Ill. Sec. of State now controls U.S. Senate

Item: Burris rebuffed by officious parliamentarian.

I do not see where the Senate believes it has the authority to define "the executive" of a state differently from the definition adopted by a state itself. — Sandy Levinson

Me neither. I remain convinced that Gov. Milorad R. Blagojevich is the only actor in this entire farce who isn't behaving lawlessly.

Also from Balkinization, this amusing reader comment:

[Harvard law professor Laurence] Tribe (and you and all the others) are still tap dancing, rather insolently, around the utterly unambiguous text of [U.S. Const. art. I, § 5, cl. 1 and the 17th Amendment].

At least have the intellectual honesty to state, openly and notoriously,* what your analytical flowchart really is:

Step 1. Dislike the plain text.
Step 2. Disregard the plain text.
Step 3. Congratulate yourself.

Not an entirely unfair assessment, roughly put.

* That's the term of art Gov. Blagojevich used when he publicly dared the FBI to tape record his telephone calls. Nice touch!