Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion

Larrey Anderson is a frequent contributor to, and an editor of, American Thinker. I've spoken with and corresponded with Larrey numerous times in connection with several of my articles published at A.T. One thing that always jumped out at me is how much Larrey talked about his kids and grand kids.

I guess Larrey is one of those people Eric Holder would characterize as a "coward" and "racist" without knowing anything about Larrey. Larrey's from Idaho, which in Eric Holder's Washington world is almost as bad as being from Alaska; he's involved with a conservative website; he's pro-Second Amendment, believes that "hate crime" legislation is unfounded since we should punish actions not thoughts, is a defender of property rights, and, horrors, questions the science behind the "global warming" hysteria. In all, Eric Holder would have a field day with Larrey Anderson.

Except that Larrey Anderson is having none of it. Read his article, published today at A.T., Racism, Eric Holder, my Son and Me. For the punch line, you'll have to read the article, but here are some of my thoughts, which somewhat echo Larrey's point.

There is a cottage industry of race consultants, hucksters and political flame-throwers who talk about race endlessly because it serves their hidden agendas. That agenda may be monetary, ideological, or political.

And there is the vast majority of people in this country who simply go about their lives treating everyone fairly without regard to, or need to comment on, race. This does not mean that there is no racism left in society, it simply means that talking about race may not be the real answer to the problem. The lack of comment on race does not reflect cowardice, but the fulfillment of what was supposed to be Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream.

But dreams die hard. Particularly for people with an agenda which necessitates perpetual agitation on race issues.

As for Larrey Anderson. Read the article. Then tell me if he is a coward or racist.

The cold day in hell has just arrived. I agree with Maureen Dowd:

Yet Obama is oozing empathy compared with his attorney general, who last week called us “a nation of cowards” about race.

Eric Holder, who showed precious little bravery in standing up to Clinton on a pardon for the scoundrel Marc Rich, is wrong. We have just inaugurated a black president who installed a black attorney general.

We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.

In the middle of all the Heimlich maneuvers required now — for the economy, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, health care, the environment and education — we don’t need a Jackson/Sharpton-style lecture on race. Barack Obama’s election was supposed to get us past that.

I'll enjoy the feeling while it lasts, which likely will be only until her next column.

(Thanks for sending me this, Patricia!)

As reported by the putative first gentile Prime Minister of Israel:

"Quick synopsis of every Jewish holiday: They
tried to kill us; we won; let's eat."

Ah, hope and change. Near silence from the American mainstream media, but this news item from the Brits about Obama appointing one of his key fundraisers as Ambassador to Great Britain:

Barack Obama has been embroiled in a cronyism row after reports that he intends to make Louis Susman, one of his biggest fundraisers, the new US ambassador in London.

The selection of Mr Susman, a lawyer and banker from the president's hometown of Chicago, rather than an experienced diplomat, raises new questions about Mr Obama's commitment to the special relationship with Britain.

American commentators denounced the selection of a rich friend to the plumb post, regarded as one of the most prestigious in the president's gift, as worthy of a "banana republic". They said it was proof that Mr Obama has turned his back on his campaign pledge to end politics as usual....

Mr Susman's reputation for hoovering large amounts of cash from deep pockets saw him nicknamed "the vacuum cleaner" when he raised more than $240million for John Kerry's White House bid in 2004.

He was one of Mr Obama's biggest campaign cash "bundlers", fundraisers who collect contributions from hundreds of others. He also gave $300,000 to the president's inauguration fund.

More on Susman, a Kennedy crony, from the Brits:

Mr Susman, 71, is now tipped to occupy the grand surroundings of Winfield House, the US ambassador's residence in London which occupies a 12 acre site on the edge of Regent's Park.

He is no stranger to luxury accommodation. He and his wife Margie own a grand mansion on Chicago's exclusive Gold Coast, which in the late 1980s was the second most affluent neighbourhood in the US after Manhattan's Upper East Side.

The couple own another property in the millionaire's playground of Nantucket, bought in 1990 for $4.6m, just up the road from the holiday home of John Kerry, and a short boat ride from the Kennedy family compound at Hyannisport.

That proximity to family patriarch Ted Kennedy is no accident. Mr Susman's entree into Democratic presidential politics came when he raised cash for Senator Kennedy's 1980 challenge of Jimmy Carter for the party's nomination.

Who's next for an ambassadorship? Tony Rezko?
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UPDATE: When I saw the number $240 million as the amount Susman raised for John Kerry, I thought that must be a typo, that it was $24 million. But no, the Telegraph story quoted above is accurate. This from the Chicago Sun-Times in January 2007 under the headline "Obama attracts big-bucks fund-raiser":

In star-struck, political America where Barack Obama is a supernova, other superstars can slip by unnoticed. See the guy in the picture? The one with the swhite hair and the Walter Matthau eyes?

Superstar.

If you want to be president of the United States, he is the one you want to call before you even talk it over with your own mother.

Louis Susman is his name. He lives in Chicago. And at this moment, he is ready to do whatever Illinois Sen. Barack Obama needs him to do to take the White House in 2008. If Obama is running (and he is), then Susman will be pivotal to raising the cash....

Susman has tried mightily to get Democrats elected president and raised prodigious amounts of money for them. He was Richard Gephardt's finance chairman in 1988, Bill Bradley's in 2000 and John Kerry's national finance director in 2004.

The Kerry campaign nearly killed him. ''I was with Kerry for 2½ years, gained 30 pounds, and my blood pressure shot up to 187,'' said Susman, who has since dropped the weight, lowered his heart rate and was trying with limited success not to eat the French fries he hadn't ordered but the waiter brought anyway.

How much money did Susman raise for Kerry? A bundle: $247 million.

A vacuum cleaner was how someone once described him for a 2005 Tribune article, saying Susman was able to ''Hoover'' money from ''deep pockets.''

I guess we should consider ourselves lucky that Obama is appointing Susman Ambassador to Britain, rather than Secretary of the Treasury.
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UPDATE No. 2: Isn't Susman a kulak? Shouldn't his property be confiscated for the greater good?
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UPDATE No. 3: Be nice. Over at Free Republic, someone posted the following comment: "Based on the title, I thought that the article was about Monica Lewinsky."
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UPDATE No. 4: If you are worried where we are heading, check out The Last Bull Capitulates.

The beginning of a protest movement against Barack Obama's redistributive policies is underway. Though still small, every movement starts somewhere. While called the "Tea Party" after the Boston Tea Party, this movement is similar to movements throughout history where the producers of society refuse to have their property and income confiscated.

This movement can succeed if it does not stop at protest and includes changes in economic behavior. Obama's redistributive plans require higher taxation, but higher tax plans (to be announced this week by Obama) are based on the fallacy that the "rich" will not change their economic behavior in reaction to higher tax rates.

History tells us, however, that economic redistribution plans fail because the producers of society would rather not produce, than have the fruits of their production taken away and given to others. Obama can raise the tax rates on income, but he cannot force people to generate income to be taxed. People may just say "no." This resistance will not come from evading taxes, but from evading taxable income. In the end, as must all economic redistributors, Obama either will have to resort to repressive measures, or he will have to abandon his redistributive plans.

The best example of this phenomenon is the forced collectivization of farms in the Soviet Union. At the time of the Revolution, Russia was a largely agrarian society which allowed more productive farmers (so-called "kulaks") to prosper. Since the kulaks represented a political threat to communism, the collectivization of farming was a focus of communist policy. From the start, the kulaks resisted, requiring Lenin to resort to repression:

Comrades! The revolt by the five kulak volost's must be suppressed without mercy. The interest of the entire revolution demands this, because we have now before us our final decisive battle "with the kulaks." We need to set an example.

1) You need to hang (hang without fail, so that the public sees) at least 100 notorious kulaks, the rich, and the bloodsuckers.
2) Publish their names.
3) Take away all of their grain.
4) Execute the hostages - in accordance with yesterday's telegram.

This needs to be accomplished in such a way, that people for hundreds of miles around will see, tremble, know and scream out: let's choke and strangle those blood-sucking kulaks.

Telegraph us acknowledging receipt and execution of this.

Yours, Lenin

P.S. Use your toughest people for this.

From 1928-1932, Stalin pressed forward with collectivization. In some circumstances, peasants lost the private ownership of land to the collective, in other instances land owners where forced to give most or all of their production to the state or collective. The forced collectivization was more violent at some times than others, but the consistent theme was the use of government power to force the Kulaks to subsidize less successful farmers and the state (sound familiar?).

"Stalin wanted to transform individual farms into large collective farms because he saw that the government was losing money to private traders. This required that the majority of farmers would have to work and live together on large state-run farms. Through these farms Stalin hoped to increase agricultural productivity, create grain reserves for Russia, and free many peasants for industrial work in the cities. In some cases the collectivization took the form of collective farming, in others forced reallocation of crop production." (Cite)

But the peasants, particularly the kulaks, refused to submit willingly, despite the promise that the contribution of their property would increase the collective good. "How did peasants initially respond to the idea of collectivization? Party agitators sent to the villages to persuade peasants of the benefits of collectivization often met with skepticism and mockery. Peasants who resisted the pressure of regional party officials to enroll in collective farms were labeled as kulaks; those who feared confiscation sold off their property as quickly as they could, in effect self-dekulakizing." (Cite)

In response to resistance, Stalin turned to terror. Yet resistance continued. Most significantly, peasants preferred to burn their crops and destroy their property rather than have it taken over by the government.

"But the peasants objected violently to abandoning their private farms. In many cases, before joining the kolkhozy they slaughtered their livestock and destroyed their equipment, The losses, as well as the animosity toward the Soviet regime, became so great that Stalin decided to slow down the collectivization process." (Cite)

The results of collectivization were food shortages and famine. Peasants preferred starvation and death to property confiscation.

"Peasant resistance to collectivization took many forms: wanton slaughter of livestock, women's riots (bab'i bunty), theft and destruction of collective farm property, and, perhaps most widely spread, an intentionally slow pace in carrying out directives of the kolkhoz administration. The tremendous loss of livestock through slaughter, inadequate fodder, and simple neglect made it virtually impossible for kolkhozes to fulfill their procurement quotas for meat and dairy products." (Cite)

Obama and the Democratic-controlled Congress, who are so anxious to raise income taxes on the "rich," will be in for a rude surprise. There is nothing Obama can do about people who would rather not work than have the fruits of their labors confiscated, or who structure their lives to avoid taxation.

In addition to protest, supporters of the Tea Party would do well to change their economic behavior to deprive Obama of what he wants most, your tax dollars. Invest in municipal bonds, carefully manage your investments to minimize taxable income, do everything possible and legal to insulate yourself from creating taxable income. In so doing, you will doom Obama's plans because the inability to raise tax revenues will cause Obama to move to more confiscatory tactics, and then the political revolt really will begin, as it has throughout history. Can you say 1994?
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UPDATE: The Soviet-era poster above says "Come, Comrades! With us to the Kolkhoz!"; other posters from the forced collectivization campaign are available here.

Another Obama "I told you so," this time from Investor's Business Daily:

Last Oct. 13 [2008], in trying to explain why the market had sold off 30% in six weeks, we acknowledged that the freeze-up of the financial system was a big concern. But we cited three other factors as well:

• The imminent election of "the most anti-capitalist politician ever nominated by a major party."
• The possibility of "a filibuster-proof Congress led by politicians who are almost as liberal."
• A "media establishment dedicated to the implementation of a liberal agenda, and the smothering of dissent wherever it arises."

No wonder, we said then, that panic had set in. Today, as the market continues to sell off and we plumb 12-year lows, we wish we had a different explanation. But it still looks, as we said four months ago, "like the U.S., which built the mightiest, most prosperous economy the world has ever known, is about to turn its back on the
free-enterprise system that made it all possible."

Sounds familiar, huh?

I am about to tread where sane people in this society dare not go for fear of having their words twisted: Discussing race. Attorney General Eric Holder told us not to be cowards on the subject, so let's talk about whether non-racist cartoons or words can be twisted to create a false accusation of racism.

Exhibit A: The now-famous NY Post cartoon showing a chimpanzee being shot by two police officers, with the caption "Now they'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." The cartoon clearly was referencing the attack by a chimpanzee in Connecticut, in which the chimp went crazy with rage. The "stimulus bill" reference was to the trillion dollar (including interest costs) stimulus bill drafted by Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress, which eventually was signed into law by President Barack Obama. Put together, the reasonable interpretation of the cartoon was that the artist was mocking Nancy Pelosi and Democrats in Congress for acting like out-of-control primates in drafting the stimulus bill.

But others had a different agenda. The "Reverend" Al Sharpton, of Tawana Brawley (photo) hoax fame, had a beef with the NY Post, which had exposed an investigation into possible criminal violations by Sharpton in the financing of one of Sharpton's non-profit groups. So Sharpton seized on the cartoon as an excuse to accuse the NY Post of racism, asserting that the cartoon compared Obama to a chimp. So much for an honest conversation on race. Others, afraid of being accused of not condemning "racism," followed Sharpton's lead.

The word that jumped into my mind in thinking about the racism accusations against the NY Post was "gobbledygook." As described by Wikipedia:

Gobbledygook or gobbledegook (sometimes gobbledegoo, gobbledeegook or other forms) is an English term used to describe nonsensical language.

Other sources define "gobbledygook" as "wordy and generally unintelligible jargon" (Merriam-Webster); "language characterized by circumlocution and jargon, usually hard to understand" originating in the early 1940's as a "fanciful formation from gobble" (Dictionary.com); and "talk or writing that is wordy, pompous, etc. and largely incomprehensible or meaningless" (Yourdictionary.com).

I'm not sure calling criticisms of the NY Post cartoon "gobbledygook" is a proper use of the term, in light of these definitions. But clearly, nothing about the word carries a racist connotation.

Yet I hesitated to use the word, because the last four letters clearly are a racist term for Asians. Would I be subjected to an accusation of racism for using a word which itself is not racist, but if taken apart and out of context, could lead to such a charge? One has to worry about these things, as witnessed by controversies over the word "niggardly" (which means "cheap" but sounds like a pejorative for blacks). Just like the NY Post cartoon, you could take a few letters out of a word, or take a word for what it sounds like rather than what it means, and create a false accusation of racism. Such things can ruin careers.

So I won't use the word "gobbledygook" because I am a coward. I'll just call the Al Sharptons of the world what they are: Race baiters.

Hillary Clinton went to China to assure Chinese investors (i.e. the Chinese government) about the safety and security of investing in the U.S. (video here). Great. What about assuring U.S. investors? Don't we matter?

With the export-heavy Chinese economy reeling from the U.S. downturn, Clinton sought in meetings with Premier Wen Jiabao and other top Chinese government leaders to reassure Beijing that its massive holdings of U.S. Treasury notes and other government debt would remain a good investment.

"I appreciate greatly the Chinese government's continuing confidence in United States treasuries. I think that's a well-grounded confidence," Clinton told reporters at a joint news conference with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi.

"We have every reason to believe that the United States and China will recover, and together we will help lead the world recovery," she said.

While Hillary smooth talks the Chinese, Obama continues to talk down our economy and markets to the point that Obama is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of a looming depression as cover to push through his plans to remake our economic system.

A little hope? A little change? Hillary for President, anyone?

This must be some sort of plot to undermine Republican opposition to Obama's stimulus plan. Online marketers of "free government money" get-rich-quick schemes now are targeting Republicans:

Where did I find this? Through a Google Ad over at Finkelblog. Seems like Mark's audience must have been marked by Google Ads as "Republicans" so ads targeting Republicans pop up on his blog.

Here's the Google Ad from Legal Insurrection Blog:This teaser link leads to a website targeting Taxpayers. So Legal Insurrection Blog readers must be marked as being Average Joe Taxpayers:


Legal Insurrection Blog is recognized by the geniuses at Google Ads as a home page for taxpayers in need of cash. Sounds about right.

One thing about this ad, though. Why spell taxpayers "tax payers"? "Taxpayer" is defined as: "One that pays taxes or is subject to taxation." When you separate out the terms, it might take on a deeper meaning. One of the definitions of "tax" is: "A burdensome or excessive demand; a strain." The definition of "payer" is: "One that pays." So put the two together, and you get "One that pays a burdensome or excessive demand." Is this on line marketer sending subliminal messages, or have I lost my mind, or both?

Regardless of whether you say "taxpayer" or "tax payer" one thing is clear. Legal Insurrection Blog must be the home of those who pay burdensome and excessive demands, or the algorithms at Google Ads wouldn't say so.

There's an old saying on Wall Street that a bear market has not bottomed out until the last bull capitulates. News flash. The last bull has capitulated. Me.

I'm a true believer in capitalism and markets. There is no better measure of what an item is worth than the price reached by a willing buyer and willing seller. No Ph.D. in economics has come up with a better system. Every economic and political system which tinkers with this simple formulation either outright fails (the Soviet Union, for example) or relegates its people to generations of un- and under-employment (France, for example). Command economies don't work, they never have, and they never will.

There also is no better way to create wealth for a nation than to permit people to participate in economic growth through stock ownership. The companies which create jobs and economic activity benefit from investment; investors benefit from the companies' growth; and everyone is better off, even those who do not own shares.

My professional life has been dedicated to investor protection, first in private law practice and now by running a law school securities law clinic which represents small investors. Investor protection walks hand in hand with free markets, which are not free when subjected to fraud. Investor protection is more than rules and regulations, but also policies and practices which promote investment markets.

I don't give investment advice, so don't take what I am about to say as a recommendation that you do anything other than keep reading. You probably would be better off flipping a coin than following what I do.

I have lost faith in this government. I was no fan of Bill Clinton, but I felt he shared a common set of economic values, including a belief in capitalism and markets. I have no such faith in Barack Obama.

For the first time in my adult life, I am convinced that we have a President who sees capitalism and markets as the enemy. There is no other explanation for the hyperbolic rhetoric Obama has used to create a sense of economic crisis far in excess of reality. We are in a recession, but as others have documented extensively, to compare the current economy to the Great Depression is damaging.

Obama seems to be wishing so hard for a depression, he might actually get it. Obama is well along in the process of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy in which he so talks down the economy, and so shakes markets, that people are paralyzed with fear allowing Obama to push his political agenda of creating a command economy. Count me among the fearful. It's hunker-down and cut-back time not because I've lost a job, but because of the decline in markets.

The economy and the markets are intertwined, which is something Obama doesn't seem to get. As people see their investment and retirement accounts drop, they adjust their economic activity to compensate. Multiply that effect by tens of millions of investors, and you can turn a recession into a depression.

Yet Obama has done nothing to ease the pressures on markets. In the trillion dollars of spending and "middle class" tax cuts, there is nothing for investors. Nothing. We will spend more on Harry Reid's magnetic railroad to nowhere than we will spend to reassure markets.

One simple step would have been to include in the stimulus bill an extension of the current capital gains tax rate, or better yet, a small cut as a signal to the investors that they have a friend in Washington. But Obama's zero-sum view of the economy -- where one person's gain must result in another person's loss -- does not allow for such pro-market measures.

From an investor protection perspective, Obama's stubborn adherence to this zero-sum economic philosophy has caused more harm to investors than all the Bernie Madoffs and Enrons combined. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investment fraud are dwarfed by trillions of dollars of investment losses from market declines, exacerbated by claims of "crisis" and "catastrophe" which flow from Obama's lips so easily. Combine this rhetoric with runaway government spending and give-aways to labor unions at the expense of businesses, and you have the makings for a real catastrophe.

Not all of this market decline is attributable to Obama's rhetoric and policies, but much of it is. Markets look forward, and what the markets see is a federal government out of control with a skipper who sees bringing markets to heel as an emotional and political necessity. The shame of this vicious market and economic downturn is that it didn't have to be this bad.

Worse still, we have a President who has a "tail wags dog" economic plan. Obama's economic plans contain almost nothing for the 93% percent of the population which is employed, paying its mortgages, and to a great extent, is invested in the markets. Obama doesn't understand -- or care -- that promoting and protecting the investment markets helps everyone, including those who have fallen on hard times, through job creation and increased economic activity.

So for me, it's time to take some money off the table until things settle down or we get a government which cares about markets, whichever comes first. I hope I'm selling at the bottom, because that will mean the markets and the country will have recovered from the worst economic policies since the Great Depression.

A centerpiece of Barack Obama's foreign policy is convincing Europeans, particularly NATO members, to help with the effort in Afghanistan. George Bush, it was said, too long had practiced the politics of "go it alone." We were assured that once we asked nicely, instead of arrogantly, the Europeans would fall in line.

From Obama's campaign website, a promise:

Strengthen NATO: Obama and Biden will rally NATO members to contribute troops to collective security operations, urging them to invest more in reconstruction and stabilization operations, streamlining the decision-making processes, and giving NATO commanders in the field more flexibility.

Obama even promised during his European campaign tour that NATO troop contributions would bring American troops home and (laugh) help the U.S. economy:

Barack Obama said Friday that persuading NATO allies to contribute more troops to Afghanistan could lead to U.S. troop cuts and help improve the U.S. economy, with reduced military expenditure being diverted into tax cuts to help middle class families.

You see, the lack of European support was all the fault of bad George Bush, who didn't ask nicely enough:

"I can say affirmatively an effective U.S. foreign policy will be based on our ability not only to project power, but also to listen and to build consensus," Obama said.

Sorry to disappoint, but this story line had little chance of success. The reason the Europeans don't contribute more is that they don't have more to contribute. European armed forces are notoriously lax, and often serve more as social welfare agencies.

Not surprisingly, comes this news headline: "US Defence Secretary 'disappointed' over Nato response to troop call."

Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, pleaded with Nato allies today to send more civilian personnel to Afghanistan after expressing “disappointment” at their failure to meet his requests for troops....

Washington had hoped to capitalise on the new President's appeal to bring further troop commitments from European allies but, so far, no pledges have been forthcoming. There is growing concern over the logistics of prosecuting the war with too few troops and diminishing supply routes into the country.

Kyrgyzstan’s parliament voted yesterday to close the US airbase at Manas, striking a blow to efforts to find new supply routes after those from Pakistan come under attack by Taleban militants.

How troubling. Maybe some of the thousands of people who attended Obama's campaign speech in Berlin will volunteer. More precisely, how pathetic that we have a President who still thinks that his personal charisma can sway the world, and who fiddles while America's strategic position burns.

The headline of an Op-ed on the website of The Guardian newspaper, the left-wing British newspaper, started out promisingly enough: "Hamas No, Human Rights Yes." The sub-title was even better: "Why are the left and the anti-war movement ignoring Hamas's repression of the Palestinian people?"

Could it be, the notoriously anti-Israel newspaper was running an opinion piece calling out the left for a Middle-Eastern double standard?

The opening paragraphs of the article were good, such as this:

Hamas is intensifying its repression of the Palestinian citizens of Gaza, according to recent reports by Amnesty International and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. This repression includes beatings, kneecappings, executions, detention without trial, torture, restrictions on civic organisations and violent attacks on critics and protesters, as reported in the Guardian last Friday....

These abuses, which are part of a long-standing pattern of human rights violations, reveal Hamas's totalitarian agenda and are a portent of the Iranian-style theocratic tyranny they would impose on the Palestinian people if they ever secured absolute power. It is an antisemitic, misogynistic, homophobic, anti-trade union, authoritarian, clericalist movement.

Yes, The Guardian gets it! There is true evil in the Middle East, and its name is Hamas!

But wait. The next paragraph, after the quote above, starts with the word "Nonetheless." Ugh oh. I sense trouble here. Will The Guardian temper the truth with its standard "Israel is still to blame" mantra? Sure enough:

Nevertheless, none of Hamas's crimes excuse Israel's disproportionate, reckless and indiscriminate attacks on Gaza. The Israeli armed forces wantonly targeted civilian areas and caused thousands of civilian casualties, including the deaths of over 400 children. Under international law, such as the Geneva conventions, Israel's actions are war crimes and its political and military leaders should be taken to The Hague and put on trial.

These assertions of deliberate targeting of civilians and the death of "400 children" have been debunked so many times, not that it matters to The Guardian. What is important is that the author feels the need, in a piece detailing the horrors of Hamas, to take a cheap shot at Israel.

This is how it goes with the left-wing press. The Islamists who stone women, abuse their own people, and generally rule with an iron fist may be criticized, but only with the obligatory anti-Israel tirade thrown in to verify the author's bona fides as an enlightened intellectual. Such moral equivalency is why western Europe is on the decline, and not taken seriously by anyone outside of western Europe.

Roland Burris has offered changing accounts of his communications with emissaries of former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich in the weeks leading up to Blagojevich's appointment of Burris to Barack Obama's open Senate seat. These changing accounts, including an updated Affidavit filed by Burris with the Illinois House impeachment committee, have led to accusations that Burris committed perjury at worst, obstruction of justice at best.

Based on the accusations against Burris, various politicians and newspapers have called on Burris to resign. But what's the rush? If Burris is guilty of a crime, he will be charged and convicted. As of now, he is not even charged. Lisa Madigan, the Illinois Attorney General, is investigating, and if she feels that criminal charges are warranted, I'm sure she will bring such charges.

Perjury can be a difficult thing to prove, and my initial reading of the transcripts is that it may not be so clear cut. By offering a corrective affidavit, Burris may have "purged" any perjury as a matter of law.

Similarly, the U.S. Senate is commencing an ethics investigation. Let that investigation run its course, and if there are grounds and enough votes to remove Burris under Senate Rules, then Burris will be removed. As of now, there does not appear to be evidence of a quid pro quo for the appointment, but let's see what the evidence holds.

The rush to rush Burris out of office is another troubling slide down the road where the mere accusation of a crime leads prosecutors, newspapers, and politicians to demand that office holders resign. If Burris committed no crime, and is not removed by the U.S. Senate, the electorate still gets its vote in the next election cycle, which is less than two years away. If Burris can't convince the electorate, then he will be removed the way politicians normally are removed from office, by popular vote.

The problem with substituting prosecutorial, editorial, and political discretion for the normal electoral process is that such a process is arbitrary. Only those deemed politically unworthy are forced from office. If Roland Burris lied to get into office, what about all the other politicians who lied during campaigns. Should they be removed from office as well?

If the difference here is that Burris lied under oath, then there are remedies -- both legal and legislative -- to address such a lie. Let the process work.