Say it Ain't So, Ro!
They didn’t want to give him the appointment. Yet, they did. And for less than a month, there was no more controversy surrounding Senator Roland Burris. He voted in favor of the stimulus package, as any good Democrat would have done. Then it leaked out. An affidavit from Burris that he may not have been totally truthful in his testimony during former governor Blago’s impeachment hearing. That’s right. It appears that the very respectable Senator Burris might have fudged the truth a little bit in his testimony.
Oh, all right. The heck with it. Burris didn’t just lie a little bit. He lied a lot bit. In fact, he’s told so many lies that he probably doesn’t know what the truth is anymore. But, hey, we can’t expect anything less from an Illinois politician, can we? Especially when lying is done in exchange for personal gain, as Burris did.
You see, before Blago was arrested, good ol’ Roland was approached by Blago’s brother Rob and was asked to raise monetary donations for Blago in exchange for Obama’s vacant Senate seat. Burris’s son was also given a job by the Blagojeviches. Burris was asked about those exact topics by the Illinois impeachment hearing committee and testified that he had never spoken with Blago’s staff or family. It was an outright lie but one Burris had to commit if he wanted to be seated in the Senate. So under the guidelines Illinois politicians apparently follow, it was a perfectly legit move. But then his conscience must have been gnawing at him, so he filed an affidavit with the Illinois House Committee explaining what had happened. Coincidentally, it sat on someone’s desk until after the Senate voted on the Stimulus package. But then it broke, and now Roland is trying to cover up his lies with more lies. He’s got people telling him to resign, but so far he’s been tuning them out. That must be hard to do when you have the President (Obama), the governor (Pat Quinn), the Illinois House Speaker (Madigan), and the other Illinois senator (Dick Durbin) all telling him to step down. He’s even got the threat of a U.S. Ethics Committee investigation.
Still, Burris continues to try to save face. At a meeting last week Burris said “I am the real Roland…I ask you to stop the rush to judgment. You know the real Roland. I’ve done nothing wrong, and I have absolutely nothing to hide.” So that’s it. There’s two Roland Burris’. There’s the upstanding honest one that was at that meeting, and there’s his evil twin who has lied to us all and is currently running loose on Capitol Hill with his lawmaking buddies. Well that clears up a lot.
Actually, there is nothing to clear up. It’s as simple as night and day. If Roland wants to be a better man and do what’s right for the people of Illinois, he will voluntarily step down and we can finally have a special election to fill the vacant Senate seat, something we should have done originally. That’s what should happen. But, then again, this is Illinois.
