Even though it's finally above freezing at the moment in Chicago, we did make it through the entire month of January without having a single above-freezing night. It has been the coldest January in 24 years, and it looks like mid-February we'll see some more. Enough already.

Via Crain's Chicago Business, Roland Burris releases a statement about the recent unpleasantness:

"Impeachment is about whether our state's best interests are being served having the governor remain in office," the statement says. "Today's conviction speaks loud and clear that there are serious issues preventing him from fulfilling those reponsibilities."

Of course, appointing Mr. Burris wasn't one of those "serious issues." At least in the opinion of Mr. Burris.

... "It is my hope that today will be remembered as a new beginning, more than an end," says Mr. Burris. The state now can focus on "more pressing issues."

In unrelated news, new Illinois Governor Pat Quinn this morning announced renewed support for a recall amendment to the Illinois constitution. Also, U.S. Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) on Sunday announced plans to introduce a U.S. constitutional amendment removing U.S. Senate appointment powers from governors.

The US Geological Survey just reported a 4.5-magnitude earthquake in downtown Seattle, where the time is about 6:15 am. That'll wake you up. No damage or injuries reported yet—it was a minor earthquake—but still, what a way to start the day.

Welcome to your new office, Governor Quinn.

The Illinois Senate convicted our now-ex-governor unanimously, 59-0. I guess his speech today really helped. Good thing he flew home early.

Apparently, if the Illinois senate convicts the governor (possibly today), he gets to keep his pension:

The state's constitution spells out that punishment after an impeachment trial can't go beyond removal and a ban from holding office again. Should Blagojevich end up convicted in federal court of felony corruption charges, however, state retirement officials could decide to take away his pension.

It's unclear whether he'd receive his pension had he simply resigned. And, of course, he gets to keep his congressional pension. All the better to pay lawyers with.

In unrelated news, House Republicans voted en bloc against the President's stimulus bill yesterday, showing their true commitment to bi-partisan lawmaking. David Cameron would be proud.

(Wait a second. That picture of Cameron shows the sun behind him...yet he's apparently lit from the right? I wonder what this says about the Tories' relationship with the reality-based community...)

David Cameron...lit from within. And behind. And the right. But not the left.

Via Calculated Risk, a report that the FBI knew about mortgage fraud but couldn't do anything because they were too busy with counter-terrorism:

"It is clear that we had good intelligence on the mortgage-fraud schemes, the corrupt attorneys, the corrupt appraisers, the insider schemes," said a recently retired, high FBI official. Another retired top FBI official confirmed that such intelligence went back to 2002.

The problem, according to the two FBI retirees and several other current and former bureau colleagues, is that the bureau was stretched so thin that no one noticed when those lenders began packaging bad mortgages into bad securities.

... Both retired FBI officials asserted that the Bush administration was thoroughly briefed on the mortgage fraud crisis and its potential to cascade out of control with devastating financial consequences, but made the decision not to give back to the FBI the agents it needed to address the problem. After the terrorist attacks of 2001, about 2,400 agents were reassigned to counterterrorism duties.

Keep in mind Osama bin Laden's goal: hurt America. What does al-Queda care if they hurt us directly or if they get us to hurt ourselves? Probably not much at all. If they distract the police so much that crime generally rises, the criminals win.

On the other hand, given that so much of the financial disaster in this country has benefitted the super-rich people the previous administration coddled, perhaps they weren't simply incompetent.

The Chicago Tribune this morning reported that the President plans a visit home early next month. But as I mentioned earlier, it's not clear what effects this will have on area aviation:

Aides declined to comment on Obama's February schedule, but a source close to him said he could make his first presidential visit to Chicago as early as Presidents' Day weekend, when his daughters have a three-day break from school.

... In Chicago, the best bet for an Air Force One landing is O'Hare International Airport. Midway Airport and Gary/Chicago International Airport could also be options, especially if a smaller-than-normal plane is used to transport the president.

During the campaign, Obama almost exclusively used Midway, a location that offered a 20-minute commute to his home in the Hyde Park/Kenwood neighborhood.

But Midway's longest runway is just 6,522 feet, barely long enough for the Boeing 757 that served as his general election campaign plane. The two 747s typically deployed as Air Force One are considerably larger and heavier.

Actually, a 747 can land just fine at Midway or Gary—or Chicago Executive, for that matter. When a 747 lands, it weighs considerably less than when it takes off, and it's moving considerably slower. That's the problem: once a 747 lands at an airport without a runway longer than about 7,000 feet, that airplane isn't leaving.

Under perfect circumstances, a 747-8 needs only 5,500 feet of runway to take off or land. But "perfect" means an empty airplane on a cold day with a good headwind. Landing and takeoff performance degrade quickly under other circumstances. On a mild Chicago spring day with a modestly-loaded airplane, the distances jump to 7,000 or 8,000 feet quickly.

The Air Force, however, has a solution, which no one else seems to have considered:

When Obama was last in Chicago on Jan. 4, he departed from Midway on a military plane equivalent to a 757. That plane has been used as Air Force One and has also transported vice presidents, first ladies and members of Congress.

Duh. The 757 was designed for short runways.

So now we only have to worry about the traffic jams his motorcade will cause...

Yesterday was the 30th consecutive day below freezing in Chicago. The chart doesn't show that we've had only 10 hours above freezing all year. The last time we had 24 hours above freezing was December 27th.

One little bit of good news: Today the sun sets after 5pm for the first time since October, as each day becomes noticably longer than the one before.

Roll on April...

As the New York Times' Freakonomics column pointed out yesterday, the appointment of Kirsten Gillibrand to the U.S. Senate means only 1/3 of New York's statewide officers were actually elected:

There are six positions in New York State for which statewide elections are held: governor, lieutenant governor, the two U.S. senators, attorney general, and comptroller. But at the moment, only two of the six officeholders were actually elected to their positions.

...

[T]he next time some cranky writer/economist guys wonder why people bother to vote, let’s recall that only 33 percent of New York State’s elected officials were actually elected.

By the way, despite our current issue here in Illinois, we've only got one unelected statewide officer, appointed by a guy who'll be out of office before the Superbowl.

He got a treasury secretary. Barely. And I have to agree with Russ Feingold (D-WI), that one might prefer the head of the IRS to have paid all his taxes (or at least not lied about it when caught).

Can you believe it's been a week? Remember where you were eight years ago? I was back from London, which is where I watched the previous occupant being sworn in live on the Beeb, embarrassed for my country. Things have changed.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the soon-to-be-former Governor of Illinois continues to stretch the abilities of pundits and bloggers worldwide to come up with new ways of expressing that he's insane. Take yesterday's performance, for example:

Blagojevich again blasted Illinois Senate rules that prohibit his calling certain witnesses and producing certain evidence. "Unlike Richard Nixon, who was dealing with issues of tapes, who didn't want his tapes heard," the governor said. "I want mine heard. I'd like the full story to be told. If the Senate would let me have evidence, I sure would like to be there so I could prove my innocence."

But...um...the only reason you're not there, Roddy old boy, is that you're in New York making an arse of yourself on international television.

The bottom line: I'm proud to be an American right now, but not so thrilled to be from Illinois.

I think the only governor we have (until Thursday, apparently) has less resemblance to a cuckoo than a dodo, but even that analogy isn't quite apt. Cuckoos, recall, are parasites, hijacking the nests of other birds, killing their hosts' chicks, and taking heavy losses themselves when their hosts discover their predations. Dodos, on the other hand, were inoffensive, peaceful birds who had no defenses against the rats and pigs who ate their eggs with reckless abandon, causing the birds to go extinct within 40 years of first contact with humans.

No, after reading about our only governor's performance with Diane Sawyer this morning—hours before his presence in Springfield might be appropriate—I think, possibly, he's a peacock: a strutting, narcissistic, totally useless and not fairly intelligent bird, with a loud and grating call that irritates everyone within earshot.

Anyone else have suggestions? If Soon-To-Be-Former-Governor Blagojevich were a bird, what kind of bird would he be?

Update: Barbara Walters this morning did not ask Blagojevich what kind of bird he would be; instead she asked him "why are you wasting time on these shows?" Seems a fair question.

When the temperature falls below -5°C, practicing landings increases the risk of frosted spark plugs and other cold-weather engine failures. So why not go sightseeing instead? Especially late afternoon in the dense, calm winter air? I mean, it's not like there's a baseball game:

The only governor we have takes his fight to the air in a self-parody so pathetic it made his lawyers quit:

Edward Genson, Blagojevich's lead criminal defense attorney, announced he was quitting hours after his client smeared the impeachment trial as a "sham" in a series of radio interviews and a nationally televised news conference. Blagojevich said the criminal case was being used as a pretext to impeach and remove him by fellow Democrats who have a vendetta against him for his independent political streak.

"That's what this is all about," Blagojevich said during a nearly 20-minute news conference in the Thompson Center in Chicago. "The heart and soul of this has been a struggle of me against the system."

It was all too much for Genson, a cautious criminal litigator who didn't approve of his client going public.

"I never require a client to do what I say. But I do require them to at least listen," Genson said after a federal court hearing related to the impeachment case. "I wish the governor good luck and Godspeed."

It's sad, really, that the governor doesn't realize that he is the system. Or, rather, was.

Even the pot—er, Mayor of Chicago—"puckered his lips and—in a high-pitched, sing-song voice—chirped: 'I said cuckoo once, I'll say it again. Cuckoo.'"

Via The Atlantic's James Fallows, a report that Microsoft's latest round of layoffs means the end of Flight Simulator:

[A]s of yesterday, it's the end of development for the venerable FS franchise (and probably the associated Microsoft ESP, the new commercial simulation platform based on FS), one of the longest-running titles in the history of the PC.

Sigh.

Trib headline: "Gov. Rod Blagojevich's lawyers expect his removal from office":

"As far as I know, the people in the Senate are more likely than not to convict him, and he will be removed from office," Blagojevich attorney Edward Genson told the Tribune. "I don't welcome it, but I expect it."

Genson also said Blagojevich won't mount a defense during the impeachment trial.

Duh. Everyone in Illinois knows the Governor will lose his job next month. Everyone, it seems, except the Governor:

"What the Senate and House are trying to do is to thwart the will of the people and remove a governor elected twice by the people without a fair hearing, without due process and without giving me the right—the most basic right every citizen in our country has—and that is the right to call witnesses," said Blagojevich.

In advance of a series of news media appearances on Friday, Blagojevich told the Associated Press on Thursday: "I'm going to fight this to the very end. ... Dec. 9 to my family, to us, to me, is what Pearl Harbor Day was to the United States," he said. "...And just like the United States prevailed in that, we'll prevail in this."

Memo to Governor: Your approval is in single digits. The only two reasons you are still in office are (a) you're too stupid to resign and (b) Illinois doesn't have a recall provision in its constitution. It's not a criminal trial; it's an exercise of political power. Don't worry, even after your conviction in the Senate next month, you'll still get your day in court. Oh yes. You will.

The President has ordered the military prison at Guantánamo Bay closed within a year, directed intelligence services to abide by the Army's interrogation standards, and directed Justice to review an important terrorism case with an eye towards giving the defendant actual Constitutional protections.

If he keeps this up, we could restore our standing in the world in less than 20 years, perhaps.

In local news, the Chicago Tribune has picked its favored bidder in the upcoming Cubs sale (without revealing who it is), and Illinois first lady Patricia Blagojevich got fired from her job as fundraiser at the Chicago Christian Industrial League. These stories aren't related, mind you; they're just current.

Yesterday was also a National Day of Renewal and Reconciliation, which is as good a reason as any to republish this photo:

(Full-size after the jump.)

Life goes on:

• The Chicago Tribune says farewell to Kerry Wood, who has left the Cubs;

• Meanwhile, the Cubs have gotten into a shouting match with priest who blessed the dugout to remove the Curse of the Billy Goat (it didn't work);

• Twenty six people have filed papers to run for Rahm Emmanuel's House seat, primary to be held March 3rd; and

• Almost as exciting as yesterday's events, Lost returns tonight.

Now I'm going back to the NPR story about all the stuff we're not shipping from our major ports.

"President Barack Obama."

"Former President George W. Bush."

Ahhhh.

Or, at the very least, to the reality-based world. And look at all of those people...I'm now totally happy not to be on the National Mall today.

More later, sometime in the next Administration.

Only hours remain until the End of an Error.

Illinois' governor is William J. Le Petomane.

Crain's Chicago Business crows that Chicago businesses will enjoy happy times now that so many political appointees in Washington will be from Chicago:

[F]or Chicagoans hoping to do business with the federal government or influence U.S. policy, the key won't be a high-level connection to the White House. It will be the ability to get a call back from the staffers who have direct lines to the powers that be as well as, in some cases, authority over bureaucratic functionaries. So while being from Chicago may not get you an audience with designated Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, it may help you get to his deputy chief of staff, Matthew Yale, a vice-president at Chicago-based Ariel Investments LLC.

One of my friends pointed out the flip-side of all this: lots of good people have left Chicago. Lots of them. I've kidded about my Congressman and junior Senator leaving, but really, it's hundreds of our best and brightest. The talent vacuum gives people like our soon-to-be-former governor and our new, I-guess-we-can-live-with-him-for-two-years U.S. Senator something to fill. Consequence: we have no state government right now.

Don't misunderstand: I am very, very happy that Obama will become President in 26 hours or so, but I also think it comes at a pretty steep cost for Illinois.

Via long-time reader SP, Bob Woodward's musings in today's WaPo concerning lessons we should learn from the last 8 years:

3. A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.

The president should not micromanage, but understanding the ramifications of his positions cannot be outsourced to anyone.

For example, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the commander of the U.S. forces in Iraq in 2004-07, concluded that President Bush lacked a basic grasp of what the Iraq war was about. Casey believed that Bush, who kept asking for enemy body counts, saw the war as a conventional battle, rather than the counterinsurgency campaign to win over the Iraqi population that it was. "We cannot kill our way to victory in Iraq," Gen. David Petraeus said later. In May 2008, Bush insisted to me that he, of all people, knew all too well what the war was about.

Less than 50 hours remain in the worst presidency in U.S. history.

The legal team representing the only governor Illinois has quit this afternoon. More precisely, they stuck their collective tongue out at the legislature because impeachment is just so unfair:

Blagojevich's lawyers believe the process has become "fundamentally unfair" because they have had too little time to prepare for the Senate trial and have been denied subpoena power to call their own witnesses.

The governor's lawyers had been asked to file an appearance on his behalf by Monday. The Senate trial is scheduled to begin on Jan. 26.

"I had never committed to the Senate trial, and I will not file an appearance," said Ed Genson, who deferred further comment....

Perhaps it's only coincidental that one of Blagojevich's fundraisers just this morning turned state's evidence (same story), and one of his former staffers plead guilty to misusing corporate funds:

Christopher Kelly, a longtime friend and adviser to Gov. Rod Blagojevich, pleaded guilty in federal court this afternoon to filing false tax returns that concealed his use of corporate funds to cover gambling debts.

Kelly, 51, answered with a strong "guilty" when asked how he would plead by U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo. He admitted to underreporting his commercial roofing company's profits by nearly $500,000 between 2001 and 2005.

There's no denying the entertainment value, but in all seriousness, I'd kind of like a state government again.

The Chicago Tribune can turn off its clock; Chicago officially hit -17°C a few minutes ago.

I just realized only 96 hours and 10 minutes remain in the worst presidency in American history, and felt glad.

The Chicago Tribune's home page this morning has this counter, which as a native Chicagoan I have to call pretty whiny:

Yes, it's colder right now in Chicago than at the North Pole, and yes, we've only had 44 days in the last 139 years when the temperature failed to go above -17°C, but this counter just seems silly. And it's so short-lived: we'll be out of the danger zone by noon today.

Now, a counter ticking down the 4 days, 4 hours, and 1 minute until Barack Obama is sworn in as President? Not silly at all.

And Crain's had a story this morning to warm my heart: Goose Island Beer is now available in Washington, just in time for a Chicagoan President to drink it.

In no particular order:

• Three cheers for the US Airways crew who executed a good landing[1] in the Hudson River this afternoon. I'm not joking: it's hard enough to glide any airplane after a total power loss, something else entirely to land on water without flipping the plane or sinking immediately. That all 155 passengers got out means Capt. C.B. "Sully" Sullenberger and his first officer deserve medals. Let's remember that one kilometer in either direction would have led to a horrible outcome. This wasn't a 20-mile glide from 30,000 feet over flat farmland; this was a crippling bird strike[2] at 3,000 feet over Manhattan.

• My cousin and I got our Cubs home-game tickets today, all 13 games worth. Woo hoo! First game: Friday April 17th against the Cardinals. But before that, as part of my continuation of the 30-Park Geas[3] I'm considering going to Houston to see the Cubs on April 7th.

• I had a third point, but at my age I feel lucky to remember the first two.

[1] After a good landing all the passengers get out safely. After an excellent landing you can use the plane again.
[2] Yet another reason to declare open season on Canada geese. Disgusting birds.
[3] Speaking of geese...

The other-worldly cold that parked over Alaska at the end of December has now schlumped down to Chicago. For the first time since 3 February 1996, we've got more than 24 consecutive hours of temperatures below -18°C—officially bottoming out at -23°C overnight at O'Hare. (This is nowhere near the record set 15 January 1972 of -33°C.)

<humor tone="gentle">
You know, between this weather and their annoying governor, I'm wondering about whether we should have admitted the state in 1959....
</humor>

The Prisoner, Patrick McGoohan, dead at 80.

Yesterday, Khan Noonien Singh (Ricardo Montalban) died at 88.

Imagine the conversation:

"Where am I?"

"You didn't expect to find me...you thought this was a dead planet. Tell me: why are you here?"

"Whose side are you on?"

(Come to think of it, that gets too silly, too quickly...never mind.)

Two examples of totally ineffective security responses in today's news. First, in suburban Chicago, a commuter-rail ticket agent called police about a man with a gun boarding a train, causing a two-hour delay as heavily-armed cops evacuated and searched the train. They found the man with the gun when the man in question saw the commotion and identified himself as a Secret Service agent, not realizing he was himself the target of the search:

Metra spokeswoman Judy Pardonnet said the incident began when a plainclothes Secret Service agent asked a Naperville ticket agent whether there were metal detectors aboard the BNSF Line train and indicated he was carrying a gun.

Developers generally don't like third-party UI controls because they're generally frustrating to use. Case in point: in the Infragistics Windows Forms controls package, the UltraGridColumn has sucked a substantial portion of my day away.

If you don't write software, you still appreciate it when it works simply and intuitively. You want to search for something, you go to Google and type in a search term. Brilliant. When you go to some company's website because you want to call the company, you look for something called "contact us" and click it. If you don't get the address and phone number of the company after clicking that link, you get irritated: the simple, intuitive thing didn't work. Jakob Nielsen is all over that stuff.

So. I have a simple problem, which is how to make a column in a grid grey out so my users don't inadvertently edit something they shouldn't. What I expect to write is something like this—or I would, if the member existed:

theReadOnlyColumn.Enabled = false;

Sadly, there is no "Enabled" member. So how about using a member that actually does exist?

theReadOnlyColumn.IsReadOnly = true;

Interesting. That member doesn't allow you to change its value. In fairness, the particle "Is" suggested it was a read-only member (ironic, that), but still, it looked like the right thing to do.

But no, here's the intuitive, simple, gosh-how-didn't-I-see-that-right-away thing to do:

theReadOnlyColumn.CellActivation = Activation.Disabled;

<rant>

This sort of thing happens when developers create software based on how it works, rather than what it does. It's sloppy, it reflects an inability to think like the person using the product, and it's compounded by a criminal lack of clear "how-to" documentation. (The Infragistics documentation site appears to have no way to search for concepts, requiring you to figure out how Infragistics developers organize things on your own.) This really, really annoys me, and is why I avoid using their products.

</rant>

It's official: Roland Burris will sit his ass in the U.S. Senate seat previously occupied by Barack Obama's ass tomorrow, restoring the Illinois tradition Obama interrupted of having seriously flawed junior senators. Seriously. The seat was previously sat in by Peter Fitzgerald, Carol Moseley-Braun, Alan Dixon...despite Adlai Stevenson III being in the seat as well, you kind of have to go back to Everett Dirksen to find another person we can actually be proud of in there. I recommed a quick perusal of Wikipedia's list for a chuckle.

Forgot to mention: today the only governor we have will swear in the Senate whose first order of business is holding his impeachment trial. Fun times, fun times.

The frigid weather in Alaska (ten consecutive days below -40°C) has apparently broken. Yesterday, for the first time since December 27th, Fairbanks got above -20°C. Right now it's a balmy -17°C, in fact, which is out of the realm of truly-dangerous cold and into just-plain-annoying cold.

MSNBC reports President-Elect Obama will order our detention facility at Guantánamo Bay closed next week. However, "[i]t's still unlikely the prison would be closed any time soon. Obama last weekend said it would be 'a challenge' to close it even within the first 100 days of his administration," MSNBC reports.

In related news, outgoing President Bush still can't fathom how he damaged our standing in the world: "I disagree with this assessment that, you know, that people view America in a dim light," he said. "It may be damaged amongst some of the elite. But people still understand America stands for freedom."

Only 188½ hours remain in the worst administration we've ever had.

Dawn Turner Rice, like a lot of people, found the 1960s-style race-baiting of Roland Burris' supporters disturbing:

Perhaps the real architect of this fiasco is Blagojevich who, although ham-fisted in almost every other regard, handled this skillfully. He knows his way around racial politics. He was the one who gave Rush the platform at the news conference announcing Burris' appointment. Blagojevich knew he couldn't, with any great effect, warn reporters not to "hang" or "lynch" his appointee.

In related news, the only governor we have (for the next three weeks, anyway) released nine reasons why he's great, which Eric Kleefeld summarizes: "He is a proud and strong progressive...and a complete megalomaniac."

On a flight this evening I read the actual Illinois Supreme Court opinion in the matter of Burris v. White, and found, at the end, this helpful bit of advice for His Royal Ego the Appointee:

The registration of the appointment of Mr. Burris made by the Secretary of State is a "record of paper" within the meaning of [15 ILCS 305/5(4)]. A copy of it is available from the Secretary of State to anyone who requests it. For payment of the normal fee...Petitioners could obtain a certified copy bearing the State's seal.

This is about as close as possible the Court can get to actually calling him dumb as a post. And he's our new U.S. Senator. Woo-hoo!

The Illinois Supreme Court denied Roland Burris' motion to compel Secretary of State Jesse White to sign Burris' appointment to the U.S. Senate. The court said, in essence, we can't compel him to perform a ceremonial function:

"Because the secretary of state had no duty ... to sign and affix the state seal to the document issued by the governor appointing Roland Burris to the United States Senate, petitioners are not entitled to an order from this court requiring the secretary to perform those acts," the high court wrote in its opinion. "Under the secretary of state act, the secretary's sole responsibility was to register the appointment, which he did."

Now, this presents a problem. Under the 200-year-old case of Marbury v. Madison, it's possible that the U.S. Courts can't compel the Senate to seat Burris, even though the Illinois Court says the appointment is legal under state law. I'm not a Constitutional scholar by any stretch. The President-Elect is, however, so it will be interesting to hear his opinion on where Burris stands (or sits) now that his state-level appeals are finished.

Despite Illinois' remarkable record of political corruption, today is the first time we've actually impeached the governor:

The vote by the House was 114-1.... Rep. Milt Patterson (D-Chicago) was the lone vote against impeachment.

A spokesman for the governor said he won't resign.

(I assume the spokesman meant the governor won't resign and the reporter was just being sloppy.)

The GOP once again fails to grasp the magnitude of impeachment as a last resort, and also the limitations of the legislature's power:

While the debate was free of partisanship, Illinois Republican Party Chairman Andy McKenna was quick to criticize Democrats following the impeachment vote.

"After six years of enabling and endorsing Rod Blagojevich, the Democrats who run this state waited until Illinois faced national embarrassment to act and are now voting to impeach a governor they worked to re-elect only two years ago," McKenna said in a statement. "To make matters worse, these same Democrats have fed this crisis by refusing to strip the governor of his appointment powers, and are helping to seat Blagojevich's hand-picked and tainted choice for United States Senator."

And for those keeping score at home, here is Illinois Constitution Article IV, Section 14 ("Impeachment"):

The House of Representatives has the sole power to conduct legislative investigations to determine the existence of cause for impeachment and, by the vote of a majority of the members elected, to impeach Executive and Judicial officers. Impeachments shall be tried by the Senate. When sitting for that purpose, Senators shall be upon oath, or affirmation, to do justice according to law. If the Governor is tried, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court shall preside. No person shall be convicted without the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senators elected. Judgment shall not extend beyond removal from office and disqualification to hold any public office of this State. An impeached officer, whether convicted or acquitted, shall be liable to prosecution, trial, judgment and punishment according to law.

Interesting times, interesting times.

...just left $153 million on the table:

Chicago and CTA officials have only themselves to blame for forfeiting a $153 million federal grant pegged to help ease traffic gridlock, U.S. transportation officials said Thursday.

The fumble marks a major setback in efforts to improve mobility in the nation's second most congested region. It means Chicago will be forced to put on hold a promising plan that would use bus-only lanes, special quick-boarding stations and high-tech traffic signals until city officials can try for funding from Barack Obama's administration.

Mayor Richard Daley insisted his administration was not responsible for the loss of the $153 million. "We did everything possible," Daley said at an event with CTA officials. He accused federal officials of being inflexible by refusing to extend a deadline to meet the requirements of the grant, which was considered a shoo-in since last spring when U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters signed an agreement with the mayor.

...

"Chicago waited too long to get their application submitted in full," said Doug Hecox, a spokesman for the Federal Highway Administration.

One of the fundamental omissions was that city and CTA officials failed to conduct an adequate number of public meetings, officials said.

The grant was contingent on the city's 2008 approval of congestion-pricing for parking meters, the lease of its parking meter system and related requirements.

At least it's warmer here than in Alaska, where some areas haven't had temperatures above -35°C in more than a week. (It's -50°C in Northway right now, for instance.)

The soon-to-be ex-governor of Illinois got one step closer to getting thrown out this morning:

The Illinois House impeachment committee has drafted a report calling for the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

The report could still be amended when the committee meets later today. But it is expected to be sent to the full House, which would then take up impeachment of the governor.

In the 69-page report, committee members noted that the governor refused to testify and rebut any of the allegations involving his conduct or the federal criminal charges surrounding his arrest at his home Dec. 9.

It could hit the Illinois Senate before the end of the month.

Via reader TW, The Onion on Apple's latest innovation.

This short, from Ball State University graduate Jaron Henrie-McCrea, won the 2005 Student Academy Award in the Experimental category:

No details yet, but it looks like "Tombstone" will get to sit after all.

Update: OK, not quite, but either the Majority Leader blundered today, or he blundered yesterday. It's not easy to tell.

I have gone on the record in my opinion that both Roland Burris and Rod Blagojevich are unqualified hacks not fit for public office. I've further gone on the record saying Blagojevich should not have appointed anyone to fill Obama's U.S. Senate seat after being arrested for corruption last month, and that anyone accepting such an appointment would remove all doubt as to the appointee's vanity, stupidity, and lack of qualification for the office.

The sad fact is, though, nothing has persuaded me that either the U.S. or Illinois constitutions can undo what the only governor we have has done. Though the Burris appointment offends every inkling of public duty that I have, and though I wish a speedy and bi-partisan impeachement upon the governor's ass, I can't escape the idiocy that has befallen my beloved state. So I'm with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): seat the idiot already. (Though I don't agree with Feinstein's implication that "seasoned and experienced" are necessarily qualifications for office.)

On the other hand, given the enormous Karmic shifting that allowed the (probably) only clean politician in Chicago to become President of the U.S., I suppose Illinois is in for quite a beating. Just look at history: we produced Grant and fostered Lincoln, which was balanced by the unbelievable corruptness of Grant's administration and the scandals that led to the entire world (except the U.S.) observing May 1st as Labor Day in observance of the Haymarket riots just a few years later. Let's not even talk about The Jungle, yes?

My bottom line: If Burris wants to end his political life (and carve another line into his tomb) as U.S. Senator, fine. But let's get some actual contenders running in the 2010 Democratic primary (like, for instance, my law school classmate Lisa Madigan), and let's get Pat Quinn into the Governor's Mansion, before even Hugo Chavez thinks we're incorrigible.

Via Paul Krugman, imagine what would have happened had the Greedy Old Party (GOP) succeeded in pushing through Social Security privitization. But why imagine? We can just look at Italy:

Italy did for retirement financing what President George W. Bush couldn’t do in the U.S.: It privatized part of its social security system. The timing couldn't have been worse.

The global market meltdown has created losses for those who agreed to shift their contributions from a government severance payment plan to private funds meant to yield higher returns. Anger is rising both at the state, which promoted the change, and money managers such as UniCredit SpA and Arca Previdenza, which stood to profit.

Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's administration is now considering ways to compensate as many as 1.2 million people who made the switch, giving up a fixed return for private plans linked to financial markets. It's also letting people delay redemptions on retirement funds to avoid losses after Italy's benchmark stock index fell 50 percent in 2008, destroying €300 billion ($423 billion) in wealth.

Oops. Keep in mind, a lot of people got rich on the program: the people selling the investments.

On a much smaller scale, let's keep this example of privatizing a necessary government function in mind when the Chicago street parking privatization blows up in scandal a few years from now.

Even though the final vote count in the Minnesota U.S. Senate race put Franken 225 votes ahead last night, incumbent Norm Coleman asked the state Supreme Court for one last chance to count an additional 900 ballots. Today the court said, unanimously, "bugger off, you right prat." OK, they were more polite than that:

The record before us with respect to petitioners' motion demonstrates that local election officials have acted diligently and in accordance with our orders, and together with the candidates have agreed upon more than 900 rejected absentee ballots, which have now been opened and counted by the Secretary of State's office.

...

Because the parties and the respective counties have not agreed as to any of these additional ballots, the merits of this dispute (and any other disputes with respect to absentee ballots) are the proper subjects of an election contest under Minn. Stat. ch. 209.

In other words, Franken won, you already agreed to the procedure that solidified his win, and anyway your term expired last night so pack it in and go back to Long Island, you sodding wanker.

Again, I may be editorializing here...

In related news, the best governor Illinois has will not be going to Washington to help his own Mr. Smith get past the Capitol police tomorrow. Can't think why not.

The Senate adjourned Friday after playing "work-to-rule" to prevent the President from making recess appointments for almost two years:

Among the many standoffs between congressional Democrats and Bush, the issue of interim appointments was one -- possibly the only one -- where Democrats truly had the upper hand under the Constitution.

Earlier this decade, annoyed that Senate Democrats were stalling his nominees to the appeals courts, Bush used his so-called recess appointment authority to name controversial selections such as Charles Pickering and William Pryor to the federal bench when Congress was on one of its many breaks. Such appointees get to serve out the remainder of the year in which they were appointed and until the end of the congressional session the following year.

So with the session never legally in recess, the President couldn't make recess appointments. QED.

The 111th Congress opens tomorrow, and Thursday, Barack Obama will be certified the next President.

The Minnesota Canvassing Board is expected tomorrow to declare Democrat Al Franken the winner of the state's U.S. Senate election by a margin of 225 votes:

It took only an hour Saturday afternoon for election officials to count 933 absentee ballots that all sides had agreed were wrongly rejected. Franken won 52 percent of them and Coleman captured 33 percent (the rest went to other candidates or cast no vote in the Senate race). It was a surprisingly muscular margin that was reflected in the glum looks of Coleman staffers and the satisfied appearance of Franken's staff.

Franken started the day with an unofficial lead of 49 votes. He achieved a net gain of 176 votes on Saturday.

Republican Norm Coleman vowed to fight on, even though other Senators have already accepted Franken's victory.

That, I believe, is 59, once future Illinois Governor Pat Quinn appoints a Democrat to Obama's seat.

The weather has cooled off a bit in the interior of Alaska:

Friday marked day six of the worst cold snap to hit Fairbanks in several years and there is no relief in sight for residents who live in Alaska’s second-largest city — or the business owners they call to bail them out when their cars, pipes and septic tanks freeze.

The temperature in North Pole dipped to 55 degrees below zero on Wednesday night, the lowest temperature recorded in the greater Fairbanks area during what has been six days of severe cold. It was “only” 46 below at 4 p.m. Friday in North Pole, but the temperature was “dropping by the hour,” meteorologist Austin Cross at the National Weather Service in Fairbanks said.

Friday marked the fifth day in the last six the temperature at Fairbanks International Airport hit 40 below or colder; it was only 38 below at the airport on New Year’s Day.

Forecasters expect temperatures in Fairbanks this weekend will likely touch 50 below and there is no indication the cold wave will dissipate anytime soon.

Since I don't read Alaskan newspapers often, and I'm used to seeing cold Alaskan temperatures on the Weather Now extremes page, I actually first heard this when ten people emailed me to complain about a bug in Weather Now. It turns out, the news story above linked to Weather Now and drove 2,400 unique visitors to the site in six hours.

I should know better. Fortunately my servers easily handle 10,000 page views per hour, but still, seeing a traffic spike like that caught me a little off-guard.

In another bit of Illinois stupidity, three hunters yesterday killed a trupeter swan by mistake:

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service officials say hunters thought they were shooting at a snow goose but actually killed a rare trumpeter swan at a conservation area in far southern Illinois.

One of the comments on the above-linked page gets it right: "[S]houldn't a hunter be able to identify what [he is] shooting?" Yes. Let's compare: Snow goose:

Trupeter swan:

Hey, I'm not an orinthologist or anything, but those birds look different to me.

Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan and Roland Burris are racing each other to some resolution as the only governor we have—the commander in chief of the state militia—loses his security clearance:

Officials Friday said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has revoked Gov. Rod Blagojevich's access to classified federal security information.

Blagojevich spokesman Lucio Guerrero called the move "pretty standard procedure" Friday. He says there are still a number of other state officials with access.

Also Friday, Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan said he is calling lawmakers back to Springfield next week for a possible vote on impeaching Blagojevich.

Crain's has more:

Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich could be impeached as early as next week.

The Illinois House has changed its schedule and will meet several days next week.

A spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan says the chamber may vote on a recommendation from the special committee studying whether Blagojevich should be impeached.

My dad tipped me off to Sam Harris' response to this year's World Question:

When evaluating the social cost of deception, one must consider all of the misdeeds—marital infidelities, Ponzi schemes, premeditated murders, terrorist atrocities, genocides, etc.—that are nurtured and shored-up, at every turn, by lies. Viewed in this wider context, deception commends itself, perhaps even above violence, as the principal enemy of human cooperation. Imagine how our world would change if, when the truth really mattered, it became impossible to lie.

I've never heard of this org before, but it seems to be worth a troll.

The San Francisco Chronicle's columnist is particularly funny—and scathing—today:

To my mind, even the softest portrait of W merely raises the larger question, perhaps not to be fully answered for many years: How could such a mediocre and unimaginative human cause so much damage? How could this frat house daddy's-boy dullard so perfectly undermine America's fundamental identity and disfigure every major department of government and bring the nation to its knees? Indeed, unpacking that one may take awhile.

Other questions, though, are not so difficult. Questions like: Has it really been all that bad? Have we been too hard on the poor schlub? Does Bush really deserve such white-hot derision and international contempt? Or is he just lost and misunderstood, like a sad clown with a big shotgun and an unfortunate muscle spasm? I think we can all answer those without the slightest hesitation.

17 days, 21 hours, 50 minutes left...

Apparently their forests aren't working:

The country's 1.2 million square miles of trees have been dubbed the "lungs of the planet" by ecologists because they account for more than 7 percent of Earth's total forest lands. They could always be depended upon to suck in vast quantities of carbon dioxide, naturally cleansing the world of much of the harmful heat-trapping gas.

But not anymore.

In an alarming yet little-noticed series of recent studies, scientists have concluded that Canada's precious forests, stressed from damage caused by global warming, insect infestations and persistent fires, have crossed an ominous line and are now pumping out more climate-changing carbon dioxide than they are sequestering.

In other good news, Chicago had its wettest year on record in 2008, 1292 mm, beating the old record by more than 25 mm. The rain rain rain came down...

We start 2009 continuing the ridiculous story of the governor's strenuous efforts to ensure a Republican majority in 2010. Today's Tribune outlines what might happen next week in Washington:

If Burris shows up Tuesday to claim the seat given to him by disgraced Gov. Rod Blagojevich, the outcomes range from a denial of entry to a limbo where he can hire staff but not vote.

Should Burris appear in Washington without that certification, armed police officers stand ready to bar him from the Senate floor, said a Democratic official briefed on Senate leaders' plans. Leadership also is considering the possibility of Blagojevich appearing in person to escort Burris. Ironically, the scandal-plagued governor would be allowed onto the Senate floor, because sitting governors are allowed floor privileges, while Burris would not without certification.

Can anyone extrapolate from the Three Stooges'[1] press conference what we'd be in for should armed police bar a black Senator-designate from the all-white Senate, never mind the legitimacy of the action? Whoo boy.

Tribune columnist Steve Chapman is also worth a read today, especially for those unfamiliar with Burris and his, um, eccentricities:

Burris is the prototypical time-serving career politician who owes his success to being simultaneously ambitious and bland. He has never been one to challenge the status quo, but no one underestimates his self-esteem. The two Burris children, after all, are named Roland and Rolanda.

The result of his immodesty has been a persistent hunger for offices that most people thought beyond his abilities. He has lost races for mayor of Chicago, U.S. senator, and governor (three times).

Burris' chief claim to fame until this week was his 12-year term as state comptroller, a job whose significance can be measured by the fact that few Illinoisans could identify the current occupant (Dan Hynes). Even among accountants, Burris left few strong impressions, but he also never gave any prosecutor grounds to indict him, which is not something Illinois voters take for granted.

[1] With the governor as Shemp.