Illinois State Senator Kirk Dillard, Republican gubernatorial candidate, today called on Governor Quinn to issue an immediate Executive Order banning state funds to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Recent news accounts show ACORN employees illegally misusing state tax dollars:
“Governor Quinn should issue an immediate Executive Order to ban state funds to ACORN until the Illinois Attorney General has conducted a full investigation on all ACORN practices.
“We should not be spending tax dollars to fund an organization like ACORN which continues to violate the public’s trust at …

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Senator Mike Johanns (R-NE) introduced an amendment to the HUD and Transportation appropriation bill to strip ACORN of all federal funding.  A week ago, Johanns wouldn’t have gotten the amendment to the floor.  Today, however, after three straight days of BigGovernment.com’s video exposés of ACORN offices in Washington DC, New York City, and Baltimore offering assistance to pimping, tax evasion, and trafficking in underage Salvadorean girls, Johanns not only got his vote — but he got an impressive bipartisan showing.  The Senate passed the Johanns amendment 83-7.
The seven Senators supporting …

A senior adviser to Sen. Roland Burris (D-Ill.) slammed Democratic leaders Thursday evening, saying “they have tried their best to discredit” the new senator in the wake of his appointment by then-Gov. Rod Blagojevich.
“To the extent those goals have not been met, the Democratic leadership can blame its own tainted motivations,” the statement said. “They have tried their best to discredit one of the few ‘clean’ politicians Illinois has ever known, in order to do exactly what Blagojevich warned against.”
Read More at The Politico

I have written a lot about Roland W. Burris—the petite man with the jumbo ego– since that day in late December when now impeached Gov. Blagojevich made dopes of Democratic leaders locally and nationally by appointing the hapless, shameless Burris to Barack Obama’s vacant Senate seat.
Burris isn’t going anywhere. With  a group of African American ministers and the  Chicago City Council’s Black Caucus threatening white politicians who try to force out the U.S. Senate’s only black member, the flexible spines of Dick Durbin and Pat Quinn—at various times both called …

Could this be the end of governors appointing senators to serve until the next general election?
The end of the Burris problem?
The end of New York’s dicey blue-dog Democrat problem?
The end of Blagojevichian backroom dealings?
The beginning of real democracy in filling senate vacancies?
A federal lawsuit filed by Tom Geoghegan and former Ald. Marty Oberman six days before the special congressional election in Illinois’ 5th Congressional District may have a local and national impact far beyond the results of the primary.
In essence it says that the Constitution requires special elections to fill …