Bye-bye Burris: Obama's tainted Senate replacement won't run in 2010

(UPDATE: As predicted Burris did announce Friday that he will not seek election in 2010.)

If you were thinking of running for Barack Obama's old U.S. Senate seat from Illinois but were holding off because of incumbent Roland Burris' intention to run next year, change of plans.

Looks like on Friday afternoon in Chicago, a time designed to minimize public attention, the 71-year-old Democratic veteran of Illinois' bare-knuckles brand of politics will announce he's decided not to run in 2010. Purely his own choice, of course. And all for the better of his state.

The first clue actually came when Illinois Democratic Gov. Rod Blagojevich, now indicted for trying to auction off his nomination to fill the new president's vacant Senate chair, chose Burris as one of his final official acts before impeachment.

That tainted nomination, initially resisted by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and his No. 2, Dick Durbin, also of Illinois (see smiley photo above), eventually went through after a face-saving song-and-dance ...

Speaker Pelosi throws cold water on resolution to honor Michael Jackson

Even in death, Michael Jackson has the power to create controversy.

During the Monday memorial service in Los Angeles, Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee told the thousands of mourners in Staples Center (and the hundreds of millions of fans around the world, eagerly watching on television) that she would introduce a resolution in the hope of honoring the King of Pop for his humanitarian efforts around the world.

The Democratic congresswoman displayed a framed copy of the resolution she was proposing and insisted it would come to the floor.

On the face this would seem to be a no-brainer: iconic singer and long-time donor to charities gets a last recognition. Besides, anyone whose death can so monopolize the public arena should be a slam-dunk for a congressional resolution.

Not so fast, as The Ticket warned Wednesday in this item.

Some Republicans, including Long Island Rep. Peter King, said they had problems with the adulation pouring over Jackson. King, in a video posted on YouTube, called the....

Sonia Sotomayor cramming in practice sessions near the West Wing

These days, federal appeals court Judge Sonia Sotomayor is not in her New York chambers. She's not weighing cases or interrogating counsel or even writing opinions.

Instead, with hearings to start Monday in the historic, much-anticipated Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation process, Sotomayor is holed up in a small office in the Eisenhower Old Executive Office Building next to the White House.

A group of young aides and lawyers assigned by Team Obama poses mock questions based on research about each committee member's records. But mostly, reports CNN, Sotomayor is sitting quietly by herself, reading her back opinions, boning up on anything that might provoke a senator to raise a fuss.

"She's got to hit the books," said Thomas Goldstein, a D.C. appellate attorney. "They can ask you about any part of the law. And she's got to be ready for that."

In an earlier round of get-acquainted-sessions, Sotomayor met with 70 of the Senate's 100....

Wonder where all those stimulus $$$ are going? Maybe Joe Biden knows

Vice President Biden traveled to Ohio today, trying to salvage public support for President Obama's $787-billion stimulus package. (Details from the vice president's office below.)

With the president in Italy for the G8 summit meetings, it falls to his vice president to try to staunch the fall in public opinion. And with more and more Americans questioning the effectiveness of the massive government bailout, a new Quinnipiac Poll shows that Obama's approval rating has dropped 13 points in the last two months in Ohio, a bellwether state for presidential elections for more than a century. The plunge: from 62% approval in May to 49% now.

"The economy in Ohio is as bad as anywhere in America," said Peter Brown, who runs the Quinnipiac Poll. "These numbers indicate that for the first time, voters have decided that President Barack Obama bears some responsibility for their problems."

Adding to the administration's woes is news that state legislatures are -- imagine! -- playing politics with decisions on where to spend the stimulus dollars. Tracing the first monies dispersed by the....

Creating jobs, once the goal, dropped as criteria for $3.4-billion Energy Department project

Remember all that talk last winter about the historic awfulness of the inherited economy and how urgently the new Obama administration needed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's economic stimulus bill to get through Congress and the president flew all the way out to Denver to sign the $787-billion bill because, well, because they didn't have an Air Force One photo shoot for New York that day?

And how it was absolutely, really, essentially important to start spending all that money ASAP so that it would create good, solid, strong, patriotic American jobs right here in America? And keep the jobless rate maybe somewhere around 8-8.5%?

Which seems really pretty good today now that it's already at 9.5% and predicted to exceed 10% for much of the next year, which takes us right up close to -- oh, oh, look out! -- the 2010 midterm elections.

In fact, back in April at one $3.4-billion spending ceremony for the media, Vice President Joe Biden, who's got a lot of private meetings to attend but was still assigned to drive the stimulus spending hard, said: "This is jobs -- jobs!" Creating or saving a gazillion-point-five jobs used to be the main goal.

Not anymore.

More change. That was April. This is July. And the spending sujet du jour has moved on to....

White House misspills President Obama's name on diplomatic dokument

Somebodie -- hopefilly, not the prezdent hisselff -- doesn't no how to spell hiz furst name.

The White House this week released a copy of a new agreement between the United States and Russia on how to re-start the START arms reduction treaty talks to save the world from nuclear holocaust. (See photo above.)

And according to the illustration provided by the sharp-eyed blogger Eric Zimmermann, in the Hill's must-read Blog Briefing Room, the official diplomatic document was signed on behalf of the United States of America by "Barak Obama."

Presumably closely related to the Barack Obama who moved into 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. way back on Jan. 20. Seems longer than four months ago.

Another VIP named Dave Medvedev or something signed for the Russian Federation. 

You've got to watch those Russians every single minute.

(UPDATE: Obviously, such misteaks are not confined to government, as this newspaper correction shows.)

-- Andrue Malcolm

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Photo: Peace Pledge Union Project