Senator Burris, you need to step down.
We at Wayland High School are lucky enough to live in a (relatively) corruption-free state. Those in Illinois are not as lucky. Illinois state history is a how-to manual in corruption. Six Illinois governors have been indicted for corruption, and that’s not including Joel Matteson (1853-1857) who just happened to “find” $200,000 in a shoebox.
The most recent of these six governors indicted was Rod Blagojevich (pronounced, contrary to popular belief, bluh-GOY-uh-vich) – we’ll just call him Blago. The former governor was impeached and thrown out of office last month.
Why? He was accused of trying to sell Barack Obama’s senate seat. After Obama was elected president, the senate seat became vacant. By Illinois law, the governor is then supposed to appoint a new senator until the current term is up.
This made Blago very happy, for he knew that this put him in a powerful position. “It’s a f-cking valuable thing, you just don’t give it away for nothing,” as he put it, in a conversation secretly recorded by the FBI – who were already investigating him for other illegal activities.
By “valuable thing,” our friend Blago meant that he would demand money from whomever he appointed to replace Obama as senator. He asked around, but was indicted on December 9th, before he could get any takers. You’d hope the drama would end there.
However, on December 30th, Blagojevich announced that he was appointing Roland Burris to fill Obama’s vacant seat, a move that was completely legal but still caused immediate uproar. Even worse, Burris is now facing a possible investigation for perjury (lying) regarding his relationship with Mr. Blagojevich.
With this background in mind, we come to the present situation. The new Illinois governor, Illinois’ other senator, and the President have all called on Burris to resign. He must. He is a blemish on American politics, a problem for the Democratic Party, and a hindrance for the President.
There are plenty of other good Illinois citizens with more credibility and more political support who could replace him. Oprah Winfrey, for example. No, I’m not joking. In fact, Oprah was one of the candidates Blago was considering before Burris, but didn’t follow through because he was afraid, understandably, that she would think he was joking.
Oprah might have thought that a joke – but even Oprah right now would be more suitable than Roland Burris as the junior senator from Illinois.
![Seniors Garrett Batt, Tom White, Emmanuel Nzaramba and Jack Calverley work together in preparation for the Spring Fling. “We decided to host this because March is kind of a slow month [in which] there’s not really that much happening, so I just thought it would be fun to put pep back into everyone so people could look forward to something this month,” senior Delcie Peter said.](https://waylandstudentpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Screenshot-2024-03-20-at-10.28.14-PM-1200x832.png)
Melanie • Feb 28, 2009 at 5:30 PM
Something I’m wondering-why does Burris refuse to resign? He wanted power, and was allegedly willing to get it in shady ways. But he must have seen that his credibility would be seriously damaged just by being associated with Blagoevich. And now, with these new claims, he won’t have power in the senate at all. So who does it benefit if he stays in the senate? Either he will be impeached at some point, or he just won’t get re-elected.
dave • Feb 27, 2009 at 4:35 PM
another great article basil! Oprah might have been a more suitable choice, but I think she can probably do more good with her TV show than she could as a senator. she has much more influence and power to bring change with her show than being the Illinois state senator.
Anon/gif/ • Feb 27, 2009 at 6:56 AM
I agree that Oprah would actually have been able to hold better power and use it better than Burris, as clearly Burris isn’t the person to do this. Another great article.