The good news for Democrats? Giannoulias, who was welcomed into the race by a slapdash Fox News report accusing him of being corrupt, is right up there with Kirk in his favorable ratings. Kirk enjoys a 55-28 favorable rating, while Giannoulias is at 51-33. But by a 22-point margin, voters say they’re “less likely” to vote Democratic because of the Blagojevich scandals and the state budget.

Blagojevich — who was impeached in January for allegedly attempting to trade an appointment to President Obama’s vacated senate seat for financial favor — left office in late January, but made the rounds on the daytime television circuit for months defending his innocence.  Harris agreed to cooperate with the federal government as it builds its case against Blagojevich, who is facing 16 counts of fraud, extortion and racketeering, so we could be hearing a lot more from him in the near future.

“It would be completely wrong if a senator said, ‘I’ll vote for you if you promise to withhold prosecution of a crime’,” Leahy told me. “No senator would make a request like that. It’d be improper.”

“Maybe Governor [Rod] Blagojevich [D-IL]” would have sought such an assurance, Leahy quipped. He never specifically referenced Bond, who declined to answer questions about the Times piece while leaving the Senate chamber this afternoon.

Ohhhhh dis. Of course, just because Leahy thinks that’s a shady thing to do doesn’t mean Bond isn’t telling the truth. Inevitably, there’ll be more to this story.

From The Huffington Post:

As Governor, Blagojevich was given two tickets to the historic affair by the inauguration committee. But at this juncture, his office says, he’s not sure whether or not he will make an appearance.

Flickr: Get Directly Down

On the upside, this might be good news for a lucky couple of well-heeled Obamaniacs in town on Inauguration Day. While Blago’s original plan to make a quick buck off of Obama’s electoral victory didn’t pan out too well, there’s always ticket scalping.

A helpful analysis from CNN.com notes the following:

Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution gives Congress the power to be “judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members.” Democratic senators in recent days have cited that provision when asserting “our Constitutional authority” without further explanation.

But Article 1, Section 3 lists those qualifications: “No person shall be senator who shall not have attained to the age of 30 years, and been nine years a citizen of the United States.” The potential senator must also be an inhabitant of the state from which he or she is chosen. Burris, 71 and a lifelong Illinoisan, certainly meets all those requirements.

It’s looking pretty bad for the Senate, if you ask me.

SCOTUSblog analyzes the leading case on point, Powell v. McCormack, in which the Supreme Court said quite clearly: “The House is without power to exclude any member-elect who meets the Constitution’s requirements for membership.”

Neither the case nor the Constitution say anything about whether the Senate has the power to judge the manner in which the appointment was made — or the person who made it.

As SCOTUSblog writes, there are a bunch of outstanding questions that our ever-confident Senate leaders have apparently “already answered for themselves.”

Among them: Is the power of the Senate (or House) to judge the mode of selection the same whether one was chosen by election or appointment? Does a state have any more power to control the method of filling a vacancy in one of its Senate seats than it does to hold an election for such a seat? How much deference, if any, does the Senate owe to the state’s mode of appointing a Senator?  Is a “taint” perceived in the mode of appointment a sufficient justification for excluding the appointee?

All this may end up being decided by the courts — perhaps ultimately, the Supreme Court. Another likely scenario is that the Senate will drag out its investigation of the Burris selection until Illinois legislators can get their act together to impeach Blagojevich.

In the meantime, as TPM reports today, the Democrats are going to do everything they can to keep Burris from even getting inside the building:

The Democratic leadership’s current contingency plan for next week is reportedly for Burris to be met at the chamber by a doorman telling him he’s not allowed inside. If he still tries to go in, armed police officers could intervene to get him away. Burris told the Los Angeles Times that he wants to avoid a scene and have all of this negotiated before he arrives, but it’s unlikely that he could negotiate his way towards actually being seated.

All of which means that Illinois is likely to be down a U.S. senator for a while.  At least the state will have the satisfaction of making new law — and history — in its struggle to seat one.

The story appears at Politico:

While state attorney general in 1992, Burris aggressively sought the death penalty for Rolando Cruz, who twice was convicted of raping and murdering a 10-year-old girl in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The crime took place in 1983.

But by 1992, another man had confessed to the crime, and Burris’ own deputy attorney general was pleading with Burris to drop the case, then on appeal before the Illinois Supreme Court.

Burris refused. He was running for governor.

According to the article, Cruz spent 11 years on death row before being set free in 1995 after being acquitted in a third trial. A prosecutor and a detective resigned in protest of the prosecutorial misconduct they witnessed while working on the case.

Burris’ bid for the Senate seat may have been doomed from the beginning, as Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Obama have both voiced opposition to the pick, but the Cruz case will likely be another nail in the coffin.