Burris Purjury: (Blagojevich is the Gift That Keeps on Giving)

Lynn Sweet at the Chicago Sun-Times, forwards notes from staffers Natasha Korecki and Dave McKinney :

State lawmakers are calling for a criminal investigation into whether U.S. Sen. Roland Burris committed perjury before a state impeachment panel, in the wake of a Sun-Times exclusive story published online today.

The development comes after the Chicago Democrat failed to initially disclose under oath to a House panel that he was hit up for campaign cash by former Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s brother.

State Rep. James Durkin (R-Western Springs) said Saturday that the Sangamon County state prosecutor‚s office will be asked to review Burris‚ Jan. 8 sworn testimony before the House panel to determine whether Burris (D-Ill.) perjured himself.
“I don’t trust anything that comes out of Roland Burris‚ mouth or from his pen,” Durkin said.

“We had a major league situation facing us. This is a United States senate seat that came under the most clouded of circumstances,” Durkin said. “This is supposed to be about the year of reform this is about ethics and about transparency.”

There’s a press conference scheduled for sometime this afternoon.  That news conference was apparently triggered after Burris released documents yesterday indicating that Blagojevich’s   brother asked Burris to host a fundraiser for the governor before Burris was appointed to the senate.

It should be pointed out, that Burris did not hold a fundraiser, saying that it would look like he was trying to win favor, not that he wasn’t. To my mind Burris has always had a credibility problem.  This situation merely exemplifies that problem.

To my mind, this also raises questions on the credibility of Harry Reid and Dick Durbin, neither one of which stuck by their initial commitment to block anything coming from Blagojevich.  You can’t make me believe that these two didn’t know that Burris was tainted.

It should also be pointed out however that this is the same environment that Barack Obama came up in.  Does anyone really think that anyone coming up in that environment could do so without getting fertilizer on themselves?