Burris in the President's Side

I tend to agree that Roland Burris is a lying sack of crap whose time in the Senate should be over. I'm not sure exactly the legal means to make that happen, however. As I understand it, the reason he was allowed to be sworn in was basically because nobody had the power to stop him. The sole appointment power was in the Governor's hands, even though he was on the way out. Without getting too much into the constitutional thicket, I think the only power the Senate has to keep an appointed senator from being seated relates to his qualifications for the job in the sense that, if the person is 35 years old and a resident of the state he wants to represent, the senate has no way to say no to him. On the other hand, I know there are more ways to kick a senator out once he's in. I don't know what the standard is, but I think that the senate can effectively kick their own members out due to moral turpitude. The simplest way for all this to get done would be for the Illinois legislature, or whoever is responsible for such things under IL state law, to impeach Burris. Impeach everybody!

As for making public service no longer amenable to corruption, that's a pretty tall order. Unlike some, I tend to think that most politicians act in good faith on the basis of what they think either their constituents would want them to do, what they think is the best thing to do for their state or the country, or some combination of the two. For the others, I'm not sure there's any recourse except elections and the occasional (or not so occasional) impeachment.