Andy McKenna puts on his best concern troll outfit and tells us:

“By failing to strip Rod Blagojevich of his senate appointment power, Democrats chose to trust a madman over the people of Illinois.”

While I agree in principle with the Republicans and others bemoaning the fact Blagojevich made an appointment to the open Senate seat and have that appointment actually stick, it’s abundantly clear given his pathological “administrative” style over the years that Blago would have found some loophole even if the state legislature had passed a bill stripping gubernatorial appointment powers or scheduling a special election.

In fact, looking at the way he’s acted in the past four weeks and you can easily imagine he would’ve signed off on such legislation an hour after making an appointment anyway. He did claim to support a special election, after all, albeit in the absence of anything to actually support. Just look at what he did to the ethics package last year by delaying it and then vetoing it with demands “to make it stronger…”

It would be much too easy for Blago to circumvent any state lege action on the open seat. The only recourse was for the US Senate to re-read Article I, Section 5 and actually do what they originally said they would: reject any Blago appointment under the provisions of “judging the return”.

Alas, twas apparently not to be.