Tom Geoghegan takes on Roland Burris
ob...@real.com
Tom Geoghegan takes on Roland Burris
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/tom-geoghegan-takes-roland-burris
Posted: 01 Mar 2009 04:00 PM PST
Geoghegan-Fox_02-28-09
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Tom Geoghegan was on Fox News with Greg Jarrett yesterday, talking
about the lawsuit he's filed to force a special election to fill
Barack Obama's Senate seat and force Roland Burris to stand aside:
http://progressillinois.com/2009/2/26/geoghegan-special-election-lawsuit
If the General Assembly or the U.S. Senate Ethics Committee isn’t
prepared to unseat Sen. Roland Burris, labor lawyer and 5th
Congressional District candidate Tom Geoghegan is ready to take on the
fight.
At a press conference at the Dirksen Federal Building this
morning, Geoghegan -- along with co-counsels Scott Frankel, Rob Cohen,
and former alderman Marty Oberman -- announced that he has filed a
suit in federal court against the state of Illinois and Gov. Pat Quinn
seeking a special election for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Barack
Obama.
The plaintiffs claim that neither former Gov. Rod Blagojevich nor
Quinn issued a “writ of elections to fill senate vacancies” as
required by the 17th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Currently,
Illinois follows a legal proviso in the amendment that allows the
governor to “make temporary appointments until the people fill the
vacancies by election as the legislatures may direct.” Geogeghan and
his colleagues are not suggesting that Burris’ appointment was
illegal—rather, it represents a temporary placeholder until the state
could marshal the resources to hold a statewide election. (Geogeghan
first laid out this argument in a New York Times op-ed published a few
days after Burris’ appointment in January.)
Speaking to a large assembling of reporters, Geoghegan outlined
three purposes for the suit: to “end the embarrassing stalemate” that
is the Blagojevich-Burris charade, to establish rules so the people
can vote for their elected officials, and to assure that the
government is conducted by the rule of law. “This is why I went to law
school” he said. “And the Constitution exists to make sure the
democratic rights of the people are secured.”
Jarrett worries that whatever publicity gains Geoghegan might be
making with this suit may well be offset by more mundane
considerations:
Jarrett: Let me get one more in here because we're running out of
time. There's a group of African American aldermen, they're vowing to
help black voters punish any politician who seeks to remove Burris.
That would include you. Does that strike you as a racially motivated
threat?
Geoghegan: Greg, I am a labor lawyer, and I also bring
civil-rights cases. I'm a civil-rights lawyer. My view is that both
white and black and all citizens of the state of Illinois want to stop
political corruption. That's the issue here. It's not a matter of
race, it's a matter of enforcing the people's right to vote.
You know, if we want the right to recall elected officials, we at
least ought to have the right to elect our senators directly.
Jarrett: Well, Tom, these black aldermen are going to come after
you. You know that, because you're trying to get rid of Roland Burris,
albeit in a very, very legal way. And they're going to come after you.
This seems overheated to me, but then, I'm not from Chicago. In the
meantime, it never hurts to go help out progressive heroes like
Geoghegan.
http://www.actblue.com/entity/fundraisers/21621
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