Instead, Reid is shooting himself and Senate Democrats in the foot by highhandedly and illegally spurning Roland Burris of Illinois.

Last week, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich appointed the 71-year-old former state attorney general to fill the Senate seat left vacant by president-elect Barack Obama.

Blagojevich is under a heavy cloud of corruption charges and targeted for impeachment by the state legislature. But as of last week, when he chose Burris, Blagojevich had full authority to make the appointment.

The fact Blagojevich is in big trouble proves nothing bad about Burris, who hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

We rejected asinine attempts to assign guilt by association when the Republican right tried for months to torpedo Obama’s presidential bid by tying him to Pastor Jeremiah Wright and William Ayers. Now, we reject Reid’s asinine rejection of Burris’ legitimacy to represent Illinois in the Senate.

First, the injustice involved in refusing to accept Burris as a senator is blatant and disgusting. Second, Reid is channeling the worst of President George W. “I’m the decider” Bush by placing himself above and beyond the law.

It’s been reported people in Obama’s transition team were appalled that Blagojevich made the appointment and annoyed he named someone who might not be able to hold the seat in the next election. Even so, Obama ought to call Reid and tell him to follow the law.

Burris reportedly will show up at the Senate Tuesday but not make a scene if he’s turned away. However, he says if that happens he’ll take “the next step,” which presumably is going to court.

What an unnecessary distraction, when the country is facing so many dire problems. What a way for Reid and Senate Democrats to launch a new Congress and Senate session.

How ironic that in this matter Blagojevich is meeting his responsibility and acting within the law, while Reid is doing the exact opposite.

Reid appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” this morning and was questioned about the Burris appointment. In short, after a lot of tap dancing, Reid claimed the Constitution gives the Senate and House the power to reject anyone for any reason. We don’t buy that, but you can read what the majority leader had to say in the show’s transcript.

That kind of unseemly nonsense took a terrible toll on Bill Clinton’s presidency and the whole country back in the ’90’s; it’s the last thing Democrats trying to govern and the whole country need now.

Unfortunately, the Democratic strategist, Bill Clinton adviser, author, teacher and TV personality doesn’t name names or give specifics.

The Democratic Party has had a recent run of corruption and sex scandals. Mathematicians say that there are no such things as streaks and that the last event has nothing to do with the next. The only people who disagree are crapshooters and political operatives. Since I am both, I firmly believe that there are streaks and that political scandals happen in clusters.

The Republican Party had its fair share of scandal and charges of deeply imbedded corruption preceding the 2006 election and leading up to the 2008 elections.

It doesn’t hurt to point out that these types of things are also more likely to harm the party in the majority - Republicans had more elected politicians (315 Republican officeholders in House, Senate, and state governorships) leading up to 2006.

With two big Democratic elections in a row, Democrats now hold a larger majority - 340 U.S. representatives, senators and governors. Simple math and history point to the fact that the more elected officials a party has in office, the more likely its politicians will get caught up in some sort of scandal.

The current streak, however removed from President-elect Barack Obama, doesn’t bode well for Democrats in 2009.

What to make of this? Is what Carville wrote all there is to it — just a hunch based on nonspecific probability?

Maybe, but this leaves us wondering if Carville knows some inside-the-Beltway dirt he’s keeping to himself. Likewise, could his purpose in including this passage in a column of predictions be to warn some person or persons at risk of getting caught out to clean up their act?

Whether or not that’s Carville’s game, we hope his prediction will have that effect.

Being the party of sex scandals is one area where Democrats should avoid trying to outdo Republicans. Plus, America doesn’t have time for Wide-stance Larry Craig-type distractions right now.

“Taking a pledge doesn’t seem to make any difference at all in any sexual behavior,” said Janet E. Rosenbaum of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, whose report appears in the January issue of the journal Pediatrics. “But it does seem to make a difference in condom use and other forms of birth control that is quite striking.”

Nor is it surprising that the study indicates wholesale failure of abstinence-only sex education — indoctrination, really.

“This study again raises the issue of why the federal government is continuing to invest in abstinence-only programs,” said Sarah Brown of the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. “What have we gained if we only encourage young people to delay sex until they are older, but then when they do become sexually active — and most do well before marriage — they don’t protect themselves or their partners?”

As anyone who’s ever been a teenager ought to know, if only intuitively, adolescence is a time of powerful curiosity, mercurial emotions, intense passions and raging hormones. All of that is punctuated, usually, by bouts of rebelliousness.

Thus, adolescence is a time of risk taking. Some teens take more and greater risks, some fewer and slighter ones, depending on personality. But nearly all take risks.

So it figures that, even after a period of being bombarded with facts, statistics and logical reasons why abstinence makes good sense, many a teenager will make, then break, the pledge.

But what about morality?

OK, “fortify” the facts and logical arguments with moralizing. That will probably induce a few more young people to make the pledge — before turning around and breaking the pledge, some with an added level of guilt after the fact.

Most teens who pledge abstinence probably are sincere, at that moment. The problem is, they are unstable. Circumstances and their feelings can change drastically within days.

The bottom line is that, from society’s standpoint, abstinence education and moralizing cost plenty and deliver unacceptable results. Having parents who demonstrate love, loyalty and faithfulness to each other is probably more influential, at least with some teenagers.

Realities being as they are, it makes sense to begin teaching young people more, earlier, about love, sex and responsibility, along with useful backstop information about avoiding sexually transmitted diseases, a bad reputation and unwanted pregnancy.

Please join us in praying, or keeping a good thought, for peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

No one should be surprised nothing in the internal report found any wrongdoing or even the appearance of wrongdoing.

That’s not just because the report was prepared by Obama’s people, but rather because there’s no logical motive for Obama or his aides to enter into any shady dealings with Blagojevich.

For that matter, there would be no logical reason to suspect wrongdoing on Obama’s part if he had personally pressed the governor to appoint someone. Politicians do that sort of thing all the time.

But, as we predicted, none of that makes a bit of difference to our “friends” of the right-wing noise machine. The fact Blagojevich is tainted by a bad reputation and corruption charges, and ever had something — anything — to do with Obama and/or anyone close to Obama, makes this equivalent to placing a warm cow pie in range of a swarm of flies.

For example:

• OBAMA ABSOLVES HIMSELF
• Obama’s 4:30 p.m., December 23rd Blago News Drop
• Was the President-elect Under Oath?

Obviously, they’re desperate. Obviously, the slightest morsel of innuendo, demagoguery or, at the least, raised doubts, will do.

It’s as though they’re on an evil, “Twilight Zone” merry-go-round and can’t get off.

What a waste.

Republicans tried to frame the bailout debate in terms of Detroit automakers being lumbering dinosaurs out of sync with the market, too accommodating of unions and doomed to extinction — the better to hurry them off to bankruptcy court where they could shed their union contracts and dump their pension obligations onto taxpayers.

Comparisons were made to foreign competitors, including Toyota, Honda, Nissan and others, as models of efficiency and low operating costs, and thus better able to weather tough times.

Well, here’s something for Republican Sens. Bob Corker, Tenn.; Richard Shelby, Ala.; David Vitter, La.; Mitch McConnell, Ky.; Rep. Darrel Issa, Calif.; and others to shove up their tailpipes.

TOKYO — Toyota Motor, the Japanese auto giant, said Monday that it expected its first operating loss in 70 years, underscoring how the economic crisis was spreading across the global auto industry.

On Monday, Toyota said it expected an operating loss in its auto operations of 150 billion yen, or $1.7 billion, for the fiscal year ending March 31. That would be the company’s first annual operating loss since 1938, a year after the company was founded, and a huge reversal from the 2.3 trillion yen, or $28 billion, in operating profit earned last year.

. . .“It is just a matter of time before all major automakers are losing money,” an auto analyst in Tokyo for Credit Suisse Securities, Koji Endo, said. “And things will just get worse next year, when companies start losing money for the second consecutive year.”

Turns out that, just as the Big 3 CEO’s claimed, the unprecedented credit crisis and resulting market downturn, coming on the heels of an unprecedented, long, painful runup in fuel prices, with the economy sliding into recession, created a perfect storm for the whole auto industry, not just their companies.

It’s also becoming clear those Senate and House Republicans who voted to stiff the U.S. auto industry in its hour of need were — as usual — wrong. Not just plain wrong, but selfishly, cravenly wrong, because many of them have foreign-owned automakers in their state or district.

Voters did some serious Senate and House cleaning at the polls last month, but there’s clearly more work to be done in 2010 and beyond.

The $13.4 billion loan money to be drawn from funds appropriated for the financial-industry bailout is, literally, about the least Bush could do.

The president’s plan pressures the already slimmed-down companies to do even more downsizing and to squeeze the United Auto Workers union for more and more-painful concessions.

Even so, congressional Republicans were unusually outspoken in condemning Bush’s minimal effort to salvage two of America’s surviving major manufacturers.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., typified the Republicans’ reaction:

“I have strong objections to the use of Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) funds for industry specific bailouts. And I do not support this action. But since the administration has chosen to use these funds to aid the automakers, it is important that the date-specific requirements on all the stakeholders be enforced.”

Funny, but thinking back over the hundreds of billions lost, stolen and wasted in Iraq over the last five years; the hundreds of millions for post-Katrina restoration with little to show for the outlay; plus the well over $300 billion blown for no apparent benefit on the financial industry in recent weeks, we don’t recall McConnell and his GOP colleagues demanding date-specific requirements or strict accountability.

The miserly amount Bush is providing automakers means Obama will have little time to evaluate the companies’ restructuring efforts and future plans before having to decide whether to loan them more money.

Obama’s best course is to plan on doubling the $13.4 billion soon after taking office. He and his administration should then work throughout 2009 seeing to it GM and Chrysler develop and implement restructuring plans that make sense for the long term.

Part of making sense is ensuring that dumping workers and crippling the UAW isn’t the main point of the exercise.

The charismatic senior pastor of Saddleback Church in California is likable and his inclusion will probably strike a copacetic chord with evangelicals, but there’s more to be considered.

Warren is no friend of America’s gays and lesbians, the latest manifestation being his support of California’s Proposition 8 to ban gay marriages in the state.

Gays and lesbians are offended, upset, and we don’t blame them.

Obama himself does not support gay marriage, favoring civil unions instead. That’s not an unreasonable position for a national leader trying to ratchet-down partisan and other divisions toward achieving working consensus on a host of knotty problems.

Ironically, by choosing Warren, Obama pressed a fault line of division in our society.

Many Americans, especially the young, have come a long way in recent years toward accepting gays and lesbians as normal human beings whose sexuality is oriented differently from the heterosexual majority, not deviant-behavior cases. That’s real progress. Still, gay marriage flies in the face of deeply rooted traditionalism, so majority acceptance is likely to take some time.

Nevertheless, Obama’s choice of Warren is an unnecessary, hurtful affront to gays and lesbians. He could easily have chosen a cleric who hasn’t gone out of his/her way to oppose the gay community on one of its key issues — a fundamental human-rights issue at that.

We wish Obama and Warren would take time out from preparing for the inaugural to read Newsweek’s excellent and moving cover story, “Our Mutual Joy.“

By doing that, both men might learn something especially appropriate and meaningful in this period of waiting and season when Christians celebrate peace on Earth, goodwill to men.

“To recap: We’re in the midst of a global financial crisis. The housing bubble has burst and prices have collapsed. The economy has been in recession for a year. Unemployment has risen to 6.7 percent, and if ‘marginally attached’ workers are included — those who have given up even looking for jobs — along with those who want to work full time but are forced to accept fewer hours, the rate is 12.5 percent.

“Even if the Big Three deserve to die, they shouldn’t die now. Economic theory notwithstanding, it would be insanity to throw hundreds of thousands of auto company employees, and maybe a few million others in the supply and sales chains, out of work — leaving them and their families at the mercy of an economy that has no replacement jobs for them. Public funds would end up supporting these people anyway, except that we would have lost our domestic auto industry — which, despite its many failings, is the only domestic auto industry we’ve got.”

Excellent column, well written and bristling with good, common sense from start to finish. We have just one nit to pick.

What does Robinson mean, “perhaps that’s redundant”? There’s no perhaps about it.

The United Auto Workers union and jobs of 3.5 million to 5 million American workers are also in Bush’s hands.

As millions of current and former New Orleans and Gulf Coast residents can tell you, that’s a very bad place to be.

If you somehow doubt those southern Republican senators, including Corker of Tennessee, Shelby of Alabama and McConnell of Kentucky weren’t intent on union busting, you obviously didn’t get the memo.

1. This is the democrats first opportunity to payoff(sic) organized labor after the election. This is a precursor to card check and other items. Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor, instead of taking their first blow from it.”

First shot? That’s laughable; Republicans have been waging all-out war against organized labor since working people began forming unions — to protect themselves from Republican employers.

In the current crisis, Bush can order the Treasury to directly loan $14 billion or so of financial-industry bailout funds to the automakers. That straightforward approach would see the companies through until the new Congress and Obama administration are up and running.

Alternatively, the same funding source could be tapped for a loan guarantee, with the Federal Reserve actually providing the loan money.

Conservatives don’t like either solution because the United Auto Workers union wouldn’t get cut off at the knees and billions owed retired auto workers in the form of pensions would still be the companies’ responsibility. If conservatives get their way, those pension costs will become taxpayers’ responsibility.

Plus, there’s always the chance the automakers will pay back their loans on time, with interest, and emerge better able to compete.

For selfish ideological and political reasons, the last thing conservative Republicans want the voting, taxpaying public to see is our federal government dealing successfully with a crisis. It’s better, in their view, that people think of their government as incompetent, indifferent and ineffective.

Knowing Bush’s attitude about working people generally and union members in particular, we expect he will drag out making a decision for as long as possible, then come through with something that is too little and too late.

GM and Chrysler, at least, will then go into bankruptcy. The result will be devastating to the auto industry, UAW, primary and secondary parts suppliers, retired auto workers and the whole upper Midwest. A ripple effect will intensify the recession throughout 2009 and into 2010, complicating an already nearly impossible mess for Obama throughout his first term.

When you think about it, this situation and the power Bush now has to make it immeasurably worse is the perfect neocon opportunity. They get to dump on the incoming president’s inaugural/honeymoon period. They get to add more booby traps to the economic disaster Obama inherits.

Maybe best of all, in their view, they just might get to destroy one of the country’s biggest unions.

And later on, if Obama and the Democratic Congress fail to work miracles, Republicans will declare government incapable of dealing with economic disasters, especially with Democrats in charge.

Here’s hoping we’re wrong and Bush will just lend the $14 billion. We wouldn’t bet our lunch money on it, though.

For excellent insight into the southern Republican senators and what they’re about, see “Meet the GOP’s Wrecking Crew,” by Alex Koppelman and Mike Madden, Salon.com, included in an fine post at Major Conflict. H/T to Jim Marquis.