The Supreme Court gutted school desegregation plans.
Immigration bill dies (yet again.)
Ben reports that Bloomberg says Obama’s not presidential material (yet).
Council Speaker Quinn suspends staff member who called for an opponent’s assassination.
Greg Sargent swears he is neither gay, bisexual nor transgendered. He did grow up in the West Village, though.
Mitt Romney has his own odd confession.
Meanwhile, Romney’s minions are making more mischief.
Scooter Libby gets a prison number. Prison bitch to come.
White House counsel to Congress: Drop Fred.
Rahm Emmanuel proposes cutting off Dick Cheney’s funding. (See video above, via TPM Muckraker.)
And finally, the answer to our highly hypothetical constitutional question about the presidential selection process, courtesy of a friendly law student who wishes to remain anonymous: It’s the Congress elected in 2008 that would break a deadlock, not the lame-duck Congress of 2006. Sleep tight, Rahm!
Here's the explanation, courtesy of a friendly law student:
"The Twentieth Amendment, ratified on January 23, 1933, provides in Section 1 that the terms of the President and Vice President end at noon on the 20th of January, the terms for Senators and Representatives end at noon on the third day of January, "and the terms of their successors shall then begin." [FN228] Section 2 of the Twentieth Amendment superseded Article 1, Section 4, Clause 2 of the original Constitution by providing that the annual assembly of Congress shall begin at noon on the third day in January unless it appoints a different day by law. [FN229] The legislative history of the Twentieth Amendment indicates that it was designed, in part, to ensure that the new Congress elect the President and/or Vice President in the event that the electoral college failed to do so. [FN230] In 1934, Congress made two additional changes. First, it changed the day the electors' meet to cast their ballots from the first Wednesday in January to the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December. Second, it changed the day Congress meets to count the electors' ballots from the second Wednesday in February to the sixth day of January. [FN231] Since then, these statutory provisions have remained unchanged."
William Josephson & Beverly J. Ross, Repairing the Electoral College, 22 J. Legis 145, 176 (1996).
Follow Andrew Rice via RSS.
