Ah, vindication.

Yesterday, I felt like I was the only one criticizing the Roland Burris pick for Roland Burris (as opposed to Blagojevich having the gall to make an appointment in the first place).

Today, the truth about Burris and his planet-sized ego is coming out.

Some fun links:

Burris already has his grave site, complete with a massive memorial.

Roland Burris? I haven't paid much attention to Illinois politics in a while, but when I was still paying attention, Roland Burris, a once respected elected official, had turned into a sad caricature of himself.

Some highlights: 

The Obama Presidential Transition continues to be one of the speediest ever -- this bodes well for the new president's ability to decisively govern in these chaotic times. While the team has tried to keep some things -- like the vetting of potential cabinet officers -- close to the vest, in other ways the transition process has been one of the most open and interactive in history. The Obama team is playing it smart, and converting their grassroots machinery from that of a get-out-the-vote operation to policy participation.

In my most recent question column earlier this week, I asked for readers' predictions for the upcoming year ... aside from Genghis bravely predicting that Obama would become POTUS, I didn't get too many responses.

So I'm going to ask for your predictions again, while repeating some of the predictions I made and adding a couple of more, before I revisit some calls I made this year.

It was Sept. 18. Lehman Brothers had just gone belly-up, overwhelmed by toxic mortgages. Bank of America had swallowed Merrill Lynch in a hastily arranged sale. Two days earlier, Mr. Bush had agreed to pump $85 billion into the failing insurance giant American International Group. The president listened as Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve, laid out the latest terrifying news: The credit markets, gripped by panic, had frozen overnight, and banks were refusing to lend money. Then his Treasury secretary, Henry M.

Ah Democracy...freely elected legislators dutifully fulfilling the will of the people by blockading themselves in a locked room while the honorable opposition attempts to dutifully fulfill the will of the rest of the people by breaking down the door with a sledgehammer and other sundry power tools. Full video after the jump.

Dear fellow Liberals,

Listen up.

Obama's decision to ask Rick Warren to give the invocation at the inauguration is not a slap in the face. It's not a betrayal. It's not an indication that Obama is a secret conservative who is going to force you to have babies with a non-same-sex partner.

It's a freaking prayer.

Last Saturday I got a call from my parents in Athens.  It was around seven o'clock here in Pittsburgh, so it must have been around two in the morning for them.  They were calling on their cell-phone.  They were trapped by riots in a tavern in downtown Athens.  But they were not frightened.  In fact, they sounded excited, and they held the cell-phone up for me, so that I could hear the chanting of protesters and the

There's this interesting theory floating around over at Crooks and Liars: Eliot Spitzer was investigating Madoff.  While the initial evidence offered up is pretty thin, to the tune of some anonymous comments made on an investment forum a couple of years ago, there's also this piece by Greg Palast and this one from Project Censored

It's hitting the headlines from the WaPo to the HuffPo.  In a terribly fun twist, Jesse Jackson Jr.

And here's the inevitable Bush-Austin Powers mashup:

I've been trying for years now to track down the video of the hypothetical 'State of the Union' done by Will Farrell on the eve of the 2000 election, but the best I could ever come up with was a transcript.  If you remember, Darrell Hammond also did one where Gore went over homework that he had given out to the different States while sitting in front of a supercomputer.

I suppose now that it's almost all over, NBC finally feels that it's safe to unearth this eerie piece of prophesy that aired on November 3rd, 2000.

The mob has gathered round the house of Governor Rod Blagojevich, waving their virtual pitchforks and shrieking for justice. Our own Deadman has even called him "ugly." Shame on him. Governor Blagojevich may not be married to a hot Star Trek actress, but he's a fine looking man, if a bit jowly. And no one is fooled by Aman's crocodile tears; we know that he yearns to return to his hometown and claim the office of Governor for himself. (When asked who would replace Blagojevich as Governor, he innocently shrugged in mock ignorance.)

Cardboard strikes again: Jon Favreau has been busted for a facebook photo in which he was caught groping a cardboard cutout of Hillary Clinton. Now I can understand the allure of two-dimensional women. In college, my (coed) roommates kept a cut-out of a model stroking a massive six-foot bottle of beer in our common room.

Caroline Kennedy is considering pursuing Hillary Clinton's vacant Senate seat according to a cousin, who surely spoke of his own volition and not as part of any political PR strategy. Kennedy may face some stiff competition for the post though, as dagblogger Mortimus is considering changing his screen name to Mortimus Kennedy Jr. and appropriating Orlando's womanly avatar, according to his cousin. Question for the audience: Do you know of any female "Juniors?" Why don't women give their daughters their own names?

Prime Minister Stephen Harper prorogued Canada's Parliament yesterday. Proroguing is not to be confused with pierogieing, a Polish sport in which competitors pelt each other with cheese-filled dumplings.