in the Senate

[calimac]

We pay for cable TV now - I consider this a violation of my moral principles, but I'm a politics buff so I'm used to it - so I figured that at least for my sins I could watch the dramatic moment this morning when the U.S. Senate convened and either did or did not swear in two disputed senators.

No such luck. When I turned on the set just before session time, C-SPAN was showing the House. The House! The call-in talkers were babbling about Roland Burris, but C-SPAN was showing the House. The Senate might have been on C-SPAN2, but we don't get C-SPAN2. No other stations showed the slightest interest. PBS was showing Ernie and Bert.

By the time I found that the Washington Post web site had a live feed of the Senate floor, it was half an hour later and the swearing-in was almost over. There's Cheney offering congratulations to Mark Warner. I just bet he is.

But just after that I saw that the Senate's website had updated the list of Senators. (It still showed last year's until this morning.) Here they are. Neither of the disputed seats was filled. Durbin and Klobuchar will have to stand for Illinois and Minnesota by themselves for a while yet. Clinton and Salazar have not yet resigned; neither has Biden, even though his new job is guaranteed. None of the new senators have put up actual web sites yet; they just have placeholder sites with little biographical blurbs.

They don't count the electoral vote until Thursday, so that's the official news for the day.

Comments

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Interesting. Thanks.

K.

[nwl.livejournal.com]

Yes, C-SPAN covers the House; C-Span2 covers the Senate. Somehow, I don't think anything to do with Burris will be on the main floor of the Senate.

What kind of cable company offers C-SPAN and not C-SPAN2? It's like a restaurant offering tea and no coffee. Being in D.C., the local TV stations cover a lot more of what going on in Congress than I've noticed in other cities we've visited.

For some events local Newschannel8 shows more than even CNN. It showed the whole Pageant of Peace where the local stations (NBC, ABC, etc.) just showed the lighting of the National Tree.

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I've never had only one C-SPAN channel. Then again, I have always had the not-the-barebones cable service.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

The cable company offers C-SPAN2; they just charge extra for it and include it in a package of other channels I have no interest in. Since I only want to watch the Senate about once every two years, it's hardly worthwhile.

The only way the Burris issue will never reach the floor is if it's buried in committee until it's moot. That might happen, or might not. But what I wanted to see was whether Burris was going to make good on his threat to walk onto the Senate floor and declare, "I am the junior senator from Illinois!" until they threw him out, which Reid had promised to do.

[barondave.livejournal.com]

There will be Stuff To Do before the presidential inauguration, so Biden etc might as well get in a few more votes before they're officially nominated and/or confirmed by their former colleagues.

While the Burris mess will take a while to sort out, the senate should seat Franken.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Clinton and Salazar have obviously prudently decided not to throw away the bird in the hand until they've captured the one in the bush. Biden may well have decided that, since he was simultaneously re-elected to his Senate seat and to the VPery, that it would be administratively less confusing if he took his oath of office before resigning. That's what LBJ did in 1961.