Constitutional provisions protecting the separation of powers will oblige President-elect Barack Obama to resign from his Senate seat before taking office in January.
The New York Times
Once again, the white Washington old boys club is wheeling out Jim Crow constitutional provisions in a bid to purge blacks from the Senate. Their intended victim, Barack Obama, committed only one transgression in their eyes: he took on the establishment to win the presidency. For his temerity in seeking high office, Senator Obama will be forced from his job.
In a country where racism still bars African Americans from full participation in the democratic process, the Senate is still enforcing the same old segregation of powers that, for example, would have prevented Rosa Parks from serving in both Congress and the Supreme Court.
The man who will formally choose a replacement for Senator Obama is Illinois Governor Rod R. Blagojevich—a white man who lives in the comfort of a gubernatorial mansion. It is a measure of the cynicism of America’s constitutional supremacists that the frontrunners to replace him are Illinois Senate President Emil Jones Jr, and US Representative Jesse L. Jackson Jr, both of whom are black.
