President-elect Obama took the side of Senate Democrats yesterday in a statement released to reporters regarding the surprising appointment of former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris:

"Roland Burris is a good man and a fine public servant, but the Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat. I agree with their decision, and it is extremely disappointing that Governor Blagojevich has chosen to ignore it. I believe the best resolution would be for the Governor to resign his office and allow a lawful and appropriate process of succession to take place. While Governor Blagojevich is entitled to his day in court, the people of Illinois are entitled to a functioning government and major decisions free of taint and controversy," President-elect Obama said.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich introduced today former state Atty. Gen. Roland Burris as his appointee to Barack Obama's vacant Senate seat. About an hour before the introductory press conference, Senate Democrats isssued a statement threatening to not seat the governor's selection, no matter who it is, though Blagojevich maintained that Burris would and should be seated.

"I'm absolutely confident and certain that the United States Senate is going to seat a man of Roland Burris's unquestioned integrity, extensive experience and his long history of public service," Blagojevich said. "This is about Roland Burris as a United States Senator, not about the governor who makes the appointment."

Senate Democratic leaders said the opposite in the released statement explaining their stance: "But this is not about Mr. Burris; it is about the integrity of a governor accused of attempting to sell this United States Senate seat."

Blagojevich stated that he would have supported a bill by the Legislature to hold a special election to fill the seat, but in absence of that he was required by law to appoint someone. "To not fill the vacancy would be to deprive the people of Illinois two United States Senators, to deprive the people of Illinois of their appropriate voice and votes in the United States Senate," the governor said.

The press conference took an unexpected turn when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) stepped to the microphone in support of Blagojevich's choice of Burris to fill Obama's seat. Rush all but dared the Senate to not seat Burris, who is black.

"This is a matter of national importance," Rush said. "There are no African Americans in the Senate, and I don't think anyone -- any U.S. Senator -- who's sitting in the Senate right now want to go on record to deny one African American from being seated in the U.S. Senate. I don't think they want to go on record doing that."

Chicago Sun-Times' Lynn Sweet reports that Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich will appoint former Illinois Atty. Gen. Roland Burris to the state's vacant Senate seat at a 3 p.m. ET press conference.

Burris formally announced his interest in the seat two weeks ago, though at that time most expected any appointment would come from Lt. Gov. Pat Quinn. However, Blagojevich remains in office despite facing federal corruption charges, and it's unclear whether Senate leaders will move to keep any Blagojevich appointee from joining the Senate.

Blagojevich and Burris are former political rivals, running against each other for the Democratic nomination in the 2002 gubernatorial race. Blagojevich won with 37% of the vote, with Burris finishing third.

UPDATE: Senate Democratic leaders issued a statement at 2:00 ET urging Blagojevich not to appoint Burris. The statement comes after the 50 Democratic senators sent a letter to Blagojevich on Dec. 10 requesting that he step down as governor and not appoint a successor to the seat. Read the full statement after the jump. (more...)

The fate of at least 1,346 unopened absentee ballots will begin to be decided today, as local election officials meet to see which ones were improperly rejected. Both campaigns will have much to say about that...

St. Paul Pioneer-Press:

Lawyers ended a testy public negotiation session convened by the secretary of state's office without agreement on which ballots to open or how many should be under consideration.

That leaves the heavy lifting to a series of regional meetings, which begin today. The ballots that make the cut at those meetings will be opened in St. Paul by Monday.

Those ballots are important because Franken leads Coleman by just 47 votes after the manual review of more than 2.9 million ballots.

Minneapolis Star Tribune, which has Franken leading by 46 votes:

A Star Tribune analysis of the origins of 93 percent of those ballots suggests an advantage for Franken.

With the state Canvassing Board holding out the possibility it may certify a winner in the hotly contested race as soon as next Tuesday, and with Franken holding a narrow lead, the absentee ballots may hold the key to the winner of the state's most contentious U.S. Senate race ever.

But by the time the second of two meetings with Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann ended late Monday afternoon, the campaigns remained far apart. Campaign lawyers held dueling news conferences, accusing the other side of trying to prevent an agreement. And even Gelbmann, who at one point asked lawyers from both campaigns to remain "civil," said a late proposal from Coleman -- to review 654 more votes atop the 1,346 absentee ballots that local officials had already agreed were mistakenly rejected -- threatened to derail the process.

The Census Bureau projected today that the U.S. population will reach 305.5 million on New Year's Day. That's an increase of 2.74 million people, or 0.9 percent, from the first day of 2008.

The exact number Census projects the population to hit on January 1, 2009, is 305,529,237. With one birth expected every eight seconds, one death every 12 seconds and net international migration expected to add one person every 36 seconds, the population should increase next year by one person every 14 seconds.

Chip Saltsman, candidate for the Republican National Committee chairmanship, was blasted by some political rivals over the weekend for a song he included on a CD sent to RNC members -- those who will be voting in late January for the next chair. The holiday greeting CD -- which included a song titled, "Barack the Magic Negro" -- and the responses from Saltsman's rivals were first reported on by The Hill.

Florida Republican Party chairman Jim Greer issued a statement on the news today. Greer was once thought to be a formidable candidate for the RNC chairmanship, but never threw his hat in the ring. Here is his statement:

"As the GOP Chairman in one of our nation's most ethnically and culturally diverse states, I am especially disappointed by the inappropriate words and actions we've seen over the past few days," Greer said. "I am proud of those party leaders who have stood up in firm opposition to this type of behavior."

“In Florida we have worked hard to reach out to ALL citizens to promote the Republican Party's principles and values while ensuring that our commitment to African Americans, Hispanics, and other minority communities is sincere and credible. Actions such as the distribution of this CD, regardless of intent, only serves to promote divisiveness and distracts us from our common goal of building our party.

“Today, the GOP has an unprecedented opportunity to embrace change and inclusion, and we are either going to welcome this opportunity fully or watch it slip through our fingers. We can only achieve success if Republican leaders reject racial or any other acts that divide us and instead embrace what unites us as a nation.”

Local elections officials identified some 1,350 absentee ballots last week that were "improperly rejected," the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports, and the campaigns for Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken will submit arguments this week on those as well as additional ballots they find to be incorrectly uncounted. Franken currently holds an unofficial lead of 46 votes.

From the Star Tribune:

Campaign representatives are likely to hash over the list at 12 regional meetings scheduled throughout the state on Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.

What, exactly, will happen at those meetings is unclear and partly up to the campaigns, said Secretary of State Mark Ritchie.

"This is not that complicated," Ritchie said. "These are 1,300-some wrongly rejected ballots that local election officials have identified. The campaigns have identified others that they think were also wrongly rejected, so the local election official has to examine those potential additions and see if they agree, and then the campaigns and local elections officials have to agree on the list ... and send them in."

Barack Obama is Americans' most admired man in the world, according to an annual Gallup survey (Dec. 12-14, 1008 A). Obama becomes the first president-elect since Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 to be named most-admired, and his 32% take is the highest since December 2001, when 39% chose Pres. Bush.

Obama ran away with the top billing, with Bush (5%) and John McCain (3%) rounding out the top three with fractions of Obama's take.

Hillary Clinton was chosen by 20% as the most admired woman, topping Sarah Palin (11%), Oprah Winfrey (8%) and Condoleezza Rice (7%). This is Clinton's seventh straight year being named the top woman.

Yesterday afternoon I dialed into the Team Obama conference call to hear Robert Gibbs and Greg Craig walk through the 5-page report detailing contacts between the President-elect's Transition Team and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich and his staff.

The call started 15 minutes late and lasted about 30 minutes. After Craig's presentation, he took maybe 6 or 7 questions. Surprisingly, no one asked what would seem to be the obvious question.

Page 66 of the indictment against Governor Blagojevich reads, "Later in the conversation, ROD BLAGOJEVICH said he knows that the President-elect wants Senate Candidate 1 [Valerie Jarrett] for the Senate seat but “they're not willing to give me anything except appreciation. Fuck them.”

How did Blago know he wasn't going to get anything but "appreciation" from Obama and his team for appointing Jarrett? Craig's report doesn't answer that question - even though Craig said yesterday he's "confident" he was made aware of and reported all contacts between the two camps.

There's also the matter of Rahm Emanuel's phone conversations.  Craig reports Emanuel had "one or two" phone conversations with Blagojevich.  Asked by a reporter why he couldn't say definitively whether it was one conversation or two conversations, Craig said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that Rahm had recalled his conversations from memory and wasn't absolutely sure whether it was "one or two."

Even as a matter of memory recall this is dubious (it's not like we're talking about 5 years or even 5 months ago), but shortly thereafter, when asked whether there were any audio tapes, emails or other documents that were going to be released, Craig said that he asked Emanuel and Jarrett to go back and "reconstruct" their previous contacts with the Blagojevich administration using phone bills, emails, etc. The point, of course, is that if Rahm had really done this it would be easy to say with certainty how many conversations he had with the Governor.

All of this, however, is merely parsing the details of a farce. I'm not suggesting there was any illegality or corruption on the part of Obama or his team, but rather ridiculing the idea that this was some sort of serious, credible review. A President-elect having his own incoming White House Counsel conduct an internal review that exonerates the President-elect and his staff is not what most people would consider to be a legitimate, independent investigation.

As Andrew Malcolm of the LA Times writes:

The Barack Obama presidential transition office today finally released its own report on its own internal investigation of its own contacts with legally challenged Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich. And you'll be comforted to know the Obama folks found no impropriety whatsoever by Obama folks.

So go back to wrapping holiday presents or pretending you're working at your desk and checking out Obama's important abs. All is well with the coming World of Change.

Indeed, barring some new relevation you can expect the press to accept Craig's report as the last word on the matter . Time to get back to the regularly scheduled honeymoon programming.

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll (Dec. 19-21, 1013 A) finds that 56% favor the economic stimulus package that President-elect Obama is proposing, even if it costs $800 billion. Asked whether the stimulus would actually help the economy, 17% said it would help a lot and 50% said it would help somewhat.