Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Related: Angry Dems Blame Obama, Durbin And Reid For Burrris Scandal

The Swamp:

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) asserts this evening that no one can fill the vacant seat of the former junior senator, President-elect Barack Obama, until the governor of Illinois is removed from office and his successor names a senator.

Durbin, senior senator from Illinois and second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, bases his view on the Illinois Supreme Court’s refusal to force the Illinois secretary of state to sign Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s appointment of Roland Burris, a former attorney general.

Secretary of State Jesse White has refused to sign the appointment because of federal corruption charges against the governor, accused of trying to sell Obama’s seat to the highest bidder. The Senate requires the secretary of state’s certification of a governor’s appointment of a senator to a vacant seat.

“At this point we’ve clearly reached an impasse,” Durbin told reporters at his Chicago office, suggesting that the Senate seat could remain vacant until Blagojevich is removed from office and the lieutenant governor takes over and makes a new appointment. The Senate, he says, cannot waive a 125-year-old rule requiring the signatures of both the governor and the secretary of state on any appointment.

The Illinois Supreme Court today rejected Burris’ bidt to get the signature he needs to complete his appointment to the U.S. Senate.

“This appointment meets the qualifications required by the U.S. Senate of all Gubernatorial appointees to fill vacated seats,” Burris said in a statement after the ruling. “I am confident I have cooperated with all the requests of the U.S. Senate and I expect they will validate my credentials and seat me in a timely manner.”

“I want to be clear that I could not and will not in good conscious sign my name to any appointment made by Governor Rod Blagojevich to fill the Senate vacancy,” White said in a statement. “This governor was arrested in part for trying to sell this very same Senate seat. The Illinois Supreme Court has made it clear in it’s ruling that I am under no legal or constitutional obligation to affix my signature.”

Illinois Atty. Gen. Lisa Madigan, who represented White in the case, says it’s clear now that White “is not the roadblock to Mr. Burris’s appointment to the U.S. Senate.”

“It remains within the power of the U.S. Senate to seat Mr. Burris,” she said. “They should do so immediately.”

No way, says Durbin.

Wire services contributed to this report.