Someone needs to send NBC’s Lee Cowen a copy of the constitution.

You may well have heard that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has supposedly decided to appoint former Illinois Attorney General Roland Burris to Barack Obama’s senate seat. I just watched Lee Cowen speculate that the U.S. Senate may just have to accept this because, after all, Blagojevich is the legally elected governor of Illinois and he has the sole power to decide this, in spite of Harry Reid’s objects.

Um, no.

Given the nature of this scandal, one might have thought that reporters covering the story would take two minutes to brush up on the appropriate section of the constitution. Since Mr. Cowen didn’t bother, I’ll provide this to any member of the media who wants to comment on this news story. It’s Article I, Section 5 of the U.S. constitution:

Each House shall be the judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members, and a majority of each shall constitute a quorum to do business; but a smaller number may adjourn from day to day, and may be authorized to compel the attendance of absent members, in such manner, and under such penalties as each House may provide.

Each House may determine the rules of its proceedings, punish its members for disorderly behavior, and, with the concurrence of two thirds, expel a member.

Each House shall keep a journal of its proceedings, and from time to time publish the same, excepting such parts as may in their judgment require secrecy; and the yeas and nays of the members of either House on any question shall, at the desire of one fifth of those present, be entered on the journal.

Neither House, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that in which the two Houses shall be sitting.

Andrew Sullivan provides a clear, cutting explication of why Dick Cheney should be prosecuted for the crimes he has committed as veep. Definitely worth a read.

I rarely write anything tech related here. I found something today that I’ve been trying to find for a while: a reliable means of syncing my windows mobile smartphone’s calendar with google calendar. In this case, that’s a samsung Blackjack II. I’ve tried several different on the phone apps, but haven’t been satisfied with any of them. Some of them have been spotty from the get go. Others have worked well for a while then lost their ability to sync with google’s calendar. Nuevasync (www.nuevasync.com) is a web based service that uses the same protocol that’s already on your phone for syncing with an Exchange server to sync with google. I’m only using it for the calendar, but it looks like they support mail as well.

I was actually searching for a solution for the iPhone when I found this. I bought my wife an iPhone 3g as a slightly early Christmas present. I’ve been so impressed with it that I’ll probably buy myself one sometime in 2009. This solution may turn out to be moot. I just changed jobs* and may again work for a company that will let me push my corporate email and calendar to the phone. I’ll find out in a couple of weeks. But even if it ends up being moot for me, maybe someone else who has had the same problem will find this post.

*My recent job search has been the reason this space has been pretty silent in the last few weeks.

My major prof from grad school and I used to spend a lot of time talking about nationalism and economic development. That was done in several contexts. One of those was the context of elites who served the interests of international capital rather than national interest. You could have entire regions, millions of people who were thrown into or deeper into poverty and debt while a tiny fraction of the elites enriched themselves and their U.S. and European corporate puppet masters via the power of national government–power that they usually hadn’t come by in a truly democratic election.

Today, MSNBC is reporting that Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm has called a segment of southern, conservative senators “unamerican”. That’s a heated term and one that we’re used to seeing right wingers throw around. I think, in a very real sense, she’s right. My major prof and I used to talk about “the Latin Americanization” of the U.S. What we meant by that was the ways in which neo-liberalism was turning the U.S. into a nation with an obscenely wealthy minority who lived on estates in gated communities while the number of poor increases and the middle class shrinks (among other things). These southern senators are doing exactly what the elites of Latin America have done for a hundred years. They’re serving the interests of foreign corporate capital (Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Hyundai) at the expense of the national interest. If they succeed, they’ll reduce the standard of living for hundreds of thousands if not millions of Americans.

After a six day occupation of their closed factory, the workers at UE Local 1110 managed to get a $1.75 million settlement last night. All of the money is coming from JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America. The money will pay out their accrued vacation time, will give them the 8 weeks of pay they’re entitled to under WARN and get them two months of additional health insurance.

Hopefully, more workers in this ocuntry will take the lesson here and not just roll over when their plant, site, or office is shut down.