Tuesday night I started writing a post urging Barack Obama and Harry Reid to hang tough on seating Roland Burris (though I noted that Reid, at least, is not known for hanging tough, on anything). I wanted to think it through carefully, because many of my friends in the blogosphere, particularly Digby and Jane Hamsher, mostly disagree with me -- and now, apparently, so do Obama and Reid. By the time I was at my desk this morning, there were multiple reports that Burris would be seated -- and that Obama was urging Reid to reverse himself.

I've never let being in the political minority shut me up, though on this question, since so many smart people disagree, it's entirely possible that I'm wrong. Increasingly, legal scholars are lining up to say Reid had no standing to block Burris, and ultimately, that may be the end of the argument. But there's still peril in Reid and Obama's change of heart on Burris, and here's how I see it.

First of all, GOP corruption in the Bush era was a huge reason Democrats won back Congress in 2006 and expanded their gains in 2008: It wasn't just Republican incompetence from New Orleans to Iraq that elected a Democratic congressional majority two-plus years ago; it was also the hideous political and financial corruption of Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Ted Stevens et al. (not to mention the legal and political corruption of Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Dick Cheney and the sexual and political corruption of Mark Foley and Ted Haggard). Fully 47 percent of voters in 2006 exit polls said Republican corruption was why they voted for Democrats. Reid and Obama were right to try to steer the party away from association with leaders who have more in common with Stevens, Cunningham and Ney than Obama and Joe Biden. Imagine what Democrats would be saying if the parties were reversed.

I also believe outdated racial politics will backfire on Democrats and Obama. Every Democrat (and pundit) who said Blagojevich shouldn't appoint a new senator given his indictment should be politically skewered if they changed their mind upon the appointment of an African-American senior statesman -- including Burris and Obama, frankly, who both urged Blagojevich to avoid that course last month. If I had any doubt about the case against Blagojevich's choice, it disappeared when Rep. Bobby Rush compared opposing Burris to a lynching last week. On "Hardball" today, Rush was even worse, comparing Burris' walk from the Capitol in the rain Tuesday to "the dogs being sicced on children in Birmingham, Ala." in 1963. Rush has lost all sense of proportion and decency on this issue. Yes, it's disturbing that without Burris, the Senate would once again be all white, but Illinois, the state that elected two African-American senators and gave us our first black president, doesn't deserve a scandal-tainted senator chosen by racial guilt.

Finally, speaking of politics: Burris is a four-time statewide loser. Sure, he won the attorney general seat and three races for controller, but more recently he's lost two primaries for governor and two for senator, and he'll have an uphill climb to win election in 2010 even with this appointment. I remember Burris from my professional youth in 1980s Chicago. He was a passive Illinois pol who expended little political capital during the legendary Harold Washington's racial and ideological "Council Wars" with conservative white Chicago.  Burris is now the champion of professionally black Chicago activists, but he opposed Carol Moseley Braun in her Senate primary against Alan Dixon, who'd sided with Clarence Thomas over Anita Hill the year before. So nothing about this issue is, ahem, completely black and white.

Imagine that Blago had appointed a white Roland Burris, middle-of-the-road, relatively clean but not a big reformer, a four-time loser for governor and senator with one statewide win behind him/her, who isn't given a strong chance to run and win in 2010. I find it hard to imagine that Obama and Reid would have reversed their principled anti-Blagojevich stand to back a vaguely qualified but mediocre white cadidate. And what about poor Rep. Danny Davis, the black Chicago congressman who reportedly turned down an appointment by Blago because that's what he thought a good Democrat was supposed to do? If Davis knew Reid and Obama would fold so quickly, he might be the one sitting in Washington being hailed as the junior senator from Illinois right now.

Still, this issue looks like it's heading for a resolution in which Burris gets seated, and given the enormous challenges facing Obama and Senate Democrats, I can even sort of understand why they folded (also: Reid's legs are accordion-pleated under his trousers). But I still find this issue troubling, and I think it could backfire on Democrats politically down the road, as they try to present themselves as the party of integrity on political corruption as well as race, with Blagojevich and Burris living examples of how messy politics can get in both parties.

I'm going to give Barack Obama the benefit of the doubt on his decision to include long-promised middle-class tax cuts in the upcoming stimulus package. With Republicans and other observers attributing the decision to GOP kvetching about his ambitious planned stimulus package, Obama denied that politics motivated him to include the tax cuts, at a short press briefing Monday morning.

It's true: He campaigned on the tax cuts for two years, and they were a significant boost in his campaign against John McCain, with nonpartisan fact-checkers finding that Obama's plan put more money in the hands of middle-class families than McCain's plan, which favored the wealthy. There's no reason not to make the tax cuts a cornerstone of his plan. Tax cuts also happen to be one quick and accepted stimulus solution, since they put money in real people's hands faster than jobs programs or even aid to cities and states can.

So they're a fine start -- but just a start. Paul Krugman is only one expert to express doubt about whether the tax cuts should make up such a large portion of the stimulus plan. (In some accounts, the tax cuts for families as well as businesses could amount to 40 percent of the overall stimulus package.) He's right. In this economy, the money in middle-class hands may well not be stimulative; people mainly spent last year's Bush tax rebates paying down debt and buying necessities, not on economy-stimulating new purchases. The Obama plan will also have to extend unemployment, create jobs, help with health insurance, and provide aid to cities and states as well. Big questions remain about how much of the package the tax-cut plans will actually represent.

Clearly Obama's doing some of this for political reasons, and that's not all bad. I think it was great to open the year with today's bipartisan, bicameral meeting with congressional leaders. As Obama frequently says, he's going to be everybody's president, and he's got to at least start out by giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt that they want to help the economy. I do worry about a Politico story on Monday saying the president-elect would like to get 80 votes for his stimulus plan in the Senate; that seems unlikely to me.

I felt more strongly about that after watching what came out of today's Happy New Year meet and greet, which was nearly overshadowed by the Republican-friendly tax cut announcement. Still, the dour duo of GOP leaders Mitch McConnell and John Boehner didn't seem happy; they weren't terribly gracious about Obama's gestures. McConnell continued to call for more tax cuts and a loopy insistence on loans, not grants, to cash-strapped states and cities, with Boehner sounding particularly dyspeptic about the rumored "size of the package."

Floating goals of 80 votes to the Politico is a dicey move for Obama's folks. He's setting himself up for failure, and unnecessarily irritating his liberal base with more futile pandering to people who will likely never support him. I won't hold the tax cuts against Obama; I particularly like the "Making Work Pay" credit for people who earn too little to pay taxes (borrowed language from the Clinton administration's program to expand the earned income tax credit and other supports for low-wage workers).

But he is unlikely to get 80 Senate votes on the stimulus if he made it 100 percent tax cuts and loans to cities and states. He's right to reach out; he'd be wrong to dilute his proposal to the point of ineffectiveness in order to get a big Republican vote for his plan.

In other Obama news: I wasn't sure what to make of the appointment of Leon Panetta as CIA director -- until I heard that Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Jay Rockefeller opposed it. That's not entirely true: I thought the competent and popular Panetta, who came out strongly against Bush administration torture, detention and interrogation policies, was a clear message that Obama wants to change the way our intelligence agencies do business. The two Democrats' pique -- they say Obama didn't vet Panetta with them -- is a good sign that Panetta's not viewed as an insider who will simply roll over for what the intelligence establishment wants, since Feinstein and Rockefeller did little or nothing to stand up against Bush policies (and Glenn Greenwald agrees with me.)

On MSNBC's "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue," I said I trust Obama and Panetta on these issues far more than Feinstein and Rockefeller. Pat Buchanan and David Shuster predicted the opposition of Feinstein and Rockefeller would liberate congressional Republicans to savage Panetta in confirmation hearings; I trust he'll make it through, with Obama's strong backing.

On Monday I asked whether the best course for Caroline Kennedy might be to throw her support behind her congresswoman, 16-year-feminist veteran Carolyn Maloney, for appointment to Hillary Clinton's Senate seat — and then run for Maloney's seat. Kennedy didn't reply, but on Tuesday my favorite non-Salon blogger, Digby, did.

While Digby notes, humbly, that she's not a New Yorker and has no standing in this contest (of course, only Gov. David Paterson does), she makes a strong case for Maloney as the best candidate for the job. NOW as well as the National Women's Political Caucus have also thrown their support behind Maloney. Fresh from reading Maloney's book, "Rumors of Our Progress Have Been Greatly Exaggerated," Digby lays out the following arguments on Maloney's behalf, some things I knew and some I didn't:

For instance, after 9/11, when the government was putting together its compensation fund, the government was blithely planning to shortchange female victims' families by hundreds of thousands of dollars because they were using discriminatory projected earnings tables that reflected the wage gap. It took a concerted campaign to persuade the government that the earnings estimates that determined the value of the payout should be gender blind. It wasn't a matter of conscious discrimination. They just didn't consider whether it made sense that the family of a woman who made the same salary as a man at the time of her death should be compensated equally. Maloney organized 11 members of the New York delegation to pursue the matter and reverse the policy. (Insurance companies around the country still use those outdated formulas, by the way.)

And speaking of Wall Street, Maloney compiles some stories about discrimination against women in the financial industry that make your hair stand on end. Morgan Stanley had paid out nearly $100 million in sex discrimination money to many of the top female employees in the past few years. Apparently, as with Sheila Bair and Brooksley Born, the common excuse was that these women just weren't "team players" — mostly because they weren't welcome at the strip clubs and golf courses where so many of the deals were made. And they just wouldn't get with the program when it came to looking the other way at unethical or reckless practices. (The wimmin are always raining on the parade that way.) Maloney thinks that instead of giving tax deductions to companies for their strip club expenses, most citizens would prefer for that families be allowed to deduct their child care expenses --- and has introduced legislation to do that.

I would expect that women are especially going to be facing some tough times in the near term as their lower-level service jobs are going to be very hard hit and they tend to have less money in the bank to tide them over. An awful lot of them are hanging by a thread as it is. Having fewer women in the government right now hardly seems like a good idea (particularly when people need to be reminded that a fiscal stimulus that creates mostly construction and engineering jobs will only put money in the pockets of the 9% of women who work in those fields.) I think that if the argument is that women need a strong voice in the Senate, we would probably be better served by a woman like Maloney who has a lifetime of experience in politics and a deep and thorough understanding of these issues than someone whose experience is very limited. I just wouldn't expect Caroline Kennedy, no matter how dedicated and sincere, to be the kind of champion on these issues as someone like Maloney.

I don't know much about New York politics, so maybe there is some other reason why Maloney couldn't be the choice. But on the merits, she's the one I'd choose if I were Paterson. The country badly needs the contributions of the Sheila Bairs and the Carolyn Maloneys if the government really means to clean up the mess the old boys club has made.

In related news: I was sad to see Roland Burris diminish his political legacy by going along with Rod Blagojevich's charade, and sadder still to see Rep. Bobby Rush bring race into the scandal. Illinois has the proud distinction of electing two African-Americans to the Senate, as well as giving America its first black president. I'd love to see a black candidate fill Obama's shoes as well. But Rush and Burris don't advance the cause of black political progress, or social justice, by claiming race should in any way legitimize this illegitimate choice by Blagojevich. Thankfully, Barack Obama quickly added his voice to those objecting to Blagojevich's slick move.

I had mixed feelings about the New York Times interview with Caroline Kennedy Sunday, but I was mostly disappointed.  I thought her widely rumored but little-seen sense of humor showed through once, when she needled David Halbfinger and Nick Confessore about their repeated attempts to get sappy moments of family drama out of her decision to pursue the appointment to New York's soon to be open Senate seat. "Have you guys ever thought about writing for, like, a woman’s magazine or something?" she asked. "Nothing [against women's magazines] but I thought you were the crack political team here."

I've written for women's magazines, and I can anticipate people who might object to that remark as condescending, but I thought it was smart and funny: it captured the traditional media's growing infatuation with the telling sappy anecdote over important discussions of policy – even, sadly, at the New York Times. Of course, I think she might have been unfair to women's magazines even on that point, since I'm sure a reporter for Glamour or Vogue would have zeroed in on her political stand on, say, abortion at least as directly as on what her husband thought about her candidacy. Yes, Kennedy has expressed support for choice in written answers to journalists' questions, but the way flesh and blood individuals talk about their personal and political thinking about abortion is revealing, and I was shocked Halbfinger and Confessore didn't probe that issue a little more.

The issues they did probe were interesting, and I don't think Kennedy answered them well. There's no single, easy answer to the question of merit pay vs. tenure for teachers – even that's a simplistic way to boil down this complex web of issues – but Kennedy dodged and weaved alarmingly. She never even attempted to grab the question and use it to spell out what she thinks are the core components of education reform, or how she'd update and improve her uncle Ted Kennedy's ambitious, well-intended but flawed No Child Left Behind act. Given that education is supposed to be her signature issue, I thought she was strangely vague on it.

Overall, she was slippery, and regrettably, because I admire her, I came away with the feeling that she views her single best credential for the Senate seat as her celebrity, and, secondarily, her wealth. That's really what she boasted about to the Times – the fact that she could immediately step up and replace Hillary Clinton in the Senate by dint of her family's clout; that she could bring home the bacon for New York, whether via TARP or Barack Obama's stimulus package or the normal Congressional pork provisions, because she's a Kennedy. I've also been alarmed, in Salon letters threads about this issue and elsewhere on the blogosphere, at the extent to which even some left-liberals think that's a fine rationale for a candidacy. Do we really care so little about politics as a calling right now? Are we honestly happy to say it's the province of rich folks with celebrity names, and hopefully some noblesse oblige?

I'm not a New Yorker anymore, and I have no candidate in this race. I don't envy Gov. David Paterson's decision here. But I've frequently found myself thinking: Why doesn't Kennedy throw her considerable prestige behind Rep. Carolyn Maloney's Senate appointment bid, and then run for Maloney's House of Representatives seat, since she's lived almost her whole life in Maloney's district? I don't know the intricacies of New York politics well enough to know the answers to that – maybe there's an obvious better choice for that seat, and my point is not to endorse Maloney by throwing the possibility out there, although I respect her enormously. But it's hard to avoid wondering whether the reason Kennedy isn't backing her congresswoman's bid, and then running for her seat, is that Kennedy's not keen on running for office, and/or doesn't want to start as one of 435 lowly House members.

Jonathan Capehart laid it all out here: Things weren't looking good for Kennedy's celebrity candidacy on Saturday, and they look worse today. Paterson is one politician strong enough to stand up to a celebrity juggernaut if he thinks it's just about celebrity. If she really wants this senate seat, Kennedy needs to get around the state and convince him, and New York voters, otherwise.

Caroline Kennedy's claim on Hillary Clinton's soon to be vacant Senate seat took a couple of hits on Friday. The Associated Press revealed that Kennedy hasn't voted in at least six major elections in the last 20 years, including the 1994 election for the seat she wants to claim. And on "Hardball" this afternoon, Kerry Kennedy told Chris Matthews she didn't know whether or not her cousin is pro-choice; she said they'd never talked about it.

I respect Kerry Kennedy and her loyalty to her cousin, but her answer underscored all the reasons why Kennedy's sudden pursuit of the Clinton Senate seat feels so off. This very private person hasn't left much of a public footprint. I applaud her raising $70 million for New York's public schools, but we know very little else about her political views or involvements. The idea that she'd make Gov. David Paterson's short list for the Senate appointment without any public statement on the divisive but crucial issue of abortion is problematic. According to published reports, she has called New York abortion rights leaders seeking support for her Senate crusade, implying she's pro-choice, but the fact that her own cousin can't say with certainty is disturbing.

Kennedy appears to be a person of intelligence and integrity, but she either has bad political instincts or she's getting bad political advice in her sudden, unorthodox campaign for the Senate. Her short tour of New York, visiting Harlem and Buffalo and talking to political leaders, but making no public statements and taking no media questions, has set exactly the wrong tone. She doesn't have time for a listening tour; she's got to talk, too. Clinton's famous listening tour only worked because she began it a year before she faced election. Ultimately the voters would decide if they liked what they saw and heard. Kennedy only needs to impress one person right now, and that's Paterson, and he can't be liking what he's hearing. 

Even on vacation, I can't quite get over the choice of pastor Rick Warren to give Barack Obama's inaugural invocation. I'm all for Obama (and Republicans, for that matter) reaching out to the other side. I am not theoretically opposed to Obama choosing an antiabortion gay-rights critic; I'm opposed to Warren himself. He's a poster boy for kinder, gentler 21st century bigotry, and Obama shouldn't validate him with this lofty symbolic role.

I tried to keep an open mind when Obama began courting Warren three years ago; Salon sent a reporter to cover the popular young Democrat's first visit to Saddleback Community Church, to talk about its laudable AIDS work, in 2006. I believe in seeking common ground, and I was curious to see what Warren – and Obama – were up to. I watched carefully when Obama went to Saddleback for a presidential forum in August, along with John McCain. As I wrote at the time, I think Obama got punked; Warren spent an inordinate amount of time at the forum on issues like abortion and gay rights, and the promised focus on poverty reduction and social justice got short shrift. At Saddleback services the next day, Mike Madden didn't find one worshiper planning to vote for Obama. One day after that, a self-satisfied Warren told Beliefnet he couldn't say for sure whether Obama could compete for the evangelical vote, but he insisted that an antiabortion voter backing a pro-choice candidate would be like a Holocaust survivor voting for a Holocaust denier.

Beyond his noxious political views -- Warren has compared homosexuality to incest and bestiality, supports the Iraq war, and, in fact, just gave George W. Bush his first-ever "international medal of peace" (yes, peace) -- I have come to distrust Warren personally. He looks to be from a long line of religious leaders more concerned about their own glory than the glory of God. I didn’t like him high-fiving with Obama about their million-dollar book deals, or complaining with McCain that $250,000 isn't rich in Orange County. I didn't like him misrepresenting the rules for the August forum -- he claimed McCain had been in a "cone of silence," but when that turned out not to have been true, he accused Obama supporters of "sour grapes" for complaining. It became obvious to me that the well-fed, well-coiffed Warren is full of himself, and Obama shouldn't contribute to his campaign for self-aggrandizement, especially at the expense of gay people and women, two groups who gave Obama strong support.

On MSNBC this afternoon my friend Chris Matthews kept saying that Obama has upset gays with this choice, but I'm not gay, and Warren's anti-gay rights stands are only part of my reasons for opposing his selection (although his leadership in the fight for the noxious Proposition 8, which Obama opposed, is certainly a reason to oppose his being given this special symbolic spiritual role). I object to the full Warren package, I think he's a force for division, not inclusion, and a terrible symbol for this inspiring new administration. And once again, I see an arrogance and/or naiveté on the part of Obama, when he defends his choice of Warren -- and it was his choice; read Madden's fine story -- as showing "we can disagree and not be disagreeable." I'd tell that to Rick Warren, not his critics.

On Thursday night Warren issued a short statement praising Obama for bucking his liberal base to invite him to give the invocation. Obama likewise made a big deal of Warren facing criticism for inviting Obama to his church. It's clear both men are using one another to prove their alleged political courage, and that's their choice; I object to Obama using the rest of us. This is a political and not a spiritual choice, and it stinks.

Is there someone you wish Obama had chosen to give the invocation? Use the comments section of my blog to share some better ideas.