Rain on Burris's Circus Parade

Senator-designate Roland Burris (D-Blagojevich) was damp and displeased. He had come to Washington to be sworn in as the junior senator from Illinois, but he was cast out by the Senate secretary and instead wound up, his overcoat soaked and his eyeglasses dripping, in a muddy patch of land across Constitution Avenue from the Capitol known as "The Swamp." "I presented my credentials to the secretary of the Senate," the diminutive figure announced to reporters, and was "advised that my credentials were not in order and I would not be accepted." Still, he added, "I am not seeking to have any type of confrontation." Of course not. He was seeking to have a circus -- and he succeeded. Read the whole Sketch