drwex | Trivia that probably interests nobody but me (seconds, and Senate seats) (Reply)

A few of you are probably aware that we added a 'leap second' at midnight on New Year's Eve. Technically, the clocks went :57 :58 :59 :60 and then :00 with the 60th second being the extra second.

Fascinating stuff, right? Well, it turns out that I work in a business where people count things in microseconds. So when we fire things up this AM, the first business day since the leap second and the timestamps from the market centers are all off by a second - people care. Right now it looks like the market centers failed to take the extra second into account. It shouldn't be hard to re-synch their official clocks with the USNO clock, but it's unclear what effect that will have if it happens in the middle of a trading day. Fun!

In what's certain to be a more drawn-out discrepancy there is a significant division of opinion on whether or not the Senate is required to seat Roland Burris, Blagojevich's appointee to fill Obama's vacant Senate seat. Two of the legal blogs I read and respect are coming down on opposite sides of the issue. On the "no they can't refuse" side is Eugene Volokh of The Volokh Conspiracy. He, like many on the 'no' side, point out that Powell v. McCormack, the only SCOTUS precedent that seems relevant, only gives the Senate the power to refuse someone based on clear Constitutionally invalidating grounds.

Not so fast, says Lyle Denniston of SCOTUSblog - another source I find quite good reading. The Powell decision talks only about qualifications, as they relate to Article I, Section 3 of the Constitution. However, a little further down in Section 5 there's some language about the validity of the process by which a candidate - however qualified - is selected. The Senate Dems may be preparing to argue that Burris's appointment by an under-indictment governor is a tainted process and just as they could reject a candidate from a disputed popular election they can reject this appointment.

You can read the relevant Sections here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constitution.articlei.html

One thing seems to be pretty clear and that's there is no good win or even an easy out for the Dems in this case. I do not think they really want to take this case to the Supreme Court, so my guess is that they're going to find procedural ways to stall things until the situation in Illinois is further resolved.

One of the funniest moments I've heard/read on this came in NPR's interview earlier this week of former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson. Go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98845915 and click the "Listen Now" link.

Host: Tell me how your state gets out of this mess...
Thompson: What mess?

ETA: It's no surprise that FiveThirtyEight is also hip-deep in this. They seem to be steering a middle ground. They do also point to Jack Balkin's "Balkinization" blog as another source for the "no" side. Balkin's reasoning is interesting even if (as he himself admits) not airtight.