About This He Can Speak: Obama Weighs in on Blagojevich Senate Choice -- Still Silent on Gaza

Nice to see hims so willing to weigh in on the important matters. With the Gaza situation, just like the financial crisis he says nothing. But when it comes to something that is really just so trivial in the grand scheme of things, he's chomping at the bit. Of course he does. It involves what he is always claiming he's not about. Race.

President-elect Barack Obama waded into a racially tinged dispute Tuesday over who would replace him as the only black senator, siding forcefully with Senate Democrats in rejecting the respected African-American chosen by scandal-tainted Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich.

"Senate Democrats made it clear weeks ago that they cannot accept an appointment made by a governor who is accused of selling this very Senate seat," Obama said in a statement.

The president-elect spoke out after Blagojevich defied national Democrats and appointed Burris to fill the vacancy left by Obama's resignation.

"I will ask you to not hang and lynch the appointee as you try to castigate the appointer," Rep. Bobby Rush, D-Ill., said during a Chicago news conference with Blagojevich and Burris.

"Let me just remind you that there presently is no African-American in the U.S. Senate," said Rush, who is black. "I don't think that anyone — any U.S. senator who's sitting in the Senate right now — wants to go on record to deny one African-American for being seated in the U.S. Senate."