Moved too fast on Burris?

Back when the appointment of Roland Burris to replace President Obama in the Senate was all the news (you know, back before the Illinois legislature had time to finish impeaching him), I suggested that Harry Reid and the Democratic Caucus in the Senate had adopted a fool-hardy approach. Rather than announce they would never seat an appointee of ex-Gov. Blagojevich, I said, they should have announced that because of the clear evidence that Blagojevich had tried to sell the seat, that any appointment would be closely scrutinized by the appropriate Senate committee, and a thorough investigation held to ensure that the specific appointment of Burris was corruption-free.

While there is no evidence (as of yet) that Sen. Burris is corrupt or paid anything for his seat, there is now evidence that he was hit up for campaign contributions by Blagojevich's brother.

Worse, for Burris: he failed to disclose the solicitation while being questioned under oath by the House impeachment panel investigating Burris. On Feb. 5, 3 weeks after being sworn in as Senator, Burris filed an affidavit with the House panel disclosing the approach from Blagojevich's brother.

Burris is apparently taking the position that he wasn't asked the right questions, and filed the affidavit after reading the transcript of his testimony. He says that reading the transcript made him aware that "[t]here were several facts that I was not given the opportunity to make during my testimony."

The Chicago Sun-Times article disclosing the affidavit filing reports that Burris had previously denied having been approached by anybody from the "Blagojevich camp" regarding the Senate seat.

Burris continues to assert that he did not pay for the Senate seat, and there is at this point no evidence to directly contradict that assertion.

But it sure would have been nice if there hadn't been such a rush to seat him. The people of Illinois deserve better.

H/T: Patterico