"Roland Burris -- the senator-designate from Illinois -- said upon landing at Midway Airport Wednesday that Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White told him that if he had to do it all over again, he just would have signed Burris' Senate appointment," the Sun-Times' Abdon Pallasch reports.
But White's spokesman said the secretary of state was not having second thoughts about declining to sign Gov. Blagojevich's appointment of Burris to the Senate. Senate Democrats have cited White's refusal to certify the appointment as one of the reasons they are refusing to seat Burris.
"My good friend Secretary of State White says that, uh, he certainly would sign the document," Burris said, adding that the only reason White told him he would not sign it now was because the case was in court. "The suit that we filed may have to cause him to hold it up." Inadvertently transposing "then" and "now," Burris added, "He said if he knew now what he knew then he wouldn't have done what he did."
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Watch Burris's press conference at Midway:
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