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A day after Burris's attempt to join the Senate was rejected by the chamber, Sen.  Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev). said Senate leaders are waiting for a ruling from the Illinois Supreme Court on whether the Illinois secretary of state must certify Burris's appointment by signing a document that is transmitted to the Senate. He suggested that decision could come as early as today or tomorrow and that the Senate would move quickly on a decision after that.

Reid, softening his tough rhetoric about not seating Burris and offering very warm praise for him after meeting the former Illinois attorney general for the first time this morning, said he hoped a decision could "come sooner rather than later."

Earlier this morning, House Majority Whip  Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.), one of the most influential black members of Congress, said "I think he will be seated" on MSNBC's Morning Joe.

Senate Democrats, once sharply opposed to allowing Burris to be seated because he was appointed by Blagojevich (D), are considering allowing him to serve as a way to end a confrontation that could drag on for weeks and distract from what they hope will be an end to a decade of gridlock on Capitol Hill. One idea being considered, Democratic officials said yesterday, is allowing Burris to be seated if he agrees not to run for election in 2010, allowing the party to recruit another candidate to defend the seat (Burris has lost multiple statewide races in Illinois).

Two of the most prominent African Americans in the House -- Clyburn and  Rep. Jesse L. Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), who had aspired to the Senate seat -- both said yesterday that they think the law stands behind Burris, who would replace Obama as the only African American member of the Senate.  Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) broke ranks to back Burris yesterday afternoon.

In a news conference this morning, Obama said he would accept Burris as his replacement in the Senate.

"This is a Senate matter. But I know Roland Burris, obviously; he's from my home state. I think he's a fine public servant. If he gets seated then I'm going to work with Roland Burris, just like I work with all the other senators," Obama said at a press conference at his transition headquarters.

Burris, 71 and a former state attorney general, had pressed his case yesterday at the Senate over the objections of Democrats there and Obama. Once formally rejected, he found himself holding a news conference on the lawn outside the Capitol just minutes before new senators were sworn in. The man who has already had his own mausoleum constructed in Illinois showed no signs of backing down.

"He thinks he's got a shot, and he's an ambitious guy with a large ego," Don Rose, a political consultant in Chicago who has known Burris since the 1960s, said yesterday. "I'm not sure that separates him from anybody in the Senate. . . . He's paid a lot of dues, and he may feel he's paid his dues."

Despite being selected by Blagojevich, who is under investigation on corruption charges that include allegations that he sought to sell Obama's Senate seat to the highest bidder, Burris has said in recent days that he will accept no compromise that would limit his rights as a senator. He called his appointment "what the Lord has ordained," and his visit to the Capitol suggested Burris would let nothing stop him from adding "U.S. senator" to the list of accomplishments on his mausoleum in Chicago.

But Burris shunned confrontation, despite the impasse over the seat. He left after his meeting with Reid and Durbin quietly, without talking to reporters. Yesterday, with several advisers in tow, including former Baltimore mayor Kurt L. Schmoke, Burris was denied the privileges given to senators and was required to go through a metal detector at the visitors' entrance to the Capitol. The senator-designate hugged the man in charge of making sure he would not enter the Senate chamber, Sergeant-at-Arms Terrance W. Gainer, whom he has known for years from their mutual time in Illinois politics.

President-elect Barack Obama called on Congress today to quickly approve short-term aid to the U.S. auto industry to prevent a "devastating" collapse, but a House-passed bill ran into strong Republican resistance in the Senate, and talks were underway this afternoon to salvage a compromise.

The Senate Armed Services Committee report accuses Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the Bush administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

"The abuse of detainees in U.S. custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of 'a few bad apples' acting on their own," the panel concludes. "The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees."

The report, released by  Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and  John McCain (R-Ariz.) and based on a nearly two-year investigation, said that both the policies and resulting controversies tarnished the reputation of the United States and undermined national security. "Those efforts damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority," it said.

The panel's investigation focused on the Defense Department's use of controversial interrogation practices, including forced nudity, painful stress positions, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and use of dogs. The practices, some of which had already been adopted by the CIA at its secret prisons, were adapted for interrogations at Guantanamo Bay and later migrated to U.S. detention camps in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the infamous Abu Ghraib prison.

"The Committee's report details the inexcusable link between abusive interrogation techniques used by our enemies who ignored the Geneva Conventions and interrogation policy for detainees in U.S. custody," McCain, himself a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, said in a statement. "These policies are wrong and must never be repeated."

White House officials have maintained the measures were approved in response to demands from field officers who complained that traditional interrogation methods weren't working on some of the more hardened captives. But Senate investigators, relying on documents and hours of hearing testimony, arrived at a different conclusion.

The true genesis of the decision to use coercive techniques, the report said, was a memo signed by President Bush on Feb. 7, 2002, declaring that the Geneva Convention's standards for humane treatment did not apply to captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. As early as that spring, the panel said, top administration officials, including National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, participated in meetings in which the use of coercive measures was discussed. The panel drew on a written statement by Rice, released earlier this year, to support that conclusion.

In July 2002, Rumseld's senior staff began compiling information about techniques used in military survival schools to simulate conditions that U.S. airmen might face if captured by an enemy that did not follow the Geneva conditions. Those techniques -- borrowed from a training program known as Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape, or SERE -- included waterboarding, or simulated drowning, and were loosely based on methods adopted by Chinese communists to coerce propaganda confessions from captured U.S. soldiers during the Korean war.

The SERE program became the template for interrogation methods that were ultimately approved by Rumsfeld himself, the report says. In the field, U.S. military interrogators used the techniques with little oversight and frequently abusive results, the panel found.

"It is particularly troubling that senior officials approved the use of interrogation techniques that were originally designed to simulate abusive tactics used by our enemies against our own soldiersand that were modeled, in part, on tactics used by the Communist Chinese to elicit false confessions from U.S. military personnel," the report said.

Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement that "SERE training techniques were designed to give our troops a taste of what they might be subjected to if captured by a ruthless, lawless enemy so that they would be better prepared to resist. The techniques were never intended to be used against detainees in U.S. custody."

Defenders of the techniques have argued that such measures were justified because of al-Qaeda's demonstrated disregard for human life. But the panel members cited the views of Gen. David H. Petraeus, now the head of U.S. Central Command, who in a May, 2007 letter to his troops said humane treatment of prisoners allows Americans to occupy the moral high ground.

"Our values and the laws governing warfare teach us to respect human dignity, maintain our integrity, and do what is right," wrote Petraeus, who at the time was the top U.S. commander in Iraq. "Adherence to our values distinguishes us from our enemy."

The House may have passed a rescue package for the auto industry, but Senate Republicans could stop it cold.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- In the face of an economy in crisis and a deeply unpopular president, some analysts believe the situation is ripe to give Democrats a 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate in November.

Analysts say Democrats may control the Senate after the November election.

It's "the perfect storm," said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report. "You've got Republican voters angry at Republicans, many Americans just petrified about the future...wanting change. And right now change appears to be coming in the form of Democrats."

Of the 35 Senate seats on the line this year, 23 are held by Republicans. Five Republican senators are retiring: Pete Domenici of New Mexico, Wayne Allard of Colorado, John Warner of Virginia, Larry Craig of Idaho and Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

Democrats control the Senate. Although it's split evenly with 49 Democrats and 49 Republicans, two independents -- Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Joe Lieberman of Connecticut -- caucus with the Democrats.

Winning a filibuster-proof majority of 60 Senate seats, commonly called the "magic 60," would virtually prevent Republicans from blocking legislation on the Senate floor.

The last time either party had this ability was in the 95th Congress of 1977-1979, when Democrats held 61 seats during President Jimmy Carter's administration. Carter faced concerns similar to those today -- economic instability, inflation and a 7.5 percent unemployment rate.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Democrats have a good shot at reaching a 60-seat majority in November, a possibility he all but ruled out earlier this year.

"The fundamentals of this election year could not be more Democratic," Sabato said. "You've got a terrible economy, a deeply unpopular president and an unpopular war. You put those elements together and it's going to produce a Democratic victory. ... The only question is, what size?"

A recent CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey found that Americans blame Republicans by a 2 to 1 ratio over Democrats for the financial meltdown.

Forty-seven percent of those questioned found Republicans more responsible for the problems facing the financial institutions; 24 percent said Democrats were more responsible.

Although Democrats say it's too early to predict whether they will get 60 Senate seats, they acknowledge that the focus on the economy has given them a bounce across the map.

"The economy was already the No. 1 issue in voter's minds," said Matthew Miller, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. "What the crisis did was focus attention like a laser on the fact that Republican economic policies have crippled the economy."

But, the next question is: Will Democrats need 60 or 61 seats to effectively block the Republican Party?

Some believe Democrats may actually need 61 seats in order to have a majority because of the "Lieberman factor."

"Not every Democrat will be with them on every measure and every bill," Rothenberg said.

Lieberman turned independent after being defeated in Connecticut's 2006 Democratic primary, but later went on to win the general election. He has been at odds with the Democratic Party -- particularly for his support of Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and the Iraq War.

But, according to a spokeswoman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Republicans are confident that they will, at the very least, keep their current seats.

"We feel relatively good about what is going to happen this year," said Rebecca Fisher, the communications director for the GOP committee. "We are very confident that we are going to defend our incumbents and a good shot at getting a majority of our open seats."

Pointing to low congressional approval ratings, Fisher said it's still uncertain which party will bear the brunt of the economic crisis.

"I think that people are generally unhappy with what's going on in Congress and [it's] not specifically aimed at one party," Fisher said.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Wednesday found 76 percent of the registered voters questioned disapprove of the way Congress is handling its job; only 23 percent said they approve.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties get fairly low approval ratings for their job performance in Congress. Only 34 percent of those surveyed said they approve of the way Democratic leaders are handling their jobs, while 64 percent disapprove; only 27 percent approve of Republican leaders' job handling while 71 percent disapprove.

Rothenberg says Republicans will likely bear the brunt of the economic crisis despite the bleak assessment of Congress as a whole.

"Maybe Americans will say it isn't Republicans' fault," Rothenberg said. "It's possible that Republican prospects could improve over the next month, but if they don't this year will be as bad as 2006 for the Republicans and worse in Senate races."

In 2006, Republicans lost six seats in the Senate and 30 seats in the House, shifting the majority to the Democratic Party.

Rothenberg and Sabato agree that Virginia, New Mexico, Colorado and New Hampshire are all but a lock for Democrats. With Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens on trial on corruption charges, Alaska could go to Democrats as well.

"Minnesota, Mississippi, and Kentucky are the three states most likely to determine whether Democrats get to 60," Rothenberg said, adding the unexpectedly tight race in North Carolina between incumbent Republican Elizabeth Dole and state Sen. Kay Hagan could turn out detrimental for Republicans as well.

Both parties are feeling charged from the highly contested race for the White House between Sen. Barack Obama and McCain. But Democrats and Republicans agree the outcome of the Senate elections could come down to how many people come out to vote.

Breaking: Senate Passes Rescue Bill