January 05, 2009 C-SPAN
Pat Doyle reported by telephone about the recount for the U.S. Senate seat from Minnesota. Followed by Al Franken's remarks on the outcome of the Minnesota recount.

It's time for Norm Coleman to move back to Brooklyn.

The Minnesota Supreme Court today rejected a bid by Republican Norm Coleman to have hundreds of rejected absentee ballots considered in the U.S. Senate recount, apparently clearing the way for a state board to certify election results showing Democrat Al Franken on top — and also opening the door to a post-recount lawsuit that the Coleman campaign said "is now inevitable."

The state Canvassing Board is scheduled to meet this afternoon to review recount results. Heading into the meeting, Franken holds an unofficial 225-vote lead.

We will then be able to witness the ritual of a "Bill O'Reilly head explosion" at every mention of Franken's name on his show.

Harry Reid called Coleman and told him to concede.

I believe that tomorrow the bipartisan state canvassing board will certify Al Franken the winner. After all, early on Senator Coleman criticized Al Franken for wanting a recount and wasting taxpayer money. I would hope now that it is clear he lost, that Senator Coleman follow his own advice and not subject the people of Minnesota to a costly legal battle.

I don't think it helps Reid's cause not to seat Burris at this time. Blags played everyone, even Fitz. Legally speaking, how can Reid block his appointment?

Conservatives try to paint themselves as the law-and-order folks. Yeah, it's a funny concept, I know, but at this point it's time for the Coleman camp to think about "America" and concede. Instead they are talking about filibustering the seating of Franken, so we're in for another round of Conservative whining.

Malkin writes a title to a post that could describe the Republicans in Congress since 1994: "A real clown takes a Senate seat". It's always a scream when Conservatives whine about the recount process. Oh, how they forget.

Oh, how the wingnuts writhe and hiss at the prospect of Sen. Al Franken ... especially now that it's about to come true:

A state election board on Monday will announce Democrat Al Franken has defeated Republican incumbent Norm Coleman in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, state officials told CNN Sunday.

The canvassing board on Monday will say a recount determined Franken won by 225 votes, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie told CNN.

However, Coleman's campaign, which contends the recount should have included about 650 absentee ballots it says were improperly rejected in the initial count, has indicated it will challenge the certification.

It's all going to wind up in the courts before it gets settled, but there's little doubt Franken has the upper hand.

I suppose it would be wicked to savor the knowledge that the wingnuts are going crazy at the thought of Sen. Al Franken, and are sharpening their shivs as we speak. BillO in particular, given his history with Franken.

Likewise with Ann Coulter. My weekly e-mail from the Brownshirt Barbie this week featured her shrieking about Franken:

Dear Fellow Conservative,

Last night, I had a horrible dream... and no, this isn't the famous "I Had a Dream" speech. Frankly, I think that one could use a rest.

No, in my dream it was 12 noon, so naturally I tuned in for my daily dose of conservative news and commentary from the greatest political talk show host in the history of radio.

As I imagined one half of a giant brain being tied behind a familiar back, just to make it fair, the familiar bass notes from "My City Was Gone" throbbed, and the announcer's voice boomed...

"Ladies and gentleman... in accordance with Fairness Doctrine broadcasting regulations... here's AL FRANKEN!"

I woke up screaming. But then I realized it was just a bad dream.

Or was it?

Actually, the whole schtick is just a pitch for yet another one of Coulter's imagined liberal plots -- that largely nonexistent scheme to revive the Fairness Doctrine. Coulter's been on a real tear lately in terms of pulling crap out of thin air. But it's worth noting that Al Franken has the ability to make her extra-nutty-kookoo with sprinkles on top.

One can only imagine what they'll be dreaming up for him as a senator.

All told, Franken gained a net of 176 ballots from the 952 under review according to The Uptake's unofficial count, putting him 225 votes ahead in the recount overall. Excluding disqualified ballots, Franken won 53.7 percent of the votes counted today, Coleman 34.1 percent, and other candidates 12.4 percent. Franken's 225-vote advantage is now slightly larger than the one Norm Coleman held before the recount began, when he led by 215 votes based on the certified Election Night tally.

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On a day when the Minnesota Supreme Court denied a bid by Coleman's campaign claim of some double-counted ballots, things are looking dim for his re-election hopes. Or as Josh Marshall put it:

Looks like it's gonna be Sen. Franken (D-MN). Not a 100% yet. But the state Supreme Court just put the kibosh on Coleman's last credible legal angle.

Bye, Norm.

For his part, Coleman seems rather wistful at the prospect:

"I feel fairly confident. In the end, the good Lord's going to decide," Coleman told the local Fox affiliate. "The numbers look good to us. Certainly there's uncertainty. I'm not worried about it. I've done everything I can do. I'm not really agonizing about the outcome."

Coleman went on: "Life goes on, regardless of what your job is. I certainly love what I do. If I can keep doing it, I'll be thrilled, and if not, I'm sure we'll do something else."

Now far be it for me to make fun of another man's religion but Coleman's recent appearance on Chanukah With The Stars reminds me of the parody of the old SCTV series. (Rightwing nutter Dennis Prager was also a guest on one of the shows.) Between 3:35-4:20 Coleman talks about what it means to him to be in the U.S. Senate, that "he still has to pinch himself he's there". It would seem your pinching days are just about over, Norm.

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Republicans are getting very nervous about Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman's re-election chances, now that the lowly, humiliating, obviously undeserving comedian [/wingnutspeak] Al Franken has pulled into the lead in their recount, according to the Star-Tribune, which puts Franken's lead at "about 250".

Sam Stein reports that analyses now project that Franken will win when the dust settles:

As it stands now, it seems likely that Franken will end this process with a lead wider than even his campaign expected. Earlier projections, from the Associated Press, Star Tribune and Franken himself, suggested that Coleman would lose the race by roughly 20 votes or less. And this tally doesn't even take into consideration the legal and political battle being waged over wrongfully rejected absentee ballots, which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled, on Thursday, should be counted.

That decision, another loss for the Coleman campaign, could mean even more votes flowing into Franken's tally, though the Court also stressed that the state and both campaigns come up with a uniform standard for identifying these absentee ballots before they are counted.

I wonder how those Senate Democrats who were telling some talking heads anonymously last month that they might be relieved not to have "that comedian" in the Senate are feeling. Poor babies.

The best part of all this is that Franken's election will absolutely drive the wingnuts batty. This will make for some good high comedy in the weeks and months to come, no doubt.

The now famous "Lizard People" ballot was judged yesterday. Norm Coleman's challenge was duly rejected, and the Lizard People went to Al Franken. Thanks to the great work of the people at The Uptake we now have this moment recorded for posterity. Live --and strangely compelling-- streaming video is available at their site.

As of this writing, Al Franken has a lead of 128 votes. Caveat though: That doesn't include withdrawn challenges or the improperly rejected absentee ballots.

Review of challenged ballots in the recount for the MN seat for US Senate brings some welcome comic relief in the name of write-in candidates on challenged ballots: Lizard People and Flying Spaghetti Monster, with a little Frankenstin [sic] for good measure.

Edit: Actually, Lizard People ended up being recorded as an "overvote", while Flying Spaghetti Monster and Frankenstin were recorded for Franken.

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Minnesota is wild.

In a ruling crucial to the disputed U.S. Senate election, the Minnesota Supreme Court Thursday rejected an attempt by incumbent Norm Coleman to block the state Canvassing Board from counting improperly rejected absentee ballots.

However, the court ruled that the campaigns of Coleman and Democrat Al Franken, along with Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and vote canvassing boards establish a uniform standard for identifying and counting such absentee ballots. The court said they should then be added to the tally

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Wow, it's really close now.

The tight Minnesota U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken has become incredibly close — with Coleman clinging to a two-vote lead.
That's the latest tally after the state Canvassing Board spent a third day ruling on disputed ballots. There are hundreds of challenges yet to decide, as well as thousands of withdrawn challenges that have yet to be tallied.

Coleman had entered Thursday's session leading Franken by 360 votes. But that lead eroded all day as the board considered a pile of challenges brought entirely by the Coleman campaign. The pile included a big chunk of withdrawn challenges, many of which went quickly to Franken's column.

Here's where it is now.

UPDATE: Franken takes a small lead!

I like this:

Al Franken's campaign announced on Wednesday that, for the first time since the Minnesota recount began, the Democrat has actually pulled ahead of Republican Sen. Norm Coleman. Speaking on a conference call with reporters, Franken's chief counsel Marc Elias said the campaign's own internal count showed them up 22 votes, a jump from the 13 vote deficit that they faced on Tuesday.

"We have approximately 138,000 ballots left to count," said Elias. "94.3 percent of the state has now been counted... Obviously that number is going to change, but we are pleased thus far with how things are going." 

Nate Silver's math is a little tricky for me, but he is predicting a Franken win by 27 votes...

I obviously want Franken to win for many important reasons, but if he does, watching BillO's never ending freak out would be an extra added bonus too..

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Call it the price of success, or something less flattering, but Chuck Todd is now just mailing it in by simply retelling what the serious people in Washington tell him. In this case it's "very senior Democrats" who are "concerned" what sort of message an Al Franken win in Minnesota would send to the electorate.

Joe Scarborough thinks this is all great, of course, that they really don't want "[Franken] up there anyway", that "they're fine with 59", and that "some Democrats just want to keep the comedian up in Minnesota."

Todd picks up that ball and runs with it, adding that "had Democrats had a better candidate in both seats [Georgia also] both would already be over. They would have beaten Norm Coleman with any generic Democrat in Congress."

The message so alarming to "senior Democrats," evidently, is that everybody in the Hollywood Left would soon be running for office. As Todd mentions Tim Robbins, Sean Penn and Alec Baldwin, Scarborough laughs out loud at the prospect.

This is all very strange coming from a party that gave us a Hollywood B-movie actor as President in Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzeneggar as Governator in California.

One wonders what Chuck Todd will have to say if/when Chris Matthews runs for Senate in Pennsylvania. Although not a Hollywood Lefty, Matthews would be coming from a similar place in the media as Al Franken. It's just that Matthews happens to be a colleague of Todd's at MSNBC ...

Yesterday kicked off the first day of the Minnesota recount and while a whole host of ballots still need to be tabulated, things are looking good for Al Franken. There is still substantial ground to be made up, but a net gain of 43 votes is a pretty good start. Nate has more.

According to data just released by the Minnesota Secretary of State, Al Franken has gained a net of 43 votes on the first day of that state's recount process. Norm Coleman had a lead of 215 voters over Franken in Minnesota's certified, pre-recount tally; that margin is now 172 votes.

Minnesota reports that it has thus far re-counted 15.49 percent of its ballots. If the first day's results are indicative of the pace that the candidates will maintain throughout the recount process, Franken would gain a net of 278 votes over Colmean, giving him a narrow victory. For any number of reasons, however, the results reported thus far may not be indicative of future trends.

We'll just have to wait and see how things shape up. In case you forgot, a Franken victory would put us at 59 blue Senate seats (counting Lieberman and Sanders). If Franken does manage to pull this off -- indeed, even if he doesn't -- all eyes will turn to Georgia on December 2 for the run-off between the execrable incumbent Saxby Chambliss and challenger Jim Martin.

The Franken campaign is optimistic. Keep your fingers crossed.

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Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty told Fox's Chris Wallace that there was no truth to the rumor that ballots were found in the trunk of an election officials car. The Minnesota Governor said that he knew of no suspicious activity in the tight race between Sen. Norm Coleman and Al Franken. "As of this moment we know of no actual evidence of wrongdoing or fraud in the process," Said Pawlenty.

Earlier this week, Pawlenty told Fox's Megyn Kelly that he found suspicion in the story of the found ballots. Pawlenty said, "There has not been a good explanation for that, Kelly. That's a very good question, but they've been included in the count pile which is concerning."

Coleman's lawyer Fritz Knack had originally pushed the story of the found ballots. David Brauer of the Minnesota Post debunked the idea of ballot tampering. Nevertheless, pundits and reporters have continued to cite the story.

Sen. Coleman currently has a slim lead over Franken and a recount is expected.

John Amato:

The right wingers and the RNC are trying to push the meme that Democrats are trying to steal the election, They are watering the seeds that they have planted to try and turn public opinion against Franken. You can expect all kinds of stunts by Coleman's team.

Franken should know what to expect since he covered so much of the shenanigan's that went on in Florida, back in 2000. There's no reason why they should get "played" by Coleman or the RNC

.

This is too much. The Republicans are basically admitting that Katherine Harris stole the election for George Bush.

Republicans are also questioning the credibility of Minnesota’s Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the man tasked with overseeing the recount. A background document distributed by national Republicans portrays Ritchie as a far-left, Democratic version of Katherine Harris, the former Republican secretary of state whose actions helped decide the 2000 presidential election. The document accuses Ritchie, who was elected in 2006 with the assistance of a progressive-led group designed to elected Democratic election administrators, of having connections to the controversial voter registration group ACORN and the Communist Party of America.

As Al Franken gets closer to victory, the Republicans are unraveling. A recount is definitely on its way. Oh, what fun...

Boy howdy, Norm Coleman gets some top flight talent to flack for him.

By the way, Al's SNL co-star, Victoria Jackson, had some seriously bizarre stuff to say about Barack Obama:

One of those "celebs," Victoria Jackson, a Saturday Night Live vet (though no Franken admirer) voices rather strong feelings about Barack Obama on her website:

I don't want a political label, but Obama bears traits that resemble the anti- Christ and I'm scared to death that un- educated people will ignorantly vote him into office.

You see, what bothers me most, besides being a Communist, and a racist (Obama writes in his book, From Dreams of My Father, "I found a solace in nursing a pervasive sense of grievance and and animosity against my (white) mother's race.") (Obama's "religion" of the last 20 years is Black Liberation Theology. What is that? "It is simply Marxism dressed up in Christian rhetoric. But unlike traditional Marxism, Black Liberation Theology emphasizes race rather than class. It's leading theorist is James Cone who says Jesus was black, African-Americans are the chosen people, and whites are the devil. Cone says, "What we need is the destruction of whiteness, which is the source of human misery in the world." The McAlvany Intelligence Advisor), is that he is a LIAR. He pretends to be a Christian and he incriminates himself everytime he speaks about Christianity. To lie about being a believer in Christ is very dangerous. Lightning could strike him at any minute! But seriously, he doesn't have a clue what the Bible says and yet he pretends to be a church- going Christian to win votes. That is sooooo evil.

And she actually is worried about un-educated voters. You stay classy, Victoria.

First the back story:

I've been told by two sources that [local businessman and political contributor Nasser] Kazeminy has in the past covered the bills for Coleman's lavish clothing purchases at Nieman Marcus in Minneapolis. The sources were not certain of the dates of the purchases; if they were made before Coleman joined the Senate in 2003, he obviously would not be required to report it under senate rules. But having a private businessman pay for your clothing is never a good idea if you're a public official (Coleman was mayor of St. Paul from 1994 to 2002).

When pressed by reporters Wednesday on whether or not Coleman, in fact, accepted these suits from Kazeminy, spokesman Cullen Sheehan repeats the phrase "the Senator has reported every gift he has ever received" no fewer than nine times.

HuffPo has the excruciating transcript.

Ouch. Isn't it really a simple "yes or no?" question? No wonder Coleman is running around blaming the evil bloggers and canceling press conferences.

Also remember that Coleman was busted earlier for getting a sweetheart rental deal on his pad down in DC. Does the guy pay for anything?

The best news, of course, is that this all helps Al Franken, who has drawn the Minnesota Senate race to a dead-heat. Go show him some love if you can spare it.