But his tenure as a US Senator is over.

Senator Al Franken has such a nice ring to it....

Yes - We welcome Al as our new Senator.

Norm Coleman made a much better Mayor (St. Paul) than he did as a Senator. He did bring Hockey back to Minnesota and made several good changes in St. Paul - we do have to give him credit for that.

Dana
somewhere "Up North" in Minnesota
don't ask about the SNOW...

Fun to watch the Ethics'ers suddenly become TEJTM'ers when power comes their way.

http://online.wsj.com/art...52909.html

Funny Business in Minnesota
In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor...

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes....

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

So when extra ballots are "found" in Democratic precincts, they are counted, even if it means there are more votes counted than voters. Then when more ballots are found in Republican precincts, they're tossed out as invalid.

Net result, a Republican who had more votes on Election Night has been ousted by Stuart Smalley.

A process only Comrade Stalin could love.

Lucky for us a tool of Franken's magnitude in a Democratic seat will be of much more service to us than Coleman could've been in the minority.

Poor Rickenhawk!

Normy's a loser, just like you!

Right back atcha!!: http://www.fivethirtyeigh...-fact.html

It's a nice precedent to set up for me Bridgier, when I can post an out-of-nowhere blog entry as singular evidence against an MSM article. I'll enjoy that later, thanks.

Anywho any article that makes a main argument of whether the word "Machinations" is over the top obviously has nothing but facts to argue. Or when it insinuates that a Democrat being "elected" makes them non-partisan. I'd lay a wager that they never made assertions like that about elected officials in Florida back in 2000. It'll be nice to see the trohpy for the most banana-republicesque elections move to a decidedly blue state, though.

Anyway, they never really address the core contradiction... where precincts apparently can pick either the recount tally or the election day tally depending on who their favorite candidate is. I always assumed that a recount was a recount of ALL ballots, not just those which make the kind of difference you're looking for, which can then be mixed and matched with the election day totals as needed.

The WSJ Opinion Page is a well known source of Wingnut Wankery. Anyone sign that fine editorial?

Said the guy who just posted from a website that apparently doesn't proofread for typos until their commenters point them out. And nothing says credibility like not being able to spell Journal.

Yeah, he typed a booboo. Did you look at the pretty charts and graphs alongside? He seemed to do all right predicting the election. You're a baseball fan right? Mr. Silver's the man behind PECOTA and various other statistical analysis tools. In other words - he's a wee bit smarter than you or I.

Leaving that aside - if the evidence is so great that the election is being stolen, why hasn't that case been made effectively in the Minnesota courts? Coleman keeps coming away empty...

Huh, who knew an election settled in court was a righteous end. I thought I heard something different once somewhere.

You need a hobby kuchynka. seriously

Rickenhawk:

Seriously, how bad a candidate is Normy?

He had all the advantages of incumbency, and yet he's going to lose to Al Bleeping Franken? How is it even close?

Normy's also lost to Jesse Ventura for governor of Minnesota. Unlike Skippy Humphrey, who at least had some pride and dropped out of politics, Normy soldiered on.

So, now Normy's lost to the jokes that are Jesse Ventura AND Stuart Smalley. That's even worse than your hero John Ashcroft, who only lost to a dead guy, before being appointed to AG by the Shrub.

Not sure why Bob assumes that Franken will be a joke - he WRITES jokes, that's true - but he's been involved in politics for quite some time, and from what I remember hearing from his Air America days, he seems to take it seriously.

Bridgier:

RE: Franken - Let's just say that the DFL could've found a stronger candidate.


Also, Normy would have hit the trifecta by losing elections to an ex-rassler, an ex-comedian, AND a dead guy, but the DFL replaced Sen. Wellstone with former Sen. Mondale after Wellstone's fatal plane crash in 2002.

Let's just say that Minnesota politics will be very interesting (as usual) over the next few years.

Franken has some great issues he wants to address - but like ALL politicians they promise the world, but end up not delivering once they are in office. Hopefully he won't have as many "special interest groups" to contend with and he can TRY to make a difference in our state and for the rest of the US.

I agree with the others -- RICK -- get a hobby!!! Why is everything you post so negative . Are you always looking for a fight??

Dana

Dana:

Minnesota pols are the best!

Gov. Rudy Perpich, the dentist from Hibbing(?), was always a favorite. Crazy old Rudy. I bet he didn't use novacaine on his patients.

Agree w/ you on Norm's effectiveness as St. Paul mayor...he did a great job there. Senator? Um, not so much.

If you can pull Franken out of his liberal schtick and actually get him to discuss issues you'll find, while his opinion you may not agree with, he is very knowlegable and intelligent regarding the issues he will be dealing with.