Franken wins by +312 votes.
Number of days Norm Coleman seemed to lead: 43. (Nov. 4 through hand recount and end of rulings on challenged ballots: Dec. 17)
Number of days Al Franken has certifiably led: 139 (Dec. 18 to NOW)
Number of days since election day (Nov. 4): 182
Number of days until MN Supreme Court hears oral arguments of appeal of Coleman v. Franken: 26 (June 1)
Coleman's Appellant's Brief: Due April 30. DONE.
Franken's Respondent's Brief: Due May 11.
Coleman's Reply to Respondent: Due May 15.
Come the prophets
How long will this take? We all want to know (especially my publisher; below you'll see what a beast this is. She has nightmares of me scribbling on a yellow legal pad, tearing off a page, handing it to her, she editing it, and handing it to the printer, who lays it face down to the glass screen to feed into the press as page 2194) and we have a few dates. May 11: Due date, Franken (Respondent's) Brief Due. May 15: Due date, Coleman (Appellants's) Reply to Respondent Due. June 1: Oral arguments.
Nothing to be done about those but let the pages fall from the calendar. But after that?
Well the Wicked Witch of the West (your choice of nominees) has sent out her brother the Wicked Warlock of Waco to gaze into the dusky crystal ball and prophesy doom. Texas Senator John Cornyn (R-Prick) came out from his shell at the start of April to predict "World War III" if the Senate tries to seat Al Franken without a certificate of election. With Arlen Specter switching parties Franken becomes the critical 60th vote that should all the Senate Democrats stick together on certain votes they can squelch a Republican filibuster.
(From Politico)
"I expect they (Coleman's legal team) will pursue the appeals until they are exhausted, whenever that may be. ... I would assume if they were unsuccessful in the Minnesota Supreme Court, there may very well be an appeal to the United States Supreme Court."
Further,
National Republicans are eager to see Coleman continue fighting as long as he can - even to the federal level, a process that could take many months. But they are wary of being viewed as directing the fight out of Washington, saying that the decision remains up to Coleman, who can expect the full party's financial and political backing should he appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court - or wage a new lawsuit in federal district court.............
NRSC Chairman John Cornyn, who views the race as his first of the cycle, added that he's "not advising them, I'm just watching. That will have to be determined by Sen. Coleman and his legal team."
(From Think Progress)
Cornyn, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, acknowledges that a federal challenge to November’s elections could take "years" to resolve. But he’s adamant that Coleman deserves that chance — even if it means Minnesota is short a senator for the duration.
Infuriating as ever, John. Thanks. Its so nice to see you like re-runs too, you playing Archie Bunker when you and Edith go to visit Edith's cousin Maude (the recently departed Bea Arthur.) Archie let fly with some stupid, bigoted remark and Maude gave him that STFU look and said, "Still fighting mental health, Archibald?"
Rebuttal from on High
Meanwhile, the MN Independent may have uncovered a Cronyn counterweight from out of this world. We all recall the Coleman "universe" of absentee ballots, a vast, pulsating region of space marked by clouds of dust being thrown toward judges, great, spinning masses of super heated gases (Ben Ginsberg), and numbers of absentee ballots that shifted with such rapidity and scale (from 10962 to 6 and all points in between) not even the on-board computer on the USS Enterprise, sporting giga-quads of memory and computing power behind an Apple logo, could keep up.
Well, the black-box recorder of the not-so-scientific-but-venerable vessel called the USS Astrologer has been recently recovered. Vulcans, Mr. Data and various reality-based folk dispute the significance of the data but others want to believe in a Mulder/ Scully kind of way.
Or maybe Chris Steller at the Minn Independent is getting as desperate as anyone to find anything to write about between now and May 11/ May 15/ June 1. Blogging astrologer Terry Lamb is (sort of) predicting June 14 as Al Franken's good day.
I'm not partial myself to astrology (since I never indulge in anything but the most prosaic of descriptions of events; my diaries make a Coleman attorney like Joe Friedberg come off like a genial auctioneer, but you already knew that) but I can't deny there are folks who put stock in it. Those same folks probably aren't partial to my fusion of Jewish-Pastafarian-Lutheran (JPL, Reformed; the OTHER JPL, not those rocket guys with the fancy Hubble Telescopes and cool slide rules) but they are willing to leave me to the red sauce/white sauce theological struggle as long as I support Al Franken. Live & let live.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
Book Matters
Some items on the coming collection of these diaries into book form. First, a foreword/introduction/preface/front thingy-after-the-title-page will be included, written by the Great Orange One himself, Markos. (An invitation for written rebuttal has been sent to Senator Franken but no response so far.)
Second, to meet a projected launch date of mid-August, another volunteer editor has been added to the team of Amazons trying desperately to throw a lasso around this project and edit it into readable form. This is news because Jeff is, well, a Jeff-- the first non-female editor in the charmed circle. (He was REALLY adamant about removing the "sexual re-assignment surgery" provision from the contract.)
Third, the lead editor, Word Alchemy, blew me away yesterday in a phone call. NOT counting comments (which we want to include on a "best of the best" basis; limited, but your real gems), NOT counting MY comments, NOT counting an introductory chapter, NOT counting a "we've gotta have an index or we'll die" index, as of diary v. 135 from the other week my word count, in YUST my diaries, was over (holy smokes!)......... 280,000! Good grief! 280K??!! My beloved novel "Encampment", 10 years in the writing, only weighs in at 108K, and I worry its rather long-ish. But 280,000 words?? No wonder we need more help (and maybe not just editorial; paging Nurse Ratchet!)
Fourth, say is there a copyright/intellectual property law lawyer type on these boards who could answer a coyright/fair use question for us? If so, could you click on winerev above right and shoot me an e-mail? Basically, on making use of the comments on these boards, what sort of releases/permissions would we need from the commenters? What rights to use or denial of use are in play?
Thanks in advance.
Fifth, once again, if despite all this you are in need a book to hold down a curling corner of carpeting in the spare bedroom, or you need a replacement part of the soil-tamping/compacting machine for your landscaping business, for only $16.95 YOU can pre-order a copy of "Recounting Minnesota: Blogging the Al Franken Election Saga", complete with free shipping (domestic) and autograph.
AND, for our overseas friends (blows me away Kos readers are following the MN Senate Recount in the UK... and Nigeria... and in the Central Asian "-Stans"; whew!) the linked page has a NEW button for ordering from across a salt-water pond.
http://www.wordalchemy.net/...
OK thats what little we've got. I leave tomorrow night for Florida for a few days with Mama WineRev, but I'll take along the laptop for when the inevitable news of the Franken Respondent's Brief breaks. Hope this will hold you for now with all the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
A raucus Cinco de Mayo to the Latinos and Latinas from our friendly neighbor to the South (Greater Iowa.)
Shalom.