The Election Contest Court (ECC) ruled on 19 categories of rejected absentee ballots. (They asked both sides for briefs Tuesday, deadline Wednesday, heard orals Thursday afternoon (with a Coleman atty. admitting to the Judges, "You're not buying this are you?"), and took a half day Friday afternoon to write. Both sides spinning but the skinny kid who likes Orange on this website (you know, the newbie with the really low user ID number that all the rookies get; he also uses a really short screen name like "kos") was up with a nice diary on "Bad Day for Norm"http://www.dailykos.com/...
Franken leads +249 (last change: +24 on 2/10).
MN Supreme Court: No decision on Franken's suit to force a Certificate of Election (day 9 since hearing.)
So in honor of St. Valentine's Day, Chicago-style in the 1920's,http://en.wikipedia.org/... I would invite youse to "Talk like a Gangster Day" an come wid me past da post for more........
Handy Links:
Jay Weiner, a pencil-pusher over at Minn Post, has a nice write-up of what went down:http://www.minnpost.com/...
Even Ginsboig from da Red State mob wasn't able to lean on da Star Trib for a good headline. They had to go wid "Senate pool gets Drained" but they managed to put Duchschere's sub-head: "In a blow to Coleman...." unda da fold so it doesn't show at da newsstand till afta ya buys a paper:http://www.startribune.com/...
Election Contest Court (ECC) Episode XXIII- Da Court's got Somethin' to Say dat youse guys should Hear.
Foist they all spent the morning hearing more from Sandra Engdahl, da Plymouth city election gal. (Plymouth is in Hennepin county, which is mostly Franken turf, but its a suboib, where the Red State mob is tryin to muscle in.) They had about 800 absentee ballots and nixed about 171 of them. Coleman's mouthpieces keep tryin to show what kinda hanky-panky might have gone down but Engdahl wasn't showin any cards.
When Hamilton from Franken gave her the old morning cross-exam she wasn't havin anything from him either. Some a da bloggers thought she spent too much time lookin over at the Coleman table for help when Hamilton was leanin on her and she clearly didn't like being up there, but everybody got through it.
Then, the Judges sent everybody to lunch and said, "We'll call youse when we wants youse!" About 4 in the afternoon they let it drop.
Ya know those 19 categories of absentee ballots? The ECC has said we ain't gonna walk through every damn one of these 4623 absentees dat Coleman wants. ("It'd be like takin' a trip through da whole universe if you know what I mean.") Nope. We're gonna cut 'em 19 ways, and then were gonna throw out bunches.
The Coleman stiffs wanted 17 of the 19 to make it through. The Franken hired guns wanted them to knock off 17 and just leave 2.
The ECC brought the gavel down and said: 10 are dead.
But then everybody read the thing and can see they put a few together and that 13 are out. Then Franken's main talker Elias came out and said they way they saw it 13 are out because the ECC said they were out.....and 4 more are out if you read the Order the right way, you know, by implication and logic.
The Coleman mob sent out Knaak, for the first time in a while instead of Ginsboig, to say the 4623 is only down to 3500 and they are sure Norm "The Teeth" is going back to the Senate soon.
The bloggers who like to run the numbers (when they're not runnin numbers for us) are figurin' Norm lost at least 800, and maybe as high as 1100 off his stack.
Big issue hangin fire is still how the Court is goin to look at the signature matches of Pile 2, and there's a lot of those. But the Court also took a pretty hard line one whats in and whats out. They look to be pretty strict on following the law, so if the law says: No match, no vote, dat's what they're going to do. And THAT is not what the Norm gang wants. One writer put it that the ECC were singin' Franken's song and a lot of their order sounded like a straight lift from Elias song and dance.
And I'll tell ya, da Court liked da way things happened in the election and anybody who says uddawise.... well the Court ain't afraid to muss ya up:
The Court is confident that although it may discover certain additional ballots that were legally cast under relevant law, there is no systemic problem of disenfranchisement in the state's election system, including in its absentee-balloting procedures.
AND, da Court looked at all that hot air da Berg Boys (ya know, Joe the Fried-BERG and Ben the Ginz-BERG) have been spewing out the sewer grate about "equal protection" and said......... nuttin. Dey ain't goin dere, like it ain't here, it ain't happenin' and we ain't gonna flap our gums talking about any of it. Dey don't think "equal protection" is at issue at all.
AND the Court laid another hit on the Coleman mouthpieces, like Kunin writes up here:
".....the court raised the burden of evidence shouldered by the Coleman campaign in adding additional ballots. Coleman attorneys must now prove that a ballot was legally cast, not just improperly rejected. This means showing evidence that the voter did not submit an additional absentee ballot or arrive in person on Election Day to vote."
Monday, Feb. 16th
So now its on to Motion Monday. Da schools, post office and banks are closed (lettin some of us get on with diggin' under the 2nd National vault over on Toity-Toid street) but the Court is gonna hear motions from both sides. You can bet a case of bootlegged Canadian rye Team Franken is going to try to put the squeeze on da last categories and see if they can't pull Coleman's numbers down to where he can't win. Coleman's side is gonna have to play nuttin but defense even though its their suit, their case and their turn to put on their side of the argument. Not a good spot for dem.
I still think Franken's boys are actually going to have to present their case (and woid is they got 771 ballots to put on the pile from their side if they need to) but they won't have to go too far until it become mathematically impossible for Norm and his teeth to win it. Then the ECC will decide....
When dat happens, A) Coleman takes his one shot with the MN Supremes (less than 15 days by law I believe) and I think the Supremes will give Norm his final 5-0 pasting. B) Franken moves to get his Certificate of Election and puts the heat on the Senate to seat him provisionally--- which they might just do at that point. Even chowderheads like McConnell will see how pathetic Norm's case is (and for McCOnnell to see pathetic is DAMN pathetic.)
So everybody can talk dis over today and tomorrow. Dats da latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon (and ya know, Chicago is southeast of Lake Wobegon too.)
Shalom.
PS. The ECC ruled Friday. But I think the hit went down something like this:
(Roll music: sad, minor key, Big-Band on a mellow break; bete-noir kind of film)
"Ok then," rasped a low, female voice. A hand featuring polished red nails reached through the pool of light to hang up the phone. The down light on the desk also briefly showed a grey cuff and a pearl cufflink, both poking from a black pinstripe jacket. "We’ll have to take care of it ourselves," she said to the gloom beyond the desk.
She could just make out a brief smile playing across the lips of "Scapel" Marben. She watched his silhouette against the grey light coming in from the high window: wide-brimmed fedora, broad & pointed charcoal gray lapels, black shirt and ivory tie in a careful four-in-hand knot. In the dusky light he crossed over to a closet and pulled out 3 violin cases. He put one on the desk and handed another to "Stickler" Reilly.
Reilly nodded briefly, her chin bobbing over a cream-colored silk blouse. Her arm, encased in a burgundy jacket with a touch of brocade at the shoulder, hefted the case with a familiar ease.
The "Presider" looked up from her desk. She hoped the semi-darkeness hid the flinch in her eyes as "Scalpel" said, "Like the old days. We’re gonna operate."
Marben wore a thin smile. "Stickler" swallowed hard and her mouth went dry as it usually did at Marben’s icy humor. The "Presider" turned back to the phone, picked it up and growled, "Louise? Yeah, get me Maplewood P- 6171......"
A dying splash came off the tires of the square-backed 1929 Oakland rolling on the rain-washed bricks. Pools of light from the streetlights on Ireland Boulevard reached only faintly into the alley. As the 5 inch whitewalls brushed against the curb Hayden let the American Straight Six idle for a moment before she killed the ignition. She took a last, long drag on her Lucky Strike then she flicked the butt out the window into the flowing gutter.
"What didja tempt ‘em with?" Reilly asked from the front seat.
Hayden grunted back, "20 cases of Jack Daniels, 15 of French Clicquot and 4 Oban scotches."
"Think thats enough?" Marben hissed from the back.
"Enough to get ‘em interested," the "Presider" answered. "I clinched it when I said I had 40 cases of Absentee Ballot."
Reilly whistled low past the toothpick in the corner of her mouth. Marben’s soft, deadly "heh, heh" from the back seat broke off as he snapped his fingers. He pointed toward the yellow cone of light over the outside steps going down to the basement of St. Paul’s Judiciary Building.
"There they are," he rasped. "Right on time." Several shadowy figures moved out of the midnight gloom. They slipped along the edge of the light circle and then went down the concrete steps. The gang in the car could just see the top of the basement steel door open and close several times.
Stickler kept count, then threw away her toothpick. Presider took one more long look around. They both heard Scalpel pull back the bolt on his gat. All three got out and tucked their Thompsons inside the fronts of their black robes. They didn’t zip them, just held them closed for the few seconds they walked along the alley. They went with a quick, deadly silence down the steps below street level. The steel door opened and closed once more and a muffled chatter ripped the night quiet for a few seconds.
"CNN Headline: Modern Valentine’s Day Massacre in St. Paul?--developing"
Just beyond the yellow police tape marked "CSI St. Paul, Do Not Cross," Lt. Horatio Cainenen pointed and asked,"What is that?"
Technician "The Kid" Wolfenberg took several photos of a small piece of steel that was carefully, even deliberately, perched on one of the bodies. Then he used a pair of tweezers to pick up the polished crescent and put a few drops from a small bottle on the surface. He peered at it through the lens of a small, blinking metal box.
"High quality steel, hardened with vanadium. Surgical grade I’d say. You could make a scalpel out of this."
Cainenen stared off in the distance and whispered under his breath, "Scalpel?" His footsteps took an urgent pace as he walked quickly over to Sr. Tech Kalli Duquesnedahl.
Kalli was just pulling something out of a heavy wooden post with a pair of rubber coated needle-nosed pliers.
"That is an unusual slug I’d say," Cainenen remarked as he came up. Kalli nodded as she squinted at it through her Swiss Army knife pocket magnifying lens. ".45 caliber with a long, right hand twist." She places a pair of calipers on the faint balistic marks. "Its about a 16 inch twist so its not a pistol. This rim says it came from an automatic weapon."
Cainenen’s eyebrows lifted as Kalli dropped the slug in a white box for a weighing: "230 grains?" Kalli muttered, puzzled. She punched up her iPhone, tapped the application labeled "iBullet" and waited a few seconds.
"Horatio, this doesn’t make any sense. This kind of bullet hasn’t been made in 70 years but I’ll stake my reputation that its freshly fired. What’s going on?"
Horatio looked over her shoulder at the iPhone screen and a little detail caught his eye. Then he looked around the scene: cases of Veuve Clicquot and Jack Daniels piled high, a large tarp covering a heap over by the wall. On a sudden impulse he went over and yanked down the tarp. 6 cases high. 6 wide. 4 more in a short stack over here. The letters A B everywhere.
Cainenen holds both sunglasses in his hands and fixed his eye on both Kalli and "the Kid."
"What we’ve got is murder. Those old style bullets are nicknamed "Orders." They were made by a British firm Tryal & Court. Like we used to say back in New York, (slips on sunglasses, gestures toward body bags on floor) what we have are 13 ballot categories killed off by "Court Order."
(Cue Roger Daltrey scream. Roll music: "Won’t Get Fooled Again.")