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: 138 (Dec. 18 to NOW)
Number of days since election day (Nov. 4): 181
Number of days until MN Supreme Court hears oral arguments of appeal of Coleman v. Franken: 27 (June 1)
Franken Days
ENOUGH about Norm Coleman, horse dentures, Ginsberg the spinning top and the limpest election appeal since Mom put the linguini in the 10 liter pot and turned up the heat--- an hour ago.
Pat Lopez of the Star Tribune had a nice interview piece with Al Franken, the, you know, Senator-elect! from MN. The weekend page assembly crew seems to be much more even handed in their news treatment and headlines (unless Pat Doyle is vomiting up some screed about Coleman's path to the US Supreme Court) so Lopez got page 1, lower left corner with a color picture of a thoughtful Al Franken.
They met at a famous St. Paul breakfast shop called "The Egg and I"
http://www.eggandimn.com/...
Al is "tantalizingly close" and yet so far. Instead of legislating he's having to wait.....and wait.....and wait, just like us, only worse, since he's in the middle of it.
"A lot of people ask me and Franni [his wife], 'Are you OK?'" Franken said, his face crumpling into a caricature of someone inquiring after one's health. "As life's challenges go, this is pretty low on the totem pole. Our kids are OK, we're not in danger of losing our home to foreclosure. We're fine."
He has named a chief of staff and a director for MN constituent services, but he can't pay them. When he travels its on his own dime. But he keeps looking ahead, how he's going to handle celebrity (been talking with Hilary about that) and how he's going to relate to the rest of the MN congressional delegation.
One challenge will be maintaining at least cordial relations with a congressional delegation that spans the political rainbow from Rep. Keith Ellison, recently arrested while protesting Darfur, to Rep. Michele Bachmann, whose controversial pronouncements have earned her a near-permanent berth on the talk show circuit.
And then to sort of act out "a day in the life of Senator Franken" he had a pair of lobbyists meet with him over toast and coffee and pitch him why cap and trade on emissions is a bad idea..... followed by a pair of lobbyists who pitch him why cap and trade on emissions is an excellent idea.
Nice stuff, complete with video, here:
http://www.startribune.com/...
Odds & Ends
Chris Steller at Minn Independent does a nice job taking apart Coleman's use of Bush v. Gore in his appeal brief. Ties it to retiring Justice David Souter.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
Your ever-lovin' winerev decided to go Communist over the weekend and attend the Powderhorn neighborhood May Day parade in the delightful company of my mental institute's nurse and Kossack who signed me out for the day. Weather was fantastic as father Sun was rowed across the pond in the manner of the closing credits from "Hawaii 5-0". Jousting boats of snow and winter rowed out to duel the Sun but the Sun pushed on through to kiss mother Earth in a Tree of Life ceremony. We weren't close enough to the Kremlin Wall to see who was in "bad health" and who was the coming man, and I did miss the Red Army Chorus and the SS-22 missiles, but the band "Machinery Hill" was excellent. There were tents set up from all sorts of MN organizations....... including the MN Republicans. (Good for them for turning out.) Their tent with tables was a good 25 feet apart from every other tent in the row (most were like 6 feet apart) and in 5 full minutes NO ONE went near their tent. My Orange nurse and I watched the 4 white males stand there inside their "U" shaped tables talking earnestly with each other, backs to the outside world. Great symbolism.
Some pretty pix here:
http://www.mnprogressiveproject.com/
Personal Notes
I will be traveling Wednesday night to Florida to spend Mother's Day weekend with Mama WineRev. (Consider yourselves reminded you have 6 days to get something on the way to Mom; prayers and blessings are good anytime.) I'll take along the laptop and try and keep up on when the Franken Respondent's Brief gets filed (Due Monday, May 11, but can be turned in anytime.)
AND.... now 3 dozen of you have actually gone and pre-ordered the collected diaries of this saga. Which is staggering and stunning and will frankly help us pay for printing the first run. Foreward by MARKOS himself and waiting on an invitation to the Senator-elect to likewise write an introduction.
Tell your friends! No poli sci bookshelf is complete without the Kossack counter-balance, counter-weight and bargain counter tenor to "War and Peace" and "The Decline & Fall of the Roman Empire."
http://www.wordalchemy.net/...
OK hope your Cinco de Mayo tomorrow is a good one. Thats the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.