Franken wins by +312 votes.
Coleman can (optional) file a Reply to Respondent's Brief By THIS FRIDAY, May 15. Its optional but the chances he won't are less than discovering Dick Cheney actually qualifies as a mammal, so yeah, he'll file.
Oral arguments, MN Supreme Court: June 1, 19 days from this morning.
Some very odd ends just past the fold....
UPDATE: kossack Tenzen links to an odd/sleazy tale of chutzpah on the part of Norm Coleman here: complete with Ben Ginsberg and money and Talking Points Memo:http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmem...
Odds & Ends
Its all odds and ends today as we await Friday at the MN Supreme Court's clerk window. Back on April 30 the Coleman Team filed their Appellant's Brief. Monday the 11th was Team Franken's turn to file their Respondent's Brief. The Court set this Friday the 15th as a deadline for the Coleman side to file their Reply to Respondent's Brief. Since the side making the appeal carries the "burden of proof" (known in Missouri as the "Oh yeah? Show me!") they get to both open and close around the Respondent's paperwork.
If this sounds familiar it is. When we've watched oral legal arguments on the UpTake during the Recount on various motions whoever brought the Motion opens and gets to reserve part of their time to a closing (which they usually do.)
Around the blogosphere learned legal minds are weighing in on both Briefs and as you might guess the consensus is building that the Coleman case looks like a pig on stilts..... on ice: not pretty.
Professor Rick Hasen of Loyola Law School weighs in with thoughts (like the Franken Brief treats the Coleman case like "a stifled yawn.")http://electionlawblog.org/...
Pat Doyle at the Star Tribune continues to prepare his dwindling circle of readers for the inevitable defeat of former Senator Horse Dentures by reporting actual facts:
Franken also said Coleman's lawyers never adequately raised a constitutional due process argument in seven weeks of testimony during the trial.
Coleman claimed a due process violation during closing arguments, saying the three-judge panel that heard the trial imposed different standards for counting ballots than were used during the election and recount.
Franken said Coleman should have raised the issue in a more serious manner earlier in the trial if he wanted it to be considered.
He closes with:
Election and constitutional law experts Fred Morrison of the University of Minnesota, Guy-Uriel Charles of Duke University Law School and Hasen said Monday that it's unlikely Coleman will prevail before the state Supreme Court because he hasn't proven violation of constitutional rights or state elections law.
"I thought Coleman had an uphill battle, and it's only reinforced by my reading of the Franken brief," Hasen said.
Meanwhile a law professor at Ohio State's School of Law has spent time combing through the Coleman Brief from the other week and has this take:http://moritzlaw.osu.edu/...
I haven't always liked Dr. Foley's take on things but this is a thoughtful piece, sort of like reading over a judge's shoulder while she works out a next-to-last draft of a ruling:
If local officials acted properly within their scope of discretion under state law, then there is no wrongful conduct to remedy even if some of them rejected ballots that others would have accepted, and vice versa. Only if this exercise of discretion were a violation of federal law would a remedial issue arise.
Odder End
The whole question of issuing a Certificate of Election is headed for the governor's office and Tim Pawlenty is being the last kid on the one side of the gym in a game of dodgeball. While he keeps trying to have it both ways ("I'll sign when the appeals are done.... but I didn't say WHICH appeals") the heat in state is growing on him.
At the corner of I-94 and Snelling Ave in St. Paul some folks have bought up the rights to a billboard and are using it for a hot pink challenge to T-Paw that thousands of commuters a day can ponder while zipping by at 17 MPH riding each other's bumpers.
The sign puts Pawlenty in the cross hairs by challenging him to choose between MN and his personal ambitions. Quick writeup & picture here:http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
Oddest Yet
Of course in MN you can't REALLY do "odds and ends" until you do Jesse Ventura. Monday night Jesse had a guest appearance on "Larry King Live" and was vintage Jesse. You want to know why a former Navy Seal (yes, he's that tough and that smart; the Seals don't take weaklings and they do NOT take stupid for members), former mayor and, yeah, former ring rat showed WHY he attracted a certain percentage of the vote in '98? The man comes off as speaking his mind and speaking other people's minds as well. In the embedded video he flat out calls Dick Cheney a "coward" for having ducked Vietnam (FINALLY! somebody willing to nail that fascist son of a bitch.... not that I have an opinion about the former VIce-President....fumes!). He says waterboarding is torture and anyone who did it OR ORDERED IT should be jailed or worse. He calls out Cheney on the waterboard/torture issue by offering to use the technique on Cheney! ("In one hour I'll have him confessing to the Sharon Tate murders.") (I would sleep under a bridge for a year... In Minnesota, through the winter..... to see that particular hour carried out on the carcass of Dick Cheney.)
BUT, to bring this back to all things MN, Ventura also calls his former opponent in '98, Norm the Dentalated, a hypocrite and says that is nothing new. Coleman is only doing what he has always done, said Jesse, looking out for Norm.
That kind of straight talk will get you votes in a lot of places, even if you govern like you've been hit with a metal folding chair on the head a few too many times.
http://minnesotaindependent.com/...
The Personally Odd
If you have a taste for things odd (and reading these diaries means, YES, you qualify!) I was interviewed about the forthcoming book collecting these diaries into a paperback bridge abutment. Local Air America station AM-950 had me on and the MNProgressive and kossack BigE (Eric Pusey) did the interview. Its now up on podcast here:
http://www.am950ktnf.com/...
Then too, Mr. Down East Odd, Bill in Portland Maine, mentioned this forthcoming book in yesterday's "Cheers & Jeers" diary. Yet odder, over 30 of you went to the ordering site and actually (good freakin' odd god, people!) ORDERED a copy (or more than 1) of Recounting Minnesota. You realize by pre-ordering you are making it harder and harder to avoid actually printing the thing? I mean its forcing us to consider putting down a down payment with a printer to reserve space on their calendar so this insane collection of insanity can actually end up in book form.
Odd indeed, x over 100 now (and I thank you most humbly. Wow.)
http://www.wordalchemy.net/...
Well the Coleman Reply is due Friday. If his team follows form they will file about 3:45 in the afternoon and folks like jpmassar or terribleTom or word alchemy will be up with diaries. I'll have a mass of madness then on Saturday for sure. The next couple days? We'll see if there's enough to put something together to hold you from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon.
Shalom.