Why not him? The Minnesota Supreme Court has unanimously declared Al Franken the winner of the state's Senate race after eight months of litigation.



UPDATE: At his press conference, Coleman announced he concedes.

Even more Sunday night links.

* Ev psych on the ropes? We can only dare to hope.

* MetaFilter remembers the Stonewall protests.

* Also from MetaFilter: Are we doing enough to prevent the asteroid apocalypse?

* Pawlenty says he'll finally let Franken be seated once the state Supreme Court issues its ruling. Aren't we moving a little fast, Tim? It's only been eight months.

* Katrina vanden Heuvel with Steve Benen against bipartisanship.

* 3 Quarks Daily's top science blog posts of 2009.

* And Ze Frank plays "That Makes Me Think Of" again at Time, this week about thigns that are and aren't black and white. Can't we get The Show back already? We keep getting closer and closer.

Coleman loses ...a lot of money: he's been ordered to pay $94,000 in Al Franken's court costs, hardly anything compared to what either candidate has actually spent on the recount. Should there be punitive damages when a case is as frivolous as Coleman's? Much of election challenge law rests on an unspoken presumption that bitter candidates won't intentionally seek to delay the seating of their opponents out of spite; with that assumption apparently out the window, it's hard for me to say offhand how the rules should be rewritten. But they should.

Norm Coleman to finally give up? More here speculating on the possibility that he'll run for governor.

Due to various academic commitments, this blog has been very Blogspot Nights lately. I'm not happy about it but it may not change soon—once my comics class is over I have a few weeks off before work at [Undisclosed Location] starts up again.

Let's struggle onward together.

* Daily Kos has a compilation of the obsessive hate directed from Bill O'Reilly towards Dr. George Tiller for the crime of practicing medicine. O'Reilly's response tonight on the air was essentially that Tiller had it coming.

* Birthers overrun government transparency program.

* Petraeus says the U.S. violated the Geneva Conventions, while General Ricardo Sanchez calls for a Truth Commission. More from Attackerman.

* Barack Obama has declared June LGBT Pride Month. Hey, how great! It's like he's almost actually taking action! Call me when you're repealed DADT.

* Oprah and pseudoscience. Via Kevin Drum.

* The accusation that Sonia Sotomayor has—as The New York Times uncritically put it—a "race-based approach to the law" is turning out to be one of the most reality-detached arguments to make it into the mainstream since Saddam’s mushroom clouds. All the relevant evidence—all of it—proves how false that accusation is.

* Franken and Coleman went to the Minnesota Supreme Court today, and Coleman got smacked.

* And atheist children will kill you for candy.

You have to earn it: 'Senate Democrats Deny Specter Committee Seniority.' Not sure if Specter's latest flub had any role in this, but it's safe to say that Arlen's not impressing.

Links for Wednesday.

* First-gen Sierra adventure games in your browser. Your childhood says come back home, all is forgiven.

* The setup for this Flash Forward show seems pretty good, but man do I wish Brannon Braga weren't involved.

* McSweeney's has the syllabus for "ENG 371WR: Writing for Nonreaders in the Postprint Era."

* Long-time Republican strategist declares defeat in NY-20, while Norm Coleman presses on in the courts with his unique metaphysical argument that he is the only logically possible winner in the Minnesota Senate race.

* David Simon on Bill Moyers.

* Roberto Bolaño, 2666, and the Ciudad Juárez murders.

* What happens when you "run government like a business."

* I don't agree with everything Amanda Marcotte has to say about prostitution here, but she's certainly right about Eliot Spitzer; it's completely insane to me that some people actually seem willing to give the guy another chance.

* The best article about the "sexting" crisis you're likely to read.

He then told the parents and teens to line up if they wanted to view the photos, which were printed out onto index cards. As the 17-year-old who took semi-nude self-portraits waited in line, she realized that Mr. Skumanick and other investigators had viewed the pictures. When the adults began to crowd around Mr. Skumanick, the 17-year-old worried they could see her photo and recalls she said, "I think the worst punishment is knowing that all you old guys saw me naked. I just think you guys are all just perverts."

If your laws allow people to be charged with distributing child pornography for sending other people naked pictures of themselves, you need some new laws.

* Nate Silver thinks the libertarians are taking over the Republican Party. That would certainly be a huge improvement, as long as we're not just talking about glibertarians.

* The headline reads, "Obama keeps prosecutions on the table."

Al Franken has been declared the winner in the Minnesota Senate race, though Pawlenty and his secretary of state still has to sign off on it for Franken to take office—which they won't, because Republicans are cheaters. Don't miss the spectacle of nearly the entire Minnesota Supreme Court recusing themselves from Coleman's inevitable appeal.

"If you asked me what I would do, I would step back. I just think the healing process is so important. The possibility of any change of this magnitude in the voting system we have would be so remote — that would be my judgment. Mr. Franken will decide what Mr. Franken will do."
—Norm Coleman, two days after election day.

UPDATE: Minnesota's secretary of state is elected, not appointed, and is actually a Democrat now, Mark Ritchie. gerrycanavan.blogspot.com regrets the error. Mistakes were made.

Tuesday night linkdumps can't/won't stop.

* The Vermont legislature overruled the governor and legalized gay marriage in the state. Vermont had been the first state to approve civil unions; now it is the first state to introduce gay marriage via the legislature. Way to go Vermonters.

* Obama is very popular. Republicans are not. More gloating at Washington Monthly, Matt Yglesias, and MyDD.

* Franken continues to win and yet somehow continues not to take office. Odd how that works.

* How not to photograph.

Tuesday Night Linkdump #1.

* Republicans, no longer satisfied by stealing elections after the fact, are now filing election challenges before the polls even close.

Ordering the respondent New York State Board of Elections and the Commissioners thereof to certify the name of James Tedisco as elected to the public office of Member of the U.S. House of Representatives, 20th Congressional District, in Dutchess, New York, at the Special Election held therefor on the 31st Day of March, 2009, or alternatively enjoining the improper issuance of a certificate of election for the said public office.

Can't argue with the fairness of that.

* And speaking of Republicans stealing elections: Coleman's kind of doing it wrong.

* Ken Jennings loves metafiction, which by the transitive property means I love Ken Jennings.

* Terminator timelines. On a whiteboard.

* Star Wars as Dallas. Cute, but both these references are so very old. Between this, Terminator, Star Trek, and Watchmen, has this country actually produced anything since the 1980s?



* Mapping 'the zone of sanity'. Away from the coasts things aren't that bad, precisely because the imaginary growth of the Bush years never really touched these places in the first place.

I can't help it: I'm addicted to news of the Minnesota Senate race. The latest insanity: Norm Coleman is now asking to count votes he successfully barred from the count several weeks ago. When this is over, Minnesota really needs to change its laws so that disgruntled losing candidates can't hold up the seating of the victors through frivolous lawsuits. Of course, when this is over Al Franken will also be an incumbent Senator coasting to reelection after reelection...

Norm Coleman, man of honor, will sue to keep his Senate seat despite saying two days after Election Day that he wouldn't.

Why not him? Al Franken has officially won the recount in Minnesota. (Image shamelessly stolen from Donkeylicious.)

UPDATE: Coleman's lawyer is threatening to take this to the courts, but I know he won't do that—Norm Coleman is a man of honor who would never put his personal aggrandizement ahead of the "healing process."

Taking care of a little link business.

* How to Organize an Insurrection: tips from the protestors in Greece. (Via Vu.)

* It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. Via Kevin Drum.

* Fimoculous's 30 Most Notable Blogs of 2008. #31 for the second year running!

* Burris bags benighted Blago embrace. Democrats demur.

* Jim Webb will introduce legislation to beat back the prison-industrial complex.

* The case for Caroline Kennedy. I find this interesting because it's a completely ends-based analysis, the only field in which I think Kennedy's potential appointment has merit. She will be probably a good senator from my perspective and probably (yes) advantageous for New York—but she just doesn't deserve the nod. The Senate's not the House of Lords.

* The 1,000 Greatest Films of All Time. Subset: The 250 Greatest Films of the Last Eight Years. Via MeFi.

* Also from MeFi: an improbable defense of the suburbs from a most-probable place.

* Franken... wins?

* "Golden Years": A pre-Office one-off from Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant.

* "Farewell to All That: An Oral History of the Bush White House." 22 days remain.

Links for your post-Christmas blues.

* In the future, all movies will have lightsabers.

* Rest in peace, Harold Pinter and Eartha Kitt.

* Barack Obama is stupendously ridiculously popular.

* Al Franken is not quite so popular, but he's looking like Minnesota's next senator.

* Confidential for Mac users: the weird inability to change location in Finder dialogues is easily rectified.

* In the zeitgeist: people living life backwards.

* 95 Old School Games You Can Play Online. Via MeFi.

* So you're saying we need Batman? (Thanks, Kate!)

A few.

* Franken officially takes the lead.

* The music industry is abandoning their strategy of dickish law suits.

* There are now more slaves on the planet than at any time in human history.

* Gao Xiqing, who oversees 10% of China's $200 trillion, tells it to us straight.

The current conditions can’t go on. It is time for the new government, under Obama or even McCain, to really tell people: “Look, this is wartime, this is about the survival of our nation. It’s not about our supremacy in the world. Let’s not even talk about that any more. Let’s get down to the very basics of our livelihood.”

I have great admiration of American people. Creative, hard-working, trusting, and freedom-loving. But you have to have someone to tell you the truth. And then, start realizing it. And if you do it, just like what you did in the Second World War, then you’ll be great again!

If that happens, then of course—American power would still be there for at least as long as I am living. But many people are betting on the other side.

Random.

* The Cleveland Plain Dealer doesn't like it when big-shot New Yorkers take shits on our beloved city.

* I thought I was raised in a country where we were all free to vote for the Lizard Person of our choice. I was wrong.

* By the way, it looks like Franken may actually win.

* Labor leaders like Obama's labor pick.

* "Area Woman Becomes Republican Vice Presidential Candidate." The Onion continues its Year-in-Review.

* James Howard Kunstler's "10 Ways to Prepare for a Post-Oil Society."

kos has your MN-Sen update.

Late night links.

* Wikipedia's list of common misconceptions.

* It's good to live in a country without nobility or hereditary office.

* Are you a film addict? I am 55.2% yes.

* John Updike considers Mars.

* Matt, Josh, and Ezra consider the fillibuster and the extent to which we should just dump the damn thing.

* Coleman has gone to the Minnesota Supreme Court (a majority of whom have apparently been appointed by Tim Pawlenty) to ask that improperly rejected absentee ballots not be counted in the recount. I've looked, but I haven't actually found any sort of legitimate reason why he thinks ballots that were improperly rejected should stay improperly rejected, other than "I might win that way." Some commentary at TPM.

* Scientists have found the first unequivocal evidence that the Arctic region is warming at a faster rate than the rest of the world at least a decade before it was predicted to happen. We're so very screwed.

Links!

* The podcast of my appearance last night on Poli-Sci-Fi Radio is already up.

* Lots of anxiety today over Google's commitment to Net Neutrality after a report in the Wall Street Journal that they were looking to sell a "fast lane" to their services. Google denounces the report, but questions remain.

* Franken +200? So says the AP. More at First Read and TPM, which reports that optimism in the Franken camp is at very high.

* Does Harry Potter poison young minds? Richard Dawkins hates puppies and sunshine, too.

* The IEA says we're screwed starting in 2020. That's actually sort of good news; there's good reason to think we may already be screwed right now.

* Whose poetry will be read at the inauguration?

There's buzz about all sorts of names. Among them: Philip Levine, a Midwesterner whose writings are attuned to the working class; Robert Pinsky, former poet laureate who created the Favorite Poem Project; Yusef Komunyakaa, whose work is heavily influenced by jazz; U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan.

* Epic collection of sci-fi ray guns.