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.

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 Call me when you're repealed DADT.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.

Jim Tedisco has pulled an anti-Coleman and conceded in NY-20, thereby proving that Obama has been right about everything thus far.

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 linkdump #3.

* Here comes the Dollhouse? 'Scientists Erase Painful Memories Without Drugs.'

* Both Inside Higher Ed and Barack Obama himself can declare victory alongside UNC.

* Even the National Review says it's time for Coleman to concede.

* Environmental reporters at The Washington Post hit back at George Will over the many inaccuracies in his climate change columns.

* More on the Morristown UFO hoax.

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."

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.

The first stage of the recount has ended in Minnesota, and the Franken camp's methodology puts them ahead by an unbelievable 4 votes. Due to differing methodologies, the official tally has it +687 for Coleman, and the Star-Tribune's has it at +192 Coleman. Kos does his best to explain the differences in methodologies:

With the recount over, the Star Tribune gives Norm Coleman a 238-vote lead, but that doesn't include challenged ballots, which number about 5,400, pending negotiations between the campaigns to reduce the number of challenged ballots. While the official state results site hasn't been updated yet, Minnesota Public Radio is reporting that the official margin will be down to a 192-vote Coleman lead, which would be down slightly from the 215-vote Coleman victory after the first count. Why the discrepancies? Beats me.

The state canvassing board will meet on December 16 to review those challenged ballots. If they were to affirm the decision of local election judges on every one of those challenges, then the Franken campaign claims it would win by four votes. That number does not include the 133 missing ballots from a Minneapolis precinct that have likely cost Franken about 36 votes. A state election official has said that if the ballots aren't found, they would probably stick with the election night numbers, giving Franken a bit more of a cushion. One can't assume that every single one of those ballot challenges will fail.

Looks like it's just about time for a coin flip.

For the first time, Al Franken is claiming a lead in Minnesota. But I think that was before this Minneapolis thing.

If you'd asked me before today I'd probably have told you that runoff laws (like the one mandating the special election in Georgia today) were pretty stupid. But the ongoing saga of Franken v. Coleman is starting to change my opinion somewhat—a margin this narrow (caused entirely by the presence of a third-party candidate) is almost certain to be perceived as illegitimate by the losing side, regardless of the care with which the recount is conducted. A mandated runoff, unusual as it seems, would probably be far preferable to some + or - 27 post-recount result.

Perceived as illegitimate, that is, even outside the periodic discovery of uncounted ballots that favor one candidate or another. In short, this thing is turning into a complete mess. Nate, fresh from declaring Coleman the favorite this morning, is back to tossup-favoring-Franken territory.

Better than either choice, of course, would be instant runoff voting. Dare to dream.