U.S. Senate

Can Facebook users pressure Coleman to drop suit?

A Facebook group is hoping three days of phonecalls to Norm Coleman’s campaign office may convince the former senator to give up his lawsuit and let Al Franken get started in the Senate. The “Norm’s Gotta Go Virtual Protest,” an email and call-in campaign begun yesterday and running through Friday, attempts to hold Coleman to [...]

U.S. Senate recount: What’s next?

Al Franken won the U.S. Senate contest by 225 votes. That was the determination that the five-member State Canvassing Board put their signatures to on Monday. Franken duly declared victory, pronouncing himself the “next senator from Minnesota.”

But as subsequent events have made abundantly clear that doesn’t mean the never-ending Senate contest is over. Indeed the legal contest filed by Norm Coleman’s campaign on Tuesday means it could still drag on for months. Here’s a quick primer on what will unfold in the coming weeks.

After exposing Cheney as a robot, paper calls for boycott of ‘Commie-sota’

The Wall Street Journal opining about alleged “funny business” in the Minnesota Senate recount is one thing. But when the Weekly World News — the paper behind exposés about Dick Cheney’s robotic innards or George W. Bush’s alien endorsement — weighs in on Loon State politics, it’s time to take note. Via the rightwing blog [...]

Video: Burris’ backing from God recalls Bachmann’s, Palin’s

“We are hoping and praying that they will not be able to deny what the Lord has ordained,” Roland Burris said before his fateful trip to Washington. Now that Democrats in the U.S. Senate appear ready to join God in backing Burris’s appointment by Illinois Gov. Rod “Nothing but Blue Sky” Blagojevich to join their ranks, [...]

Daily Beast: ‘Franken is the right’s new punching bag’

The Daily Beast has a provocative piece up today theorizing that Sen. Al Franken might be just the remedy for an ailing Republican Party. Writer Benjamin Sarlin posits that Franken presents exactly the type of frothing, over-the-top liberalism that the GOP needs to demonize Democrats as out of touch with mainstream Americans. He cites Franken’s [...]

Chief Justice will recuse himself from Coleman contest

Minnesota Supreme Court Chief Justice Eric Magnuson will recuse himself from participating in Norm Coleman’s legal contest of the U.S. Senate race, according to John Kostouros, Communications Director for the state’s Court Information Office. Under Minnesota law, the Chief Justice is charged with naming a three-judge panel to oversee the legal dispute. But since Magnuson [...]

Pioneer Press reprints discredited Wall Street Journal editorial on Senate race

The St. Paul Pioneer Press sees fit today to run a Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal editorial on the Minnesota U.S. Senate recount that nearly everyone but Rush Limbaugh has laughed off for its woolly inaccuracies and hidebound misrepresentations. Does the PiPress editorial staff let stand the errors that their WSJ counterparts committed to print two days [...]

WSJ recount editorial prompts non-meek response from Judge Cleary

A much-criticized Jan. 5 Wall Street Journal editorial that called the Minnesota State Canvassing Board “meek,” Secretary of State Mark Ritchie a man of partisan “machinations,” and Al Franken — who the board determined had won 225 more votes in the statewide recount than former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman — “tainted and undeserving,” has prompted a retort from one of its targets: State Canvassing Board member Edward Cleary.

Franken lawyer: Coleman’s waging an ‘uphill battle to overturn will of people’

Democrat Al Franken’s campaign attorney Marc Elias, responding to former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s filing of an election contest today, said the Republican’s legal move “could charitably be called an uphill battle to try to overturn the will of the people.”

Elias dismissed the Coleman suit, which alleges mistakes in the recently concluded statewiderecount, as being without merit — “essentially the same thin gruel, warmed over leftovers we’ve all been served over the last few weeks.”

Majority Leader Reid calls for Coleman concession

Harry Reid, Senate Majority Leader, is the latest to call for Norm Coleman to concede in Minnesota’s Senate race. While he’s technically correct that Coleman, the incumbent for office, is no longer a senator, the Nevada Democrat’s statement, given during his inaugural speech at the start of the 111th Congress today, seemed to go out [...]