Al Franken

[Rodolfo]

Wow...the guy just finally won by 214 votes. Every vote counts people! Any guess on who'll run next for office in Minnesota? I have my money on Prince.

 

[barfo]

Wow...the guy just finally won by 214 votes. Every vote counts people! Any guess on who'll run next for office in Minnesota? I have my money on Prince.

Prince would be good. Maybe the Vanilla Gorilla. To win he'd have to change his name legally to The Vanilla Gorilla, of course.

barfo

 

[Minstrel]

As Nate Silver noted on 538.com...Norm Coleman, in state-wide election, has now lost to a professional wrestler, beaten a dead guy and tied a comedian.

Well, we can now changed "tied" to "lost." But he lost close.

 

[dpc]

Should I be proud of my senator? I know dick about politics.

 

[Dumpy]

Coleman had engaged in some unethical behavior, and deserved to be drummed out of office, regardless of who replaced him--democrat, another republican, gorilla.

 

[Denny Crane]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html

Funny Business in Minnesota

In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.


Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

<cite>
AP</cite>


Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Wow...the guy just finally won by 214 votes. Every vote counts people! Any guess on who'll run next for office in Minnesota? I have my money on Prince.

You make a very good point in that every vote does indeed count.

 

[Denny Crane]

You make a very good point in that every vote does indeed count.

And if you're a democrat who loses a close election, even votes that weren't cast indeed count

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html

Funny Business in Minnesota

In which every dubious ruling seems to help Al Franken.


Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victor.

<cite>
AP</cite>


Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

Minnesotans like to think that their state isn't like New Jersey or Louisiana, and typically it isn't. But we can't recall a similar recount involving optical scanning machines that has changed so many votes, and in which nearly every crucial decision worked to the advantage of the same candidate. The Coleman campaign clearly misjudged the politics here, and the apparent willingness of a partisan like Mr. Ritchie to help his preferred candidate, Mr. Franken. If the Canvassing Board certifies Mr. Franken as the winner based on the current count, it will be anointing a tainted and undeserving Senator.

You may be right that democrats are stealing this election, but with a vote so close it's really impossible to say for sure.

 

[drexlersdad]

maybe the republicans should put someone in there to run against these clowns that can win.

 

[hasoos]

The Al Franken generation for the win!

 

[PapaG]

maybe the republicans should put someone in there to run against these clowns that can win.

Meanwhile, the Democrats literally did run a clown, who may or may not have won.

 

[drexlersdad]

Meanwhile, the Democrats literally did run a clown, who may or may not have won.

that was what i said in the first place.

this guy has lost against a wrestler and a comedian. they need someone better to run, or else they need to stop complaining.

 

[hasoos]

Meanwhile, the Democrats literally did run a clown, who may or may not have won.

And the Republican literally did run an asshole, who may or may not have won.

 

[Minstrel]

From 538.com (which has been chronicling this almost day by day):

Did the Wall Street Journal Fire their Fact-Checkers?

The Wall Street Journal is bar none one of the best newspapers in the country -- except when its Editorial Board is having a bad day. And today the Board is having a very bad day, having published an editorial that declares Al Franken's provisional win in Minnesota, which the state just certified moments ago, to be illegitimate, while accusing Minnesota's Canvassing Board of being inconsistent and biased in favor of Franken.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with taking such a position. The Journal's editorial, however, has several basic facts wrong, makes several other assertions based on flimsy or nonexistent evidence, and generally has little understanding of the process that has taken place to date.

Let's go through the editorial paragraph by paragraph.

Strange things keep happening in Minnesota, where the disputed recount in the Senate race between Norm Coleman and Al Franken may be nearing a dubious outcome. Thanks to the machinations of Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and a meek state Canvassing Board, Mr. Franken may emerge as an illegitimate victory

"Machinations": there's a ten-dollar word. Ritchie may be a Democrat, but he was also democratically elected -- lower case 'D' -- by the people of Minnesota. And as for the Canvassing Board, it arguably leans to the right, consisting of two members appointed by Tim Pawlenty, one appointed by Jesse Ventura, one elected member, and Ritchie.

Mr. Franken started the recount 215 votes behind Senator Coleman, but he now claims a 225-vote lead and suddenly the man who was insisting on "counting every vote" wants to shut the process down. He's getting help from Mr. Ritchie and his four fellow Canvassing Board members, who have delivered inconsistent rulings and are ignoring glaring problems with the tallies.

Actually, Coleman is having far more trouble with the Minnesota Supreme Court, which generally has a conservative reputation, than he is with the Canvassing Board. They're the ones who rejected his petition on duplicate ballots, and they're the ones who rejected his notion of wanting to tack on additional ballots to the absentee ballot counting.

Under Minnesota law, election officials are required to make a duplicate ballot if the original is damaged during Election Night counting. Officials are supposed to mark these as "duplicate" and segregate the original ballots. But it appears some officials may have failed to mark ballots as duplicates, which are now being counted in addition to the originals. This helps explain why more than 25 precincts now have more ballots than voters who signed in to vote. By some estimates this double counting has yielded Mr. Franken an additional 80 to 100 votes.

There are 25 precincts with more ballots than voters? I'm not sure this is actually true. There were certain precincts with more votes counted during the recount than there were on Election Night -- which is not surprising, considering that the whole purpose of a hand recount is to find votes that the machine scanners missed the first time around. I have not seen any evidence, on the other hand, that there are precincts with more votes than voters as recorded on sign-in sheets. And the Coleman campaign evidently hasn't either, or it presumably would have presented it to the Court, which rejected its petition for lack of evidence.

Also, note the weasel-wordy phrase "by some estimates", which translates as "by the Coleman campaign's estimate". There is no intrinsic reason why Franken ballots are more likely to be duplicated than Coleman ballots, especially when one significant source of duplicate ballots is military absentees, a group that presumably favors the Republicans. Coleman, indeed, only became interested in the issue of duplicates once he fell behind in the recount and needed some way to extend his clock. Before then, his lead attorney had sent an e-mail to Franken which said that challenges on the issue of duplicate ballots were "groundless and frivolous".

This disenfranchises Minnesotans whose vote counted only once. And one Canvassing Board member, State Supreme Court Justice G. Barry Anderson, has acknowledged that "very likely there was a double counting." Yet the board insists that it lacks the authority to question local officials and it is merely adding the inflated numbers to the totals.

The Canvassing Board indeed determined that it lacked the jurisidiction to handle duplicate ballots, telling Coleman that he had to go to court. Which he did. And the court threw the case out because Coleman didn't have any evidence.

In other cases, the board has been flagrantly inconsistent. Last month, Mr. Franken's campaign charged that one Hennepin County (Minneapolis) precinct had "lost" 133 votes, since the hand recount showed fewer ballots than machine votes recorded on Election Night. Though there is no proof to this missing vote charge -- officials may have accidentally run the ballots through the machine twice on Election Night -- the Canvassing Board chose to go with the Election Night total, rather than the actual number of ballots in the recount. That decision gave Mr. Franken a gain of 46 votes.

Actually, there is some proof: the number of votes identified during the recount fell 134 short of the number of voters who signed in on Election Night in this precinct.

Meanwhile, a Ramsey County precinct ended up with 177 more ballots than there were recorded votes on Election Night. In that case, the board decided to go with the extra ballots, rather than the Election Night total, even though the county is now showing more ballots than voters in the precinct. This gave Mr. Franken a net gain of 37 votes, which means he's benefited both ways from the board's inconsistency.

The decisions are not inconsistent if the Canvassing Board's objective is wanting to count every vote.

And here again the Journal is going on about the county "showing more ballots than voters in the precinct". If there is evidence of this, it would be news not just to me but also to the Coleman campaign.

And then there are the absentee ballots. The Franken campaign initially howled that some absentee votes had been erroneously rejected by local officials. Counties were supposed to review their absentees and create a list of those they believed were mistakenly rejected. Many Franken-leaning counties did so, submitting 1,350 ballots to include in the results. But many Coleman-leaning counties have yet to complete a re-examination. Despite this lack of uniformity, and though the state Supreme Court has yet to rule on a Coleman request to standardize this absentee review, Mr. Ritchie's office nonetheless plowed through the incomplete pile of 1,350 absentees this weekend, padding Mr. Franken's edge by a further 176 votes.

This is just blatantly false. All counties, red and blue alike, were instructed by the Supreme Court to identify any wrongly-rejected absentee ballots, and all of them did. In certain counties, Coleman claims to have identified additional wrongly-rejected absentee ballots above and beyond the ones that county officials identified -- but these were counties that nevertheless complied with the court's order and turned in their lists of ballots to the state.

Both campaigns have also suggested that Mr. Ritchie's office made mistakes in tabulating votes that had been challenged by either of the campaigns. And the Canvassing Board appears to have applied inconsistent standards in how it decided some of these challenged votes -- in ways that, again on net, have favored Mr. Franken.

I watched the video feed of the challenge adjudication process and did think there were some number of inconsistencies, particularly in the ways that ballots with 'X's on them were handled. But, I was looking at .pdfs of the ballots, whereas the Canvassing Board got to look at full-color, three-dimensional copies, which may make some difference in borderline cases. More to the point, however: (1) both candidates had their lawyers in the room when this adjudication was taking place, and had every right to press the Board on perceived inconsistencies, and (2) there is no evidence whatsoever that these inconsistencies hurt any one candidate particularly more than the other.

The question is how the board can certify a fair and accurate election result given these multiple recount problems. Yet that is precisely what the five members seem prepared to do when they meet today. Some members seem to have concluded that because one of the candidates will challenge the result in any event, why not get on with it and leave it to the courts? Mr. Coleman will certainly have grounds to contest the result in court, but he'll be at a disadvantage given that courts are understandably reluctant to overrule a certified outcome.

He'll be at a disadvantage because fewer people voted for him.

Meanwhile, Minnesota's other Senator, Amy Klobuchar, is already saying her fellow Democrats should seat Mr. Franken when the 111th Congress begins this week if the Canvassing Board certifies him as the winner. This contradicts Minnesota law, which says the state cannot award a certificate of election if one party contests the results. Ms. Klobuchar is trying to create the public perception of a fait accompli, all the better to make Mr. Coleman look like a sore loser and build pressure on him to drop his legal challenge despite the funny recount business.

But it doesn't contradict Congressional precedent, as the Congress generally has seated provisional winners while challenges were taking place, including Republican Representative Vern Buchanan in 2007 and Democratic Senator Mary Landrieu in 1997.

Link

 

[e_blazer]

Christing Gregoire, anyone?

Democrats are good at this recount game.

 

[DaRizzle]

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Republican Norm Coleman said Tuesday he is suing to challenge Democrat Al Franken's apparent recount victory in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race, delaying a resolution of the contest for weeks or months.

At a Capitol news conference filled with cheering supporters, Coleman said he won't accept a board's determination a day earlier that Franken won 225 more votes in the November election. He had a seven-day window to file the lawsuit.

"We are filing this contest to make absolutely sure every valid vote was counted and no one's was counted more than anyone else's," Coleman said.

Coleman shrugged off the idea that he might concede the election to avoid a protracted fight that could leave Minnesota with only a single senator in Washington for months.

"Something greater than expediency is at stake here," Coleman said. He added: "Democracy is not a machine. Sometimes it's messy and inconvenient, and reaching the best conclusion is never quick because speed is not the first objective, fairness is."

State law prevents officials from issuing an election certificate until legal matters are resolved.

link

 

[Masbee]

Wow...the guy just finally won by 214 votes. Every vote counts people

And sometimes twice!

 

[drexlersdad]

see now coleman can sue and use taxpayer money to clean this up. hopefully the tie and need to run again, and someone else beats both their asses.

 

[Ed O]

Christing Gregoire, anyone?

Democrats are good at this recount game.

I was just wondering about whether Democrats are less likely to cast ballots that get initially rejected, whether the GOP cheats people out of their votes the first time around, or if Democrats cheat people the second/third/n (final) time around.

Ed O.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

Christing Gregoire, anyone?

Democrats are good at this recount game.

However, in that election, she was elected from the votes of people who had been proven to be dead for years.

 

[Dumpy]

You can discuss possible improprieties in the election results if you want. For me, the other issue is more important. According to CREW, while not one of the "20 most corrupt" members of Congress, Norm Coleman is one of four others to have earned a "Dishonorable Mention." In my view, everyone on this list deserves to be drummed out of office. I'd be just as happy if he had been replaced by another Republican. As citizens, regardless of our affiliations and the party of our representatives, we should hold them ALL to the highest ethical standards. Here is the report on Coleman:

SEN. NORM COLEMAN
Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN) is a first-term senator, representing Minnesota. His
ethics issues stem from lodging he accepted in violation of the Senate gifts rule.

Failure to Pay Rent

When in Washington, Sen. Coleman lives in a basement apartment in the Capitol Hill
townhouse of Republican operative Jeff Larson. Mr. Larson runs FLS Connect, a telemarketing
firm, which has been paid over $1.4 million since 2001 by Sen. Coleman’s leadership political
action committee (PAC) and two campaign committees. Mr. Larson is also the treasurer of Sen.
Coleman’s PAC and provides it with office space in St. Paul, MN. Adding to the relationship
between the pair, Mr. Larson’s wife, Dorene Kainz, had been employed as a casework supervisor
in Sen. Coleman’s St. Paul office, though after National Journal questioned Sen. Coleman about
this, his staff announced that she would leave the office on July 10, 2008.

In March 2007, Mr. Larson and his wife purchased a townhouse on Capitol Hill. In July
2007, Sen. Coleman began paying Mr. Larson $600 per month to rent a portion of the basement
apartment. After National Journal began asking Sen. Coleman and Mr. Larson about the
senator’s living arrangement, the senator “discovered” that he had failed to pay rent in
November 2007 and January 2008, leading his wife to provide Mr. Larson with a personal check
for $1,200. In addition, Sen. Coleman sold Mr. Larson some furniture -- a couch, table and
chairs and a desk -- to cover one month’s rent, and Mr. Larson held onto Sen. Coleman’s March
rent check for three months, until June 17, before cashing it only days after National Journal
began making inquiries. Similarly, Sen. Coleman did not have a lease or pay utilities for the
first year he lived in the apartment. On July 3, 2008, Sen. Coleman and his wife signed a lease
and on July 14, 2008, Ms. Coleman wrote a $532.88 check for a year’s worth of utilities.
According to his campaign manager, a verbal agreement with Mr. Larson was the basis for Sen.
Coleman’s annual utility bill.

Gifts Rule Violation

Rule 35, paragraph 1(a)(1) of the Senate Code of Official Conduct states that “No
Member, officer or employee of the Senate shall knowingly accept a gift except as provided in
this rule.” The Ethics Manual defines “gift” to mean “any gratuity, favor, discount,
entertainment, hospitality, loan, forebearance, or other item having monetary value. The term
includes gifts of services, training, transportation, lodging and meals, whether provided in kind,
by purchase of a ticket, payment in advance, or reimbursement after the expense has been
incurred.”

Over the past year, Sen. Coleman appears to have accepted lodging from Mr. Larson for
at least three months without paying the agreed upon rent until caught by National Journal.
Although Sen. Coleman recently paid $1,200 and Mr. Larson cashed a check for an additional
$600 after National Journal questioned the pair about the payments, the fact that the payments
were not made until flagged by the media heightens rather than diminishes the concerns over
Sen. Coleman’s conduct. Sen. Coleman’s repeated missed rent payments and Mr. Larson’s
failure to cash Sen. Coleman’s check suggest that Mr. Larson was not, in fact, necessarily
expecting payment. Moreover, it is unclear whether the $600 rental rate represents the fair
market value of the apartment considering other rental rates in the Capitol Hill neighborhood.
After touring Sen. Coleman’s apartment, a Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter wrote that the
space is not extravagant but well kept and renovated. A spokesman for Sen. Coleman said,
according to their research, the senator is paying fair market value, but a Minnesota political
group reported similar apartments on Capitol Hill rent for $1,100 to $1,450.

Because lodging clearly falls within the Senate’s definition of “gift,” Sen. Coleman
appears to have violated the Senate gifts rule by accepting free lodging from Mr. Larson,
someone who financially benefits from his relationship with the senator. Further complicating
the issue is the question of whether the salary paid to Mr. Larson’s wife as an employee in Sen.
Coleman’s office might constitute the true payment of the rent. Also troubling is the fact that
Sen. Coleman paid his back rent, and Mr. Larson cashed Sen. Coleman’s checks, only once the
media began questioning the living arrangement. Finally, by failing to pay his utility bills, which
were valued at $532.88 – well over the $49.99 permissible gift limit -- Sen. Coleman accepted an
improper gift from Mr. Larson.

On July 1, 2008, CREW filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics
requesting an investigation into this matter to determine whether Sen. Coleman has violated the
Senate gifts rule.


http://www.crewsmostcorrupt.org/files/Coleman FINAL.pdf

I removed the footnotes so it would be easier to read on the forum.

Look, I am not partisan on this issue, and I don't see why anyone could be. The fact that there may or may not have been irregularities in the election results does not mitigate the fact that Coleman should not have the opportunity to represent Minnesotans at all. I guess you could argue that I'm being too militant about this, and that his alleged misconduct is relatively minor in the greater scheme of things, but that's the way I feel.

Just my opinion--I appreciate that others feel differently, and I don't intend to get into a pissing match over it.

 

[Real]

Al Franken is a huge fraud. He ran under the Paul Wellstone banner but he doesn't pass the smell test.

If this guy becomes anything more than a rubber stamp for the far left, I'll be very suprised.

 

[maxiep]

Democracy requires more than just sitting on your ass and hoping for a preferable outcome. Minnesotans get what they deserve if they let these results stand.

BTW, that 538.com article demonstrated more of Nate Silver's bias than the WSJ's. Hilarious stuff.