It was just one year ago, June 2008, when GOPer Laura Brod was a nominee for that month's "Hypocrite Of The Month". It's important to remember why Brod was singled out that month: she stood in front of a microphone, as a surrogate for ol' Smokescreen, even though ol' Smokescreen had done his best to cover for his pals Jack Abramoff, Tom DeLay, et al. And Laura earned that nomination; click here for a recap of her hypocrisy and the sordid treatment of women that Norm Coleman ignored as Chair of the Truman Committee.
Yet there Laura Brod was, a year ago, rippin' Al Franken. Nothing demonstrates hypocrisy more than an indignant republiCon woman defending a guy like Norm Coleman's inactions by criticizing someone else's jokes.
And no one epitomizes a republiCon makin' (stuff) up more than Laura Brod and her imaginary issue of "voter fraud." Take, for instance, part of what Spot at The Cucking Stool wrote, in a piece entitled "A solution in search of a problem" back in February 2007:
In her little incitement to action, Rep. Brod mentions the increase in "identity theft and fraud." What she doesn't do, because she can't, is tie the efforts of digital thieves to voter fraud. And frankly, you'd have to be a pretty stupid thief to try to steal a vote here and there. Now that he thinks about it, Spot has never gotten a Nigerian voter-fraud scheme email!
How many voter fraud cases in Minnesota have you read about in the paper recently, boys and girls? Spot certainly hasn't seen any. If Rep. Brod's proposals ever gets a committee hearing, Spot hopes that Rep. Brod and her sidekicks will get a good grilling on the evidence behind statements like those contained in her letter.
Rep. Brod says that she just wants to be sure that "only those who are legally eligible can participate." Bull chips. What she really wants is to depress the turnout of the poor, the minorities, and the natives. (The Cucking Stool)
PhoenixWoman at Mercury Rising noted "right" around the same time:
If there is one thing that former Senator Norm Coleman is good at it is undoubtedly playing the victim. While he is also good at flip flops, shirking his oversight duties and dirty campaigning, do they really even compare? Seriously, can anyone name something he's better at?
Now that his election contest is nearing a verdict that in all likelihood conservatives won't like and if his appeal to the MN Supreme Court goes the same, they are preparing his ascension to martyrdom.
If you've been reading the blogs, you know that this trial went badly. The bumbling duo of Fritz Knaak and Tony Trimble laid the groundwork for his failure and there is nothing the more competent Ben Ginsberg and Joe Friedberg could do.
Former Senator Norm Coleman's election contest suit could be toast tomorrow -- or at least mighty burnt. Last week Al Franken's legal team submitted arguments for dismissal and on Friday they argued it. Coleman's team's counter was weak and this suit could be over or enough parts could be dismissed that Al's swearing-in would be all but a certainty.
It seems like months ago the three-judge panel ruled that the Coleman team had to prove that absentee voters who had their ballots rejected had cast legal votes. This is the higher standard. All that they've been able to do is cast doubts upon whether certain categories were wrongly rejected.
Norm's attorneys have used every single wrongly rejected ballot to spin a tale of widespread problems. Their problem is that the judges agree that every rejected absentee ballot has a unique story. The judges even ruled that there are no systemic problems.
Probably most importantly, is that in arguing against dismissal Norm's attorneys kept asserting that "they believed" and "I think" while Franken's attorneys kept pointing to evidence.
The inability of the Avista Partner's-owned Star Tribune to accurately cover the Minnesota Senate election contest suit by former Senator Norm Coleman continues. The real story is the devastating arguments for dismissal by Al Franken's attorneys on Friday. However, the Strib uses the top left hand corner of their Sunday frontpage for this crap.
The real story is the 3 judges might dismiss all or part of Norm's election contest suit tomorrow.
The Avista Partners-owned Star Tribune couldn't avoid reporting what actually happened in the election contest between former Senator Norm Coleman and Al Franken. They didn't even bury the good news for Al like they usually do. The Franken legal team would argue today for dismissal of Norm Coleman's election contest suit.
Nine ballots. That's what Democrat Al Franken's lawyers say Norm Coleman has to show after nearly six weeks of courtroom combat in the U.S. Senate election trial.
On Thursday, Franken's lawyers asked the three judges hearing the case to dismiss some or all of Coleman's claims, even as they continued to introduce evidence in court about absentee ballots they said were wrongly rejected.
Franken's attorneys said Coleman's team "failed to meet [the] burden of proving that a voter's absentee ballot was improperly rejected" for the great majority of ballots they identified.
(Star Tribune)
They even kinda let on how devastating it all is for Norm's case. Hint: it was. Quite.
The Avista Partners-owned Star Tribune cannot stop shilling for former Senator Norm Coleman. Today, they recognize the overwhelming odds of Norm winning the election contest, but spin it. From Norm and their perspective it isn't that Norm's case is weak or that Al Franken's legal team has been kicking their butts or that they've hurt their own case or that the math appears to favor Franken.
No.
They overlook all that.
Norm Coleman said Tuesday that the three judges hearing the U.S. Senate recount trial will have to ponder whether they'll be able to decide who won the election.
Coleman, a Republican, questioned whether the panel will be able to certify him or DFLer Al Franken as the candidate with more legitimate votes. "I think the court is going to have to reflect on that," Coleman said during a break in the trial, which is in its sixth week as he challenges recount results showing Franken ahead by 225 votes.
(Star Tribune)
As typical with any bad news for Coleman, this article was buried inside the Metro section on B3.
Anyhoo ... Yes, Pat Doyle, Kevin Duchschere and Strib editors, the court will ponder whether they can make a ruling. That was crux of Coleman's legal argument. I guess ya'll kinda admit it though you fail to mention how poorly they presented it. And as to the ruling? Hint, I think they might rule as they've been trending. For Al.
Coleman legal team proves it is possible to practice law without a brain
Former Senator Coleman's legal team finally rested their case yesterday. After 5 excruciating weeks of fumbling, ranting, fishing and bumbling, the train wreck finally ground to a halt. Provisionally. They could always petition to raise another point, I guess. As if it would help.
Was it 12,000 rejected absentee ballots? 11,000? 7,500? 5,500? 5,000? 4,500? 3,500? 3,000? 953? We may never really know.
The time wasting is over. The excessively slow annunciation of Joe Friedberg as he introduces evidence is done. Their insistence that that every vote be counted fades. Their pleas to throw out votes that were already counted ceased. The chanting of their mantra, "Bush v. Gore" and "equal protection" is fading to a memory. The universe has stopped expanding and/or contracting. The key witness in their double-counting claim, Patricia Howell, will crawl back under the rock from which she crawled. Her disastrous testimony might linger. Virtually every motion they've put foreword has been rejected ... that might linger, too.
Over the last few weeks, I've run into a decent number of people who are pretty tired of the endless counting, recounting, arguing and etc. that are part and parcel of our endless 2008 Minnesota Senate race. I don't think they're alone. I think that many people have tuned out this process long ago simply wishing it would be resolved.
The common questions I get since I've been paying such close attention are:
Why doesn't Norm Coleman just concede?
Isn't Norm ruining his chances of running for higher office?
Is it ever going to end?
These are legitimate questions. The answer also includes how disingenuously the media have covered it. Follow me after the fold and I'll explain it all.
Throughout the recount and the election contest in the Minnesota Senate race, former Senator Norm Coleman has had no better ally than the Avista Partners-owned Star Tribune. They have faithfully spun every story so that their readers never got the real story about what was happening with the recount and the election contest.
We are now seeing the implications of Friday's ruling from the 3 judge panel in the election contest suit of former Senator Norm Coleman. On Friday, the number of ballots allowed for consideration were limited to number far less than 4800 and made the burden of proof for the Coleman legal team much higher. Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo believes that Norm's legal team are resigned to defeat in the election contest and are preparing to appeal the panel's ruling.
Norm Coleman's legal team is clearly getting an early start on a very important task: Laying the groundwork for an appeal.
Yesterday they asked the court to reconsider their ruling to not count certain categories of rejected ballots. And today they've continued to submit evidence from one of those categories into the record, ballots for which the voter failed to sign the application form.
The reason you would continue to submit evidence in a rejected category, to put it simply, is to make an appeal much easier. Coleman's team is building up the evidentiary record that can be used in an appeals court -- or perhaps the Senate itself -- and the evidence will be assembled in case a higher judge rules with them as a matter of law that they should be counted.
(Talking Points Memo)
The latest news from the MN election contest, in which former Sen. Norm Coleman is hoping to keep Al Franken from becoming our next Senator, is that Norm's chances just got cut in half. The 3-judge panel ruled that they will not consider 13 categories of rejected ballots (The judges had previously asked that the contestants argue why or why not to consider ballots in 19 separate categories). They ruled that ballots in these 13 categories were legally rejected and Norm's legal team wouldn't be able to present ballots in these categories for consideration.
Noah Kunin of The Uptake speculated on AM950's On The Uptake show that this could halve the universe of 4600 or so ballots that are still in contention. I would add that it could possibly be fewer than 2000 ... we won't know until guys like Noah get a chance to analyze things.
"You never know if this was the turning point until the journey is over," Marc Elias said when asked if this was a turning point.
He wouldn't comment on how many ballots were tossed or still remain, but did offer that the rulings will affect a "large chunk" of the ballots.
Elias said that the judges rejected the notion offered by the Coleman legal team that there was a "systemic problem" with how absentee ballots were rejected. "The vast majority were counted, a small percentage were rejected improperly."
The Franken legal team has always maintained that only a small number were improperly rejected. On the other hand, the Coleman team had initially claimed that none were. After losing the recount, they asserted that all 12,000 were possibly wrongly rejected and vacillated around for a while until the court narrowed the universe to 4800.
Another important ruling, according to Elias, was that the burden of proof has been decided. The Coleman team needs to clearly prove that a ballot was lawfully cast not that it was wrongly rejected. This is a higher standard than what the Coleman team had wanted.
This also makes Norm's chances even slimmer. To pick up 250 ballots out of a drastically reduced universe of ballots, they need a more lenient burden of proof.
While Al is not yet our Senator, I think we can begin practicing saying "Senator Al Franken."
Former Senator Norm Coleman filed an election contest back in January. He argued in his filing that there were 654 rejected absentee ballots that should have been reviewed. Then his legal team changed their mind. New additions Ben Ginsberg and Joel Friedberg must have realized that Fritz Knaak and Tony Trimble blew it by limiting the universe to such a small number.
They then wanted to include all 12,000 rejected absentee ballots. Then they wanted to include 5,000. Then they submitted 5,500 ballots. Then they wanted 11,000 ballots considered.
Throughout out the Coleman legal team's floundering, Al Franken's legal team insisted that the Coleman campaign be held to the number they submitted in their original filing, 654.
Today, the 3 judge panel ruled on what would be the universe of included rejected ballots. 4,797 ballots is the magic number, but I believe that Norm's chances are still slim. Read on and I'll do the math.
There is now a chance that Al Franken, once seated, may become the 60th Democratic Senator. Why? Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) is rumored to be the next Secretary of Commerce.
President Obama has approached Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) about becoming commerce secretary, "a step that could open the way to significant shift in the balance of power in Congress" as New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch, a Democrat, would most likely to pick a Democrat to replace Gregg. Though Gregg refused to comment on the discussions, his office confirmed that he had been approached.
(Think Progress)
This explains the Republicans desperation to role the dice, to string out the election contest case as long as possible.
I understand former Senator Norm Coleman's plight. He was barely getting by on a Senator's salary and now with those paychecks ended, he had to get a new job. However, will Norm get paid next week for his consulting for the Republican Jewish Coalition last week?
Didn't he spend the last week taking up space in a courtroom in St. Paul?
Wouldn't it be great if we could all have jobs where our employers would pay us even if we didn't show up for work. Is this job a real job or just another example of largesse from Norm's rich buddies?
In the third day of former Senator Norm Coleman's election contest, aka the fishing expedition to find votes, the 3 judge panel ruled against Norm's legal team in allowing the Franken legal team to present the statements, letters and emails Coleman's attorneys made about the recount. This is a blow to Norm's cause because his legal team is now arguing against positions they had previously supported.
In other words, Norm has been caught in yet another flip flop.
"There is a principle called the doctrine of invited error," Franken's lead attorney Mark Elias explained. The doctrine of invited error means you cannot argue contrary to a ruling you requested that you approved of at the time. "The Coleman team said 'we insist you do it this way. The court then ruled and they agreed with this ruling. Then they backtrack and say the court is wrong."
What the Coleman legal team is now doing is arguing that they do not approve of the way that the MN Supreme Court ruled on how incorrectly rejected absentee ballots should be dealt with despite requesting the ruling and agreeing with it at the time.
The day involved Franken attorney David Lillehaug getting Deputy Sec. of State Jim Gelbmann's testimony into the record of all the instances of Coleman flippery floppery. He didn't even finish. Coleman attorney Ben Ginsberg suggested that he might not be done all that soon.
What's the significance of all this? What actually is Coleman's legal strategy at this point? Read on ...
