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Coleman vs. Coleman
I haven't been following the Minnesota Senate recount very closely, but apparently Norm Coleman still has no intention of abandoning his Ahab-like quest to retain his seat even though he lost the election:
Republican Norm Coleman on Tuesday refused to rule out an appeal if a three-judge panel rules against his challenge in what he called “the race that never ends.”
....Coleman said his lawyers will wrap up their arguments by the end of the week, and he expected a ruling to come down in a “couple weeks.” If he loses, he would not say whether he would try to appeal a ruling with the state Supreme Court.
“I’m not ruling it in or ruling it out, let’s see what the court does and hopefully they’ll do the right thing,” Coleman said. He added: “This process already is Tolstoy-esque.”
Considering that Coleman is the guy primarily responsible for this Tolstoy-esque state of affairs, his complaint here is a little rich. Still, as much as I'd like to blame him for this whole mess, I'm not entirely sure I can. Speaking purely as a layman, what really appalls me about all this is how slowly the courts are moving. Are the issues really so complex that things can't be expedited a wee bit? Are Minnesotans really bound and determined to make Florida look like a model of efficiency and dispatch? What's going on with these guys?
Coleman is deliberately
Coleman is deliberately attempting to slow things down.
He can't win. He knows this for a fact.
He's attempting to cause the Democratic majority in the Senate as much grief as possible, and deny them their super majority. You don't plan to individually call absentee ballot casters, especially ones that hurt your case badly, without having a plan of obstructionism.
since it seems franken is gonna win
its easy to say "I wish the court system would move faster", but there's something to be said for due process. There was certainly swift movement by the supreme court in 2000, which led to one of the worst decisions in their history. So much as I want Franken seated and seated ASAP, the repercussion of waiting aren't that great so I'll be patient.
Quality vs. quantity
My concern, seeing as how Mr. Coleman can apparently tie up the seating of a rival party's candidate with fatuous legal procedures, is that unless the MN legislature gets it in gear, there is nothing stopping any losing candidate from doing the same, no matter what the margin of his defeat.
The courts are moving too
The courts are moving too slow! They must seat a candidate or Minnesota and the Nation will fall apart!!!
Jeez Kevin.
Come on, Jerry...
The elections were in the beginning of November and they had the recount finished 5 days into January. It's almost March and we're still twiddling our thumbs over this? Franken should be seated until the recount is over. Shit, if you think about it, Roland Burris has spent more time on the Senate floor than Al Franken. Isn't that at least a little screwy?
True enough, but you can't
True enough, but you can't lay that at the feet of the MN courts. It's MN law that says they can't certify until the challenges are finally resolved.
Minnesota courts are speedy!
I admit that I'm biased because I used to work in the MN court system, but I think the present court is doing a terrific and even speedy job. Remember that the Coleman campaign threw the kitchen sink at this with many (dozens?) of different kinds of claims, each to be proven or disproven. The court can't just say, "We're bored, so we're just not going to take evidence on your other claims." The court knows that unless a proper record is made and every claim considered and ruled upon at great length, an appellate court could throw it back. They've heard a tremendous amount of evidence and produced prodigious opinions and decisions.
No, this court is going to cross every t and dot every i and make sure that its final decision is as impregnable as the interim decisions have been.
Order the claims
How about if the court ordered Coleman to rank his claims from strongest to weakest and proceed in that order. Once the court rules against one, two, or maybe three claims in a row, since the rest are even weaker by Coleman's own ranking, just dismiss them outright.
Dbomp is right. The court
Dbomp is right. The court is moving as quickly as a court can. Due process is slow, especially when demanded by a deep-pocketed litigant. You can blame the rules (which created the incentive for Coleman's team), but you can't blame the court.
My fear
is that Norman has already been told that the Supreme Court will be glad to take his case and rule in his favor.
The issue
..should not be how slow the court is moving, but why can't the Franken be seated as an interim senator, with the understanding that he could be replaced if the final judicial decision (after all sides have exhausted their appeals) goes against him.
I realize there may be rules now against it, but I think they need to change, or any losing candidate can de facto stop the winner from taking office for a long, long time.
More details
Please read this before burying Coleman.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123111967642552909.html
Read it.
Can we bury him now?
kthxbi
For what it's worth, the WSJ article is from Jan 5, so does not include any court decisions. It's grumbling that rulings don't benefit their preferred candidate, so must be biased.
Wall to wall obstructionism is the strategy
mark r >"Coleman is deliberately attempting to slow things down...."
Precisely. The New ReThuglician Way.
CarloP >"...any losing candidate can de facto stop the winner from taking office for a long, long time."
DING !!!
I believe that we are going to see more and more of this as time goes on. It IS what ReThuglicans are about, manifesting the behavior of spoiled three year olds because that is who they are.
BRING IT ON !!!
"...it's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine..." - REM
Has anyone asked Coleman lately about this?
"If you ask me what I would do, I would step back. I just think the need for the healing process is so important."
-Norm Coleman, Nov. 5, 2008
What about Frankensteiner?
Considering that Coleman is the guy primarily responsible for this Tolstoy-esque state of affairs, his complaint here is a little rich.
Franken could have accepted the initial vote and the election would have been over even sooner. That said, you have to give his campaign credit for its post-election game. You'd almost think that they had James Baker working for them.
what?
"Franken could have accepted the initial vote"
No.
With such a low number of votes separating the candidates, the recount was AUTOMATIC according to MN election law.
Or...is this like a re - vote - you want a re-arguing from the very beginning?
"Please read this before
"Please read this before burying Coleman."
ha ha ha. I can't believe someone still is citing that ridiculous and completely discredited WSJ column.
Please read this
www.salon.com/opinion/conason/2009/01/09/franken/index.html
or this
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/01/did-wall-street-jorunal-fire-their-fact.html
or this
http://minnesotaindependent.com/22229/wsj-recount-editorial-prompts-non-meek-response-from-judge-cleary
or this
http://www.commonprejudice.com/2009/01/myths-of-the-frankencoleman-recount.html
....before reading the WSJ journal again.
I say this as a lawyer who's
I say this as a lawyer who's favorite part of the job is writing, but I don't think laypeople fully understand how time consuming the briefing process is. I submitted a 24 page brief (doublespaced) a couple of weeks ago that addressed three main arguments -- it essentially took me two weeks of working on very little else to draft it, and there were no serious problems requiring a substantial rework along the way. And I already had about 75% of the research done! Plus, a lot of the work in the drafting process really can only be done by one person, at least if you want the most effective brief possible (drafting-by-committee never works well).
As an exercise, let's consider everything that has to be done to create and file a typical brief:
- Read and analyze the other side's brief that you are responding to.
- Pull the authorities that they cite to make sure they say what the other side says.
- Figure out how you are going to respond.
- Do the necessary research to indentify authorities that will support your argument.
- Draft, edit and revise the brief.
- Distribute the draft to the client/bosses/other lawyers and incorporate any revisions.
- Do whatever research is necessary to support any revised arguments.
- Proofread the brief. Repeatedly.
- Check the cites in the brief to make sure that they are good law and don't cite/aren't cited by any cases that could bite you.
- Put the brief in the right format.
- File it -- this could mean manually going to the courthouse in a lot of states.
Considering the number of briefs that have been filed in this case and the complexity involved with them, I'm a bit amazed that they've done so much in a couple of months.
I just wish you jerkoffs
tagged as:- result
I just wish you jerkoffs were forced to use real briefs, cotton or nylon.
unlikely
there is nothing stopping any losing candidate from doing the same, no matter what the margin of his defeat.
Really? The only reason Coleman was able to do any of this was because the initial counts were so close. If there were tens of thousands of votes separating the candidates, you wouldn't see any litigation.
Also bear in mind that the initial counts had Franken behind.
witch candidate won
tagged as:- solution
Only in the USA, the land of the statistically challenged, do you have this nonsense of trying to determine the "winner" of a statistical tie. The logical thing to do, the thing that virtually every other democracy in the world does, is to have a runoff between the top two candidates. Having the courts decide it is ludicrous. You might as well throw both candidates in the Mississippi and see which one floats, it would have the same validity.
Minnesota
Hey, don't blame Minnesota courts for the way this Coleman thing has been dragged out. TPM has done a good job of covering the way his lawyers have questioned ballots, suggested that ballots that were correctly rejected shouldn't be, questioned totals, suggested recounts in certain areas, you name it. Every couple of days or so there's another ruling and then another motion by the Coleman folks. It's not our fault he can't be persuaded to accept reality -- and besides, this whole case is an effort by the Republican party to keep the Democrats from having another senator in their majority.
Didn't I read in <i>your</i> blog...
that Coleman was already either shopping for or accepting another job? Whatever happened to that? He realized he could do less work for more money as a senator?
This is an actual trial, not an administrative hearing.
There is nothing wrong with the judges, Kevin. The Coleman campaign has sued, and the case has moved from administrative hearing stage to the courtroom. I'm hoping Norm Coleman doesn't win, and I don't think he will prevail here. Nevertheless, under rules governing trial procedure, his campaign has every right to present his case in toto, and we as citizens are obligated to respect that.