Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader wonders if you all had forgotten about the Minnesota Senate race. It still hasn’t been fully resolved. Yup. April 1 and no resolution.

Well… It looks like that is about to change. According to a piece in the Star-Tribune (that is linked through the Boston Herald) Norm Coleman’s attorneys are, while not throwing in the towel, admitting that they have probably lost the appeals.

According to the piece:

Norm Coleman’s lawyers all but conceded defeat in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race Tuesday and promised to appeal after a panel of three judges ordered no more than 400 new absentee ballots opened and counted, far fewer than the Republican had sought in his effort to overcome a lead held by Democrat Al Franken.

The ballots include many that Franken had identified as wrongly rejected as well as ballots that Coleman wanted opened in his quest to overcome the 225-vote lead that Franken gained after a recount.

“We are very pleased,” said Franken lead lawyer Marc Elias shortly after the ruling, which calls for ballots to be opened next week.
Coleman legal spokesman Ben Ginsberg acknowledged that the Republican may have lost the seven-week trial and was prepared to appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

“It is pretty much of a long shot with that few ballots being put in play,” Ginsberg said, comparing the Republican’s odds of winning the trial to someone betting on the winning team in the NCAA basketball tournament. “We are disappointed. But we feel the court is wrong and we will appeal.”

The ruling is not a final order and it’s not clear for which candidate the ballots were cast. About half of them came from Hennepin, Ramsey and St. Louis Counties, which went heavily for Franken in the election. But about 60 percent of the 400 ballots are from Republican-leaning suburbs of Hennepin County or counties that broke for Coleman.

Wow. Your Maximum Leader can hardly imagine the pride he will feel in his government knowing that a former Saturday Night Live writer/cast member and 3rd rate political commentator will be a member of the United States Senate. You know, before too long the names long remembered from that august body will read: Clay, Webster, Calhoun, LaFollette, Lodge, Dirksen, Jackson, Moynihan, Helms and Smalley/Franken.

Carry on.