Evening, everyone.

5 days till this year's Game of the Century. Go Gators!

This is an Open Thread.

UPDATE - After the recount, The Uptake has Franken gaining a 176 votes and now leading by 225 votes, based on the election judge's call. Objections to the election judge's rulings will be decided by the Canvassing Board on Monday There were no objections to the Election Judge's rulings. Coleman's doors are closing. He is in Hail Mary territory now.

The Minnesota Canvassing Board is counting 953 improperly rejected absentee ballots this weekend in the Senate election between Franken and Coleman.

The Uptake has the proceedings. Franken currently leads by 49 votes. Coleman has asked for certain additional rejected absentee ballots be counted but the Minnesota Supreme Court has not acted on its request. Coleman will contest the election (presumably Franken will too in the unlikely event he is behind at the end of the Canvassing Board's tabulations.) Under Minnesota law, there can be no certified winner of the race until contests to the election are resolved.

Speaking for me only

Given the Blago Farce, it is a shame that Obama did not keep his seat the way way Clinton and Biden did:

The seats of Illinois and Minnesota are totally up for grabs. Senators from New York and Colorado have one foot out of the Capitol, and the identity of the new New Yorker remains a mystery. To top it off, the incoming vice president is to be sworn in as a senator Tuesday though he will be departing later this month to put on his new executive branch hat, which he will wear while occasionally presiding over the chamber.

So Vice President-Elect Biden will remain Senator Biden for a few more weeks. Too bad the same is not true for President-Elect Obama. But hindsight is, as they say, 20-20.

Speaking for me only

Open Thread.

The Blago/Burris Farce has some Left bloggers simply losing their perspective. Consider Chris Bowers:

A new story in the Chicago Sun-Times indicates that, the day before Blagojevich's calls were taped, Harry Reid pushed Blagojevich not to appoint the three leading African-American politicians in Illinois (after Barack Obama, of course). According [sic] using "electability" as the rationale, Reid did advocate on behalf of two candidates, one of whom, Attorney General Lisa Madigan, attempted to remove Blgaojevich via judicial coup. If the Senate's move to block Roland Burris wasn't already viewed as a political move rather than one of ethics, this story should put an end to that once and for all.

Incredible. Politicians acting politically. I for one am shocked! Sheesh. More. . . .

Via BarbinMd (who is killing on this story btw), Roland Burris promised to run for reelection if his Blago Farce appointment is upheld:

[Burris] also ruled out a caretaker role; Burris said he would likely run in 2010 to keep the seat if his appointment sticks.

Allrighty then. In the interview with Lynn Sweet, Burris apparently said "we are the Senator." I am assuming the "we" he is referring to is he and Blago, because that is how the Republicans will certainly portray it.

Speaking for me only

I am glad someone finally said it -- Hennepin County's reply to the Coleman objection to not including certain rejected absentee ballots in the vote count:

[T]his Court [the Minnesota Supreme Court] established a uniform standard for determining which ballots could be forwarded to the Secretary of State for counting. Those ballots must be identified by local election officials as rejected in error and the campaigns must agree with that assessment. In other words, only ballots which the local officials and the two campaigns agree were rejected in error will be passed on to the Secretary of State’s Office.

(Emphasis supplied.) The Minnesota Supreme Court will have to judge its own order to be flawed in order to grant Coleman relief. Of course the initial order requiring agreement from both parties was indeed seriously flawed, as dissenting Justice Alan Page noted at the time:

Does this sound familiar?

Out of the blue, ... [Darryl] Burton (age 22) was fingered by two individuals claiming to be witnesses. There was no physical evidence linking him to the murder; a slug was found at the murder scene, but no weapon was ever recovered. A jealousy motive for Burton regarding a girlfriend was investigated by police, but not presented at trial. Prosecutor Anthony Gonzales presented no motive at all.

A witness who testified in exchange for a reduced sentence lied about his criminal record. That witness' testimony varied drastically from the story he told the police. New evidence shows that the other witness "was a chronic liar who was not at the crime scene at the time of the shooting and had vision so poor that he could not have seen the shooting from where he claimed to be sitting had he in fact been sitting there."

Other witnesses identified Jesse Watson as the shooter, a likely suspect given that Watson took a shot at the same victim at the same location a year earlier. The police didn't bother to investigate Watson. [more ...]

Open Thread.

The latest, via the Strib:

Hennepin County finished its review of 326 rejected absentee ballots late this morning, with the Coleman and Franken campaigns agreeing to count nearly 80 percent of them. In the state’s most populous county, 255 absentee ballots that county election officials acknowledged were mistakenly rejected were accepted by the two campaigns after a two-day, mostly-uneventful review. Seventy-four were rejected. The rejections were roughly evenly split between the two campaigns, with Franken rejecting 36 ballots, Coleman 33, and five withdrawn by the county.

Apparently, this was the pattern around the state. The interesting development is the Coleman campaign's attempt to include more rejected absentee ballots for review. This is a reflection of their position trailing Franken at this point:

Earlier today, TalkLeft friend (and, I hope, still my friend) Jane Hamsher was accusing Harry Reid of disregarding the rule of law. In her latest post, she seems to be berating him for "sabotaging" JedL's plan to disregard the rule of law:

The Illinois House has moved up its consideration of the impeachment of Governor Rod Blagojevich to next week:

The Illinois House could vote as early as next week on whether to impeach Gov. Rod Blagojevich. . . . A spokesman for House Speaker Michael Madigan says the chamber may vote on a recommendation from the special committee studying whether Blagojevich should be impeached.

More . . .