Norm Coleman's witness backfires on the stand
This is hysterical. How do you know that Norm Coleman's chances of retaining his Senate seat are in bad, bad shape? When one of his key witnesses takes the stand and undermines his own case. TPM has the scoop:
This afternoon the Coleman team was bringing in rejected absentee voters to show that their ballots were improperly tossed. So far the court has heard from six people, most of of whom said they were contacted by the Republican Party in the last few weeks. They mostly seemed sympathetic enough, putting a human face on the disenfranchised Coleman voter -- but at least two of them appeared to have been rejected properly under the conditions of Minnesota law.
One of the voters was Douglas Thompson, who admitted under oath that his girlfriend filled out his absentee ballot application for him, signing his name with her own hand and purporting to be himself. His ballot was rejected because the signature on his ballot envelope (his own) did not match the signature on the application (his girlfriend's). The Coleman team's argument appears to be that he is still a legal voter in Minnesota, as the signature on the ballot was his own, even if admitted dishonesty was involved in getting the ballot.
Keep in mind: Thompson's story came up during the direct examination by Coleman lawyer James Langdon. So the Coleman camp fully knew this information and decided to make him into a witness.
I'm with the Minnesotans who just want this drawn out process to end already, but at least we're getting some comedy out of it. That's gotta count for something.
Markos has more: MN-Sen: Purposefully throwing the case
oxyMORON!!!!!!!
:<[)
Some stuff you can't make up!
know the answer before you ask the question!
Some stuff you can't make up!
Y'all!
...those are Coleman's choices. Even if he somehow manages to retain his seat, the Senate Ethics Committee will have his hide.
I think Coleman will lose the challenge but the article missed the point of why the witness was being called. Coleman is trying to establish that different standards were used in different counties and that this is a violation of equal protection under Bush v. Gore. If he can show that this guy's vote wasn't counted but that another similar situation in another county was counted, then he has an argument that there was an equal protection violation (although that alone isn't going to convince any court to set aside the Franken victory)
cases where a ballot, with similar circumstances, was accepted?
Just curious.
there wasn't.
Sorry, no-go on the legal argument. Or at least, under the legal precedent cited.
Bush v. Gore specifically is written - and actually says - that it is a decision applicable only to that specific case. It would be useless to cite it as precedent, it has already been precluded. Which is one reason why that decision was, in a legal sense, ridiculous.
What ethics committee?
http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/nor...
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/state_of_chang...
funny! to bad norm........al has the last laugh.
The only reason this is in court is to continue preventing Al Franken from being seated as a Senator, and the only reason THAT is happening is Republican obstructionism.
I think that the three-judge panel will be furious, assuming they haven't realized already that they are being USED to further Republican Senate obstructionism. How many cloture votes will FAIL for one vote because Franken isn't there?
Were Coleman to win I'm sure the Republicans would be happy to have him back. But right now the RNC is (somehow, count on it) funding this court action solely to thwart one Senate Democratic vote. Along the way they are screwing Minnesotans out of their due representation in Congress, and America as wel.
"The Good and Great Must Ever Shun, That Reckless and Abandoned One
Who Stoops to Perpetrate a Pun," Lewis Carroll, 'The Three Voices.'
"The Coleman team's argument appears to be that he is still a legal voter in Minnesota"
Being a legal voter, and actually voting aren't the same thing! LooHoo-ZerHERRRRR!
We need to rid the Senate and House of hypocrits and idiots like Norm Coleman. We need more Darcy Burners, Ned Lamonts, Paul Hacketts, Christine Cegelis's, etc. Dennis Kucinich and Paul Wellstone don't have to be the only ones.
We outnumber them and with adequate organization and diligence we should have no problem getting this country back from the International Loyalists, Dual Citizens, and Private Multi-National Bankers.
Let's do it.
They entire system would need to be wiped out (I mean the entire system, governmental and financial) and we'd need to start from scratch. The way it is now the corruption is so entrenched, its hardly even corruption anymore, its just S.O.P. Standard Operating Procedure.
I believe in evolution. The power of incremental changes. I'm not a creationist or a disaster capitalist.
This shows we have some stupid Law Makers. Now bringing a criminal in to defend your point is sick. Coleman should fire his lawyer for allowing this to happen. The man allowed his girlfriend to fill out the form and sign his name. That is forgary and a crime she admitted to and could be prosecuted. There is a form to use when a person can't fill out the form's for medical reasons. Just where do these idiots come from and why on earth do people vote them in office.
Has anybody heard the cry of voter fraud from Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly, Malkin, et al over this guys GF filling out and signing his ballot? Me neither.
Its considered ethical in conservative circles to have your gf fill out your voter form for you as long as you threaten to beat her if she don't.
HA! Maybe so. But can you imagine how unhinged they'd all become if this guy (sorry, this guys girlfriend) had voted for Franken? It would be pandemonium.
From what I'm reading above, she didn't sign the ballot, she signed the application to get a ballot.
His vote was legal, but I would love to see Franken in congress. The truth quotient in congress would certainly increase.
No, his vote wasn't legal. He didn't sign the application to get the ballot, which means he got the ballot illegally. His vote on that illegally obtained ballot is, then, illegal.
Coleman seems to be making that argument that if the voter could have voted legally, it's irrelevant whether the voter did vote legally. Hmm, what are the odds that they would accept that legal argument in regards to someone that voted for Franken?
A bunch of Coleman's evidence was rejected. Apparently the ballots the Coleman campaign wanted to introduce as evidence had hand written notes on the envelopes from Coleman staffers, that apparently the Coleman campaign didn't want entered into evidence so they whited-fucking-out the hand-written notes on the copies of the ballots! The judge, wisely finding that the court had no way of knowing what exactly was being whited-out and threw them out, telling the Coleman campaign to re-submit the un-altered ballots or forget it.
Hahahahaha!
Today Norm Coleman's campaign put it out that they got so many hits on their website, the one voters could use to see if Al was trying to disenfranchise them (lol) that it crashed. Except a quick investigation looks like the Coleman campaign faked the whole thing.
http://mnpublius.com/2009/01/team-coleman-fak...
I'm a Minnesotan. Go ahead, keep laughing. I'm crying.
No matter which of these characters emerges as the nominal victor of this recount process, his less-than-six-year term will be marred by a cloud of illegitimacy, by the belief of a substantial fraction of Minnesotans that the Senator does not deserve the office he holds, that the fix was somehow in.
Until 2015, Minnesota seems destined to be represented by one-and-a-half Senators, at the most.
I'm happy if that half a senator has a full dem vote in congress.
And that Dem supported the Iraq War and believes in the idea that the Israeli tail should wag the U.S. dog. Yippee!
.
...Especially when we're talking about Normie. I've often argued that the man has no actual beliefs other than the belief that he should have power over his fellow citizens while suckling endlessly at the public teat.
Don't worry about it too much. We had a similar dispute in the 2004 Gov race here in Washington and there weren't too many people complaining that the ultimate victor was tainted. Some crackpots who don't even live here bring it up from time to time but the people of WA know who our governor is.
Al's vote will count just as much as Klobuchar's, as one vote. Yes, I'm a Minnesotan, too, and have watched the whole Canvassing Board challenges and now the challenge online.
CONNECTICUT ALSO FEELS YOUR PAIN!
Some stuff you can't make up!
in Scotland George Galloway must be smiling.
Thank you for reminding me of that. Great show.
this is better than monkeys on the Gong Show!
Sounds like the writings on the wall.
Diabolus est Deus Inversus
:<[)
Some stuff you can't make up!
Looks like Norm Coleman is the comedian.
and it's coming from Coleman's camp? Maybe a job at SNL awaits....
Why doesn't someone tell this jackass that his gravy train has derailed and go the hell back where he came from?
says go, go go, mr. Coleman,
you have a date with some ethics/payola investigators.
the gov from Il will get kicked out. he is a jerk, but when a repug is a jerk, it will take years to get him. take that asshole from texas,who lost his seat. has he been to court yet?
talk about beating a dead horse.
/who is paying for this crap?
Actually, I think he's appealing to the great unwashed (which he characterizes as "Good Americans") to send money to help him with his cause. I think we should find out the breakeven point to process such a transaction, and send in a small fraction of that amount. Repeatedly.
coleman is just one more criminal reichwingnut
from the gop who just won't let go when they lose.
like all of them, it's better to disrupt the
smooth operation of the govt then move out of the way.
I don't know about anyone else, but every time I see or hear Coleman, I want to go take a shower. He sort of has that child molestor quality about him, doesn't he? Very sleazy. Anyone care to leave their unsupervised, underaged children with him? No? That's what I would have guessed. And while we're at it, how about the new rising star in the house, Eric Cantor? He has that same persona, doesn't he? Two very creepy life forms...
think Normie looks undressed without that Bolt in his neck!
"Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of Stupidity" - Frank Leahy
but it appears that the Coleman camp orchestrated a fake crash of their web site to make it look like thousands of MN voters rushed there to see if their absentee ballot counted - or for some weird reason like that. A bunch of techy types figured out it was a fake crash and the story is here:
http://mnpublius.com/2009/01/team-coleman-fak...
I'm a Minnesotan. I've watched the testimony of all the witnesses so far, and not just this one witness had problems (one had a lawyer representing a political group that was paying for his legal contest stand up and declare that his client perjured himself under oath - no kidding; and another poor mostly blind, terminal old guy with bad knees was sad - I really want his vote to count, but the election officials determined that he hadn't signed his absentee ballot properly - unfortunate - but against the law - this man said he voted absentee because of his physical problems [although his son got him to court in 0 degree weather in late January in MN - getting him to the polls on Nov 4 would have been easier since it was quite warm and no snow] and I don't blame him for wanting to vote absentee and he should be able too, but it must be done properly) and however unfortunate it may be, their absentee ballots were rejected for reasons set out in MN law and this election contest is not the place to change the law.
Stunt double for Gary Busey on Celebrity Re-hab.
Additionally, this clown has lost to Jesse Ventura and now, Al Franken (please insert Beavis and Butthead laugh here).
But that leaves 3, maybe 4! Only 50 times that many and Norm stands a chance.
Sure, it starts to get ridiculous, but both sides represent a _ton_ of money spent on trying to get them elected, so who wouldn't expect the charade to play out to the last legal possibility? Patience, patience.
who said publically that Franken should concede when he (Coleman) lead by 20 votes... to save the state the cost of a re-call, even though the recall was MANDATED by state law because it was so close?
So now that he's fallen behind in the vote count he's challenging the whole thing in court? A perfect example of Republican hypocrisy.
I meant... the cost of a re-count... not re-call.
I thought I saw norm in the airport bathroom,I guess he was looking for lary!
How long is this farce going to go on? Is Coleman instructed to just come up with one pathetic excuse to string this out. There should be time limit on this. What is the next move to continue Republican Obstructionism. This is the new deal by the Rethugs to litter the Obama years with obstructionism in one form or another.
This "Horse & Pony Show" is a pure desperation reaction of Republicans. They cannot believe they loss so many seats and through displays like this only prove WHY!
Norm don't go away mad, just go away...
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