On reflection, Al Franken was right.

Senator Al Franken called Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery a liar in yesterday’s hearing on DOMA. Franken was the one being dishonest.

A comedian-turned-Senator makes some strong points about how America goes to war.

Mitch McConnell and Al Franken provide a lesson in Senate comity.

Did felons voting illegally put Al Franken over the top in Minnesota? Probably not.

People are having fun with reports that Elena Kagan, who argued as an advisor during the Ruth Bader Ginsburg confirmation that Supreme Court nominees should be required to give very detailed answers to policy questions, has changed her position now that the shoe is on the other foot. Kagan wrote in 1995 that the confirmation [...]

It appears that a counterintuitive meme is spreading:  John Patrick Bedell, who was killed while he opened fire at the Pentagon Metro stop, was a right-wing extemist. So says Christian Science Monitor‘s Peter Grier, in a piece subtlety headlined “John Patrick Bedell: Did right-wing extremism lead to shooting?” John Patrick Bedell, whom authorities identified as [...]

Al Franken was presiding over a sleepy session of the Senate yesterday afternoon and took what AP calls “the unusual step” of denying unanimous consent to allow Joe Lieberman to finish his remarks. Franken was presiding over the Senate Thursday afternoon as Lieberman spoke about amendments he planned to offer to the bill. Lieberman asked [...]

Senator Al Franken draws a map of all 50 states from memory during an appearance on Minnesota Public Radio’s Midday at the Minnesota State Fair. I’m not sure what prompted this but it’s pretty impressive: Via Jason Kottke, who dubs it “one of the best hand-drawn maps I’ve seen.”

Waiting at DC’s Reagan National Airport yesterday evening for a flight to Minneapolis, we caught a photo of this baby biting Al Franken’s nose: Okay, so it was our baby. Franken was very gracious and accommodating. One of the joys of being a United States Senator, apparently, is that one can not read a magazine [...]

In a 5-0 decision, the state’s highest court ordered that Al Franken be declared the winner. The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled today that Democrat Al Franken won the U.S. Senate election and said he was entitled to an election certificate that would lead to him being seated in the Senate. “Affirmed,” wrote the Supreme Court, [...]

Arlen Specter, who has continued to embarrass the Democratic Party to which he’s just switched, such as announcing his hope that Republican Norm Coleman somehow wins his appeal and is seated instead of Democrat Al Franken, is not keeping his three decades of seniority after all. The Senate last night stripped Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) [...]

Yesterday’s ruling by a three-judge panel that “The overwhelming weight of the evidence indicates that the Nov. 4, 2008, election was conducted fairly, impartially and accurately” and that Al Franken “received the highest number of votes legally cast” and “is therefore entitled to receive the certificate of election” should, but likely won’t, put an end [...]

Timothy Sandefur is embarrassed: So I was watching this insane video of Christopher Hitchens and Salman Rushdie discussing the War on Terrorism with Mos Def. And it’s amusing to laugh at the utterly hapless ignorance of “Mr. Def,” as he is repeatedly called—until you stop and wonder. Why is the black community not outraged by [...]

Megan McArdle calls for an extension of Godwin’s Law that would put an end to “using the word fascist to apply to the current, or indeed previous, administration.” How is this helpful?  Has clarifying the distinction between fascism and socialism really added to most peoples’ understanding of what the Obama administration is doing?  All this [...]

The odds are good that Minnesota will continue to have only one United States Senator for quite some time, Aaron Blake reports for The Hill. A three-judge panel has the result of the Minnesota Senate race in its hands, at least for the time being. But that doesn’t mean Minnesota will have a senator anytime [...]

Jeff Bercovici notes Ann Coulter’s declining book sales: Coulter’s latest book, Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America, is something of a misfire by Coulterian standards. Of course, what constitutes a disappointment for Coulter would be a mega-hit for most authors; in its two months on sale, Guilty has sold 100,500 copies, according to [...]

President Obama is considering Republican Senator Judd Gregg for the Commerce Secretary post, Sam Stein reports for HuffPo. There is a strong possibility that Barack Obama will ask Sen. Judd Gregg (R-NH) to serve as his Secretary of Commerce, Democratic Senate aides tell the Huffington Post. The move would fill a vacancy that has lingered [...]

In case you’ve somehow missed this video of Al Franken in tights mimicking Mick Jagger from 20-odd years ago that’s newly amusing now that the former is apparently the next United States Senator from Minnesota:

Norm Coleman is likely out of a job, despite his election contest not being settled. Coleman’s first term officially expires at noon on Saturday, and he is locked in one of the closest Senate races in history, with Democrat Al Franken clinging to a 49-vote lead out of nearly 3 million votes cast. Since he [...]

A ruling by the Minnesota Supreme Court has all but officially made Al Franken the winner in the Senate recount. A state Supreme Court ruling Wednesday narrowed the options available for Sen. Norm Coleman to erase a slim lead held by DFLer Al Franken in the Minnesota election dispute, and Coleman’s campaign threatened a court [...]

Patrick Ruffini is tired of seeing Democrats win close elections that were apparently won by Republicans on Election Day.  He contends, “we are inviting a crisis of confidence in our election system if it looks like the winner is dependent on the time we count ballots: usually a Republican on the day of the election [...]

Both Al Franken and Norm Coleman got good news yesterday, as the courts continued to make up rules well after the election. The Hill: A state Supreme Court ruling, which may exclude hundreds of ballots that Al Franken (D) had sought to include in the recount, could help Sen. Norm Coleman (R) in Minnesota’s contested [...]

The recount of the Minnesota Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic comedian Al Franken has concluded, with Coleman still slightly ahead.   Still up in the air, though, is the fate of 133 “missing” ballots (which are almost certainly an accounting error) and a passel of “challenged” ballots that will have to be [...]

The bizarre saga of the Minnesota recount took another bizarre twist yesterday, this time costing Al Franken 36 votes. What Maplewood giveth, Minneapolis taketh away. Elections officials in Minnesota’s largest city today discovered that one precinct came up 133 ballots short of election day totals, resulting in a net loss for Democratic challenger Al Franken [...]

Since the initial counting of ballots on Election Day, caches of new Al Franken ballots have been mysteriously discovered on a regular basis.  Yesterday, a few more turned up. The U.S. Senate recount took two abrupt turns Tuesday, both boosting the prospects of DFLer Al Franken. Franken unexpectedly picked up 37 votes due to a [...]

Unless something drastic happens, Al Franken will lose his bid to overtake Norm Coleman’s narrow first-count win of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election through the recount.  He’s considering other options, including asking the Democratically-dominated Senate to step in. The math’s not in his favor: To win his case before the state Canvassing Board, Franken must prevail [...]

Nate Silver uses a combination of regression analysis and wild ass guesses drawn from limited information on challenged ballots to project that Al Franken will come out ahead by a mere 27 votes.  Kevin Drum, for one, is convinced. While I’m less enthralled by Silver’s savant status than most (many came closer to the results [...]

If you were under the illusion that people in Palm Beach, Florida were unusually stupid or supporters of the Bush and Gore camps in 2000 were exceptionally mendacious, take a look at this Minnesota Public Radio collection of challenged ballots in the Coleman-Franken contest. In almost all cases, I’d say the intent of the voter [...]

Senator Ted Stevens, who looked to have narrowly won re-election to the Senate weeks after being convicted on felony corruption charges, has now apparently lost as absentee ballots are slowly counted. Sen. Ted Stevens, the longest serving Republican in Senate history, narrowly lost his re-election bid Tuesday, marking the downfall of a Washington political power [...]

We all thought convicted felon Ted Stevens had been narrowly reelected to the Senate, presumably as a placeholder to keep the seat in Republican hands.  Not so fast! Mark Begich made a dramatic comeback Wednesday to overtake Ted Stevens for the lead in Alaska’s U.S. Senate race. Begich, who was losing after election night, now [...]

At least two statewide Pennsylvania polls have shown that “Hardball” host Chris Matthews would be a serious contender if he chose to challenge Arlen Specter for the Senate in 2010 and Matthews has indicated that he has at least some interest in running, WaPo’s Chris Cillizza reports. Matthews would be an interesting candidate.  His “Hardball” [...]

The Minnesota Senate race between Republican incumbent Norm Coleman and Democratic comedian Al Franken is still too close to call.  Coleman has a slight lead in all the counts and is expected to be ahead narrowly when the counting’s done.   The Star Tribune says that a recount looms. With 99 percent of the 4,130  precincts [...]