Good morning, everyone!  Before we start, here’s a nice summary of yesterday’s events from The UpTake.  As Mike McIntee notes, the number of ballots allowed in the contest universe is limited to those submitted for review by January 23.  Considering that the Coleman campaign had been habitually late in meeting various deadlines for ballot submission, I suspect that this may hurt them a tad.  Or I just might need to catch up on my sleep.  Or something. 

Eric Kleefeld notes that the Election Contest Court yesterday officially blew apart the already-shaky "equal protection" legal argument the Coleman team wanted to use to justify taking this to the US Supreme Court.  In a conference call last night, Franken attorney Marc Elias essentally confirmed this.   This ruling is so deadly to the Coleman case that Team Coleman, in the person of Joe Friedberg, tried to argue this morning for the judges to include all the 11,000-odd rightfully-rejected absentee ballots anyway.  One of the ECC’s judges told Friedberg, and I quote, "I’ve got a website for you — it’s called ‘Move On’."  (Aside from this, Friedberg spent most of the morning questioning Washington County (east of St. Paul; once largely rural, now a Twin Cities exurb with ritzy corporate mansions mixed in with farmland) elections official Kevin Corbid; it looked like he was trying to lead the witness at several points, but whether or not he got away with remains to be seen.) 

In addition, yesterday ECC Judge Kurt Marben spanked high-profile local lawyer Joe Friedberg for once again submitting crummy photocopied ballot evidence.  

If this was a normal court case, it would already be done — Norm’s attorneys would have a legal and ethical obligation to tell him to pull the plug and stop wasting his money on it.  But of course, this isn’t a normal court case, it’s now a zombie contest.  By now, it’s about Norm Coleman’s following top GOP leadership’s dictates to delay Franken’s being seated as long as he and his hundred lawyers (many of whom, being Republicans, may well be working pro bono) can afford to do so.   If they keep Franken out of the Senate another few weeks, that’s one less vote for the stimulus bill, and that — as well as just plain being jerks because they can — seems to be their main motivation right now.