Gee, and I thought nothing really interesting happened today. See, the Election Contest Court was only officially in session for eighteen minutes before it adjourned. However, it turns out that Team Coleman had other plans to give us amusement today: ” Norm Coleman’s lawyers want judges in the U.S. Senate election trial to reverse their recent ruling and consider counting rejected absentee ballots similar to others that previously were tallied.” That sound you heard was the ECC’s judges laughing their heads off.

Betraying what David Sirota calls “his deeply corrupt attitude about health care policy” Tennessee governor Phil Bredesen, rumored to be among President Obama’s finalists for HHS Secretary, makes quite clear who his constituency is.

Village Democrats appear to be promoting former Tennessee Congressman and current DLC Chair Harold Ford Jr to be Barack Obama’s third choice for Commerce Secretary. What do you think?

The Politico tells us what we already know, but which most of the mainstream press won’t mention — namely, that Norm Coleman is pursuing his doomed challenge to Al Franken’s being seated as our newest Senator because the national Republican Party has ordered him to do so come hell or high water.  NRSC fundraisers are [...]

The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) has asked Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner to prohibit banks receiving taxpayer bailout money from lobbying the federal government, especially against the Employee Free Choice Act.

One day after one of the judges of the Election Contest Court made it clear that she wasn’t buying the Coleman camp’s arguments with regard to counting absentee ballots, the rest of the court weighs in. Guess what? They’re not buying it, either: They issued an order this afternoon that rejected 13 different categories of absentee ballots from being counted in the continuing court battle between Democrat Al Franken and former Republican Senator Norm Coleman. Coleman had wanted ballots in those categories to be counted; now they won’t be

From The UpTake today: “Coleman attorney James Langdon was explaining why the court should count certain absentee ballots when he looked at Judge Denise Reilly and said ‘I see you are not buying this.’”

Since July 2008, when hotel owner Doug Manchester’s $125,000 seed-money donation to Proposition 8 was revealed, a broad coalition of labor and the LGBT community has boycotted his Hyatt hotel in San Diego. On Sunday, Bill Clinton is scheduled to deliver a speech there. He’s being asked to honor the boycott. Will he?

Joe Bodell of the Minnesota Progressive Project tells us that Cullen Sheehan, Norm Coleman’s campaign manager and a key architect of Coleman’s recount and contest strategies, is now also the new Chief of Staff of the Republican Senate Caucus in Minnesota’s state legislature.    Being Chief of Staff for a Senate caucus is a rather [...]

The Election Contest Court took control of the process back from Team Coleman and moved to make the absentee-ballot endgame go faster and without cherry-picking. The Franken and Coleman camps have submitted their opinions and the ECC judges will consider them tomorrow. Meanwhile, Mark Ritchie, Minnesota’s Secretary of State, is proposing new voting legislation that would automatically register to vote anyone who applies for a driver’s license or state ID, unless they choose to opt out. In addition, it would allow no-excuse absentee voting (currently in Minnesota, persons can only legally vote absentee if they aren’t going to be physically present in their precinct or able to get to the polling place for their precinct) as well as tighten up the rules on what is and isn’t a legal absentee ballot.