Scott Rafferty, a DC lawyer and elections expert, calls for Franken to be seated and shows that Republican claims that nobody has ever been seated in the Senate without a final official election certificate are, as the Car Talk guys would say, booOOoo-gus!

This morning, the Minnesota Supreme Court met to hear Al Franken’s plea that the Soops order Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie and Governor Tim Pawlenty to issue him a provisional election certificate so he can be seated in the US Senate while the Coleman contest (and inevitable appeal) drags on. The prognosis for this action is not good, as Minnesota state law does not currently allow for this – unlike what is currently the case in many if not most other states. Meanwhile, guess whose questionable finances made page A1 of The Politico? Yup, Norm Coleman’s.

Day 8 of the Zombie Contest continues, and there was a humorous note during the lunch break — turns out that Noah Kunin of The UpTake voted by absentee ballot, and it was rejected according to Norm Coleman’s ballot website.

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. And the ECC judges blew apart the already-shaky ‘equal protection’ claim on which Coleman’s contest case had hinged. But this is a zombie contest — it has no brain, but that’s not stopping it.

The Seattle advice columnist and LGBT activist who gave us the 21st century definition for “santorum” challenged his readers again, and Dan Savage’s readers responded. We now have a definition for that odd word Pastor Rick™ named his church. And it’s, um, clever.

Lots of big news, but the biggest may be a bill in the Minnesota House that when passed would not only get Al Franken his election certificate, but make it impossible for Norm Coleman and the Republican Party of Minnesota to ever again pull any post-election shenanigans. Pawlenty will veto it of course, but there is a chance that the Democrats might get enough Republican crossovers to override his veto.

While we wait for the Election Contest Court to get cracking again with Norm Coleman’s effort to smear the integrity of Minnesota’s state, county and local-level elections officials just so he can call for a do-over he won’t win, let me direct your attention to this lovely Media Matters "County Fair" blog post pointing out [...]

When we left you last Friday, the Coleman camp seemed to have ended a week of screwups by finally scoring something of a coup with the testimony of Ramsey County elections chief Joseph Mansky, testimony that seemed to help Coleman’s “double counting” argument. Well, folks, what the Mansky hath given on direct examination, the Mansky hath taken away on the cross-examination — and rather resoundingly.

According to Roll Call, Florida GOP Senator Mel Martinez, former national GOP chair and creation of the Bush family, is considering early (?) retirement from his first Senate term, possibly setting up Charlie Crist to appoint himself to the Senate vacancy.