Coleman’s chances of ekeing out a win — or even of dragging this out for much longer than the two to three weeks mentioned by Al Franken — were never that good and haven’t been getting any better; anyone who’s been closely or even sporadically following the case knows this.

So what possessed the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza to do yet another he-said-she-said “balance” piece that puts the rock-solid statements of Franken attorney Marc Elias on the same level as the nonsense-filled hallway press conferences of Swift Boat and Florida 2000 troll Ben Ginsberg?

Geez, no wonder Bogus Ben Ginsberg looked and sounded dispirited in his afternoon presscon today. Not only did the Minnesota Supreme Court last week hand down a decision that deep-sixes the GOP/Coleman strategy of looking to the Federal courts for relief on appeal, but today Team Coleman’s hopes of getting the ballot universe expanded with more votes for Coleman just got a swift kick in the ass, as the ballots he was counting on from pile 3a evaporated.

The traditional media is casting today as a Big Setback for Al Franken, because the Minnesota Supreme Court denied his request to have the Secretary of State and the governor sign his election certificate. Big whoop — that was expected, as state law clearly calls for all election contests to be settled before a certificate can be signed. The really big news here is what MinnPost’s Eric Black sniffed out upon reading the Supreme Court’s opinion: The Minnesota Supreme Court’s justice are saying that once they have reached their decision on this case, the certificate question is over, even if Coleman appeals to the Federal level.

Just as in her two previous re-election races, Barbara Boxer rates a “eh?” from California voters more than one year out from election day. She also squashes opponents.

One of the key points of the Franken motion to dismiss Norm Coleman’s contest of Franken’s recount win is that there is no legal or honest way that Coleman can add enough previously-rejected absentee-ballot votes into the vote totals to erase Franken’s lead — and that in fact, out of the thousands of rejected ballots Coleman’s people are trying to lob into the vote count, only a handful can actually make it. Franken attorney Marc Elias has been pointing this out for weeks now, when he discusses Norm Coleman’s Incredible Shrinking Ballot Universe.

As expected, the Franken legal has filed a Motion to Dismiss the Coleman contest in its entirety. The bad news is that Franken’s motion will likely be denied, as the Election Contest Court doesn’t want to give the Coleman side anything on which to base an appeal to the Federal courts system. The good news is that this twenty-nine-page motion is so tightly constructed that the ECC will likely base a good chunk of its case ruling on the points laid down therein.

Today, the California Supreme Court hears oral arguments on the legality of Prop 8 and on the legality of the marriages performed in the time between its previous ruling that legalized marriage equality and the passage of Prop 8.

Is Joe Friedberg really that clueless when it comes to information technology? He apparently thought he was cleverly trapping the DFL (Democratic Farmer-Labor, our local flavor of Democratic Party) party tech guru, Jared Nordlund, on some point that somehow ‘proved’ the fallibility of computer databases and other things used during the election — but instead looked like a complete doofus. Afterward, Franken attorney, quizzing Ramsey County election official Joe Mansky, got in a few zings at Friedberg’s cluelessness by suggesting that he volunteer to be trained as an election judge — “Even he would learn something about that” — right before the judges signaled a recess.

Day Two of the Franken side of the Coleman contest trial — and the morning’s star witness for Team Franken was Noah Kunin, reporter for The UpTake, whose absentee ballot in last November’s election was initially rejected.

Today was the first day of the Franken side of the recount contest trial. Remember how we felt on Inauguration Day, when Bush left town and Obama took over? Remember that sense that it really was a whole new ballgame? Know how it feels already like the previous era was a million years ago and not just six weeks ago? That’s kinda what today felt like at the contest trial. But every so often, the Coleman people would do or say something stupid, just to remind us that they were still there.