DRAGRA ad courtesy of Tild, Ollie Ox and Centristy

Earlier today I mentioned that Al Franken’s legal team filed a motion to expedite.  This morning, I found out from the live blog at The UpTake that Norm Coleman’s people have filed a motion to slow everything down:

Coleman’s attorney’s are proposing the MN Supreme Court set a schedule that puts oral arguments 11 days later than what Franken’s attorneys have proposed.

Document here: http://www.mncourts.gov/?page=3409 Under Coleman’s plan oral arguments could not start until after May 15th 

 It’s interesting to compare Coleman’s Whoa Nellie filing with the Franken motion to expedite. As mentioned earlier, the Franken motion has two pages worth of relevant case-law cites as well as cites of previous Minnesota Supreme Court rulings in the Franken-Coleman recount.   The meat of the Coleman Whoa Nellie filing, on the other hand, is this:

Appellants agree this is a time-sensitive case that should be resolved as expeditiously as possible.  Appellants respectfully submit, however, that the parties, and the Court, must be given enough time to fully develop and consider the issues on appeal.  Accordingly, Appellants request a slight modification to the briefing schedule proposed by Respondent as follows:

1.  Opening brief of Appellants – April 30, 2009

2.  Opposition brief of Respondent – May 11, 2009; and

3.  Reply brief – May 15, 2009.

The Court may then schedule oral argument at a time convenient to it.

This may not seem like such an unreasonable request.  But consider how little time Franken’s people needed to put forth what the Election Contest Court unanimously ruled was a winning argument.   They rested after only seven days — whereas Norm’s people had spent the previous six weeks trying and failing to prove their case.   The issues have been as fully developed and considered as they ever will be — especially since the Minnesota Supreme Court has already been called upon to settle some legal questions pertaining to the recount, and so is already familiar with the arguments Team Coleman will be using.   In fact, as puppethead suggests, the Court could dispense with oral arguments entirely and just go off the ECC contest records, but they probably won’t as they don’t want to give Norm any pretext to run screaming to Strip-Search Sammy Alito for a stay.