Appreciate all tidbits, nuggets, et al in this fascinating slo-mo train wreck.

and what delicious tidbits they are!

Thanks PW!

Eric Black at MinnPost has some preliminary analysis of Coleman’s Rebuttal Brief.

That leads to today’s brief, in which Team C proposes a set of five presumptions, as follows:

1. If an AB arrived at the county in an envelope that is used for registered voters, the court should assume the voter is registered. (This is probably the biggest one, which I’ll discuss below.)

2. If the witness to the absentee ballot gave a Minnesota address, she should be assumed to be a registered Minnesota voter. (This would presumably bring in 179 additional votes from Coleman-friendly Carver County, which is one of the few counties that checked to see whether witnesses were registered and disqualified ballots if the witness wasn’t registered.)

3. If the witness is described on the ballot as a notary, this should be presumed to be true, even if there is no notary stamp. (Notaries can be legal witnesses for AB purposes, even if they aren’t registered MN voters. Some ballots were disqualified for lack of a notary stamp.)

4. If a voter submitted an absentee ballot, it should be presumed that he also submitted an absentee ballot application. (The law requires that election officials examine the application. Some ballots were rejected because the applications couldn’t be found. Coleman argues that if there had been no application, there would have been no ballot mailed to the voter.)

5. If the absentee ballot bears a signature, the signature should be presumed genuine. (This relies on a long-standing Coleman argument that counties varied widely in their scrutiny of signatures, generally without benefit of handwriting expertise. Some counties rejected ballots if the signature on the ballot looked different from the one on the application. Some counties barely checked.)

It seems to me that the five arguments are quite easily shredded.

1. If an AB arrived in an envelope for a registered voter, you can assume the voter is registered.
My Take: Or the person who sent in the ballot knew a registered voter who decided not to use the absentee ballot. Just because it arrived in an envelope sent to a registered voter, does not mean the vote was cast by the same person it was sent to.

2. If the witness has a Minnesota address…
My Take: Why should that assumption be made? It may be reasonable to assume that the witness is eligible to register to vote, but equally reasonable to assume that they may not have registered.

3. If the person is described as a notary…
My Take: This one is pure B.S. an actual Notary would stamp, sign & date. I would assume the opposite. That if there is no stamp, it was erroneously signed by a non-notary.

4. If a voter submitted an absentee ballot, it should be assumed that they also submitted an application.
My Take: See reply #1. It may not have been the same person who applied and submitted. There is no reason to make this assumption.

5. If the signature…
My Take: OK. Barring handwriting analysis, if the signatures look reasonably similar, I’d assume they are the same. But there’s no reason to assume that just because there are 2 signatures that have the same name, they are signed by the same person. Where it is obviously a different signature, there should be no presumption.

I came up with those rebuttals after 20 seconds. Imagine what a trained lawyer could do with them.

Say G’night Norm.

Thanks…part of the Friday news dump that looks like it is going in the “right” direction. Let’s hope.

Does Storm-in Norman think that if he’s re-selected as a sitting US Senator he’ll have an easier go of it with the FBI (re:Kazeminy). Someone needs to let that pea-brain know that neither Alberto or Mikey are at DoJ anymore, and there’s a slim chance that the rule of law might prevail agi’n him.

The teabaggers took the nation by storm the other day. Bah hahahahahahahaha! Oh gawd. Too funny. I’m not surprised Laurie Coleman has a tea bag for a lawyer. *rolling eyes*

Hopefully he will not only lose the election (officially) but he will end up in jail for his thievery.

JoMo got fined today for BS.

These white collar crooks need to do some time up the river…

It’s all about the money. Coleman needs to be senator so he’s in a position to raise money for his legal defense. Without the influence of a senate seat, he’s just another crooked republican in a suit. Although Kazeminy probably won’t buy any more of those for Coleman without the position of influence.

Thanks, PW.

You’d think after the 35W bridge collapse and Tiny Tim’s politically motivated state budget blackmail on the pre-catastrophe remediation, post event rebuilding, and much needed general infrastructure investment that he’d already been impeached and removed from office. Gray Davis was shown the door for much less by Rove’s hachetman minions in California.

Apparently the good people of Minnesota will have to wait until next year to send him off to K Street or the AEI.

In the meantime, let’s hope it costs the RNC tens of millions to disenfranchise Minnesota’s citizens in the U.S. senate so that the DFL comes back like the days of HHH & Mondale.

Palin/Bachmann 2012!

These are all specious arguments. It asks the Court to assume “things” when there are equally, if not more likely, other alternatives. In addition it asks the court to go beyond the normal practice and law established by the Minnesota legislature. In other words, Coleman is asking the Justices to do the very thing that the Republicans constantly attack.

Coleman is asking the Court to legislate from the bench. He is insisting it be an “activist court”.

Furthermore Coleman is asking the Court to ignore simple facts to the contrary to their hypotheses. Take #2. Carver County actually checked the registration status of the witnesses and disqualified those that perjured themselves…that asserted that they were registered voters. To then assert that this information should be disregarded…even though it flies in the face of Coleman’s assumption…is simply insane.

In each of these cases Coleman wants the Court to “assume” the local or County boards actually evaluated the legal status of the registration individually. Coleman wants the Court to ignore FACTUAL EVIDENCE (Proof) and move to “assumption”….as if that evidence was never obtained or magically vaporized.

Yeah, but Tom Delay is still running around loose…so……. Gad, Matthews even has him on TEEVEE every once in awhile and I always email and protest.