The Minnesota Supreme Court

Rick Hasen points out the one big flaw in the Minnesota Supreme Court’s unanimous decision favoring Al Franken:

The bottom line is that the Court says that Franken is entitled to an election certificate, but there is no direct order to the state’s governor to sign one. We’ll see what the governor does, if Coleman does not concede, as he well may at this point. If not, the opinion is not final until the period for rehearing ends (see the final footnote of the opinion).  That’s a ten day period, enough time to file an emergency stay application in the U.S. Supreme Court. It would go to Justice Alito, now circuit justice for the Eighth Circuit.

It’s not out of the question for Norm Coleman to choose to ask Alito to issue a stay.  But as Hasen noted a few weeks ago, actually getting a stay is unlikely.

Furthermore, considering that the legal fees for this case alone (remember, Norm’s also fighting the Kazeminy lawsuit) are around $145,000 a week, the NRSC may well have decided that their money is better spent on protecting vulnerable GOP senators in next year’s elections.  Of course, Cornyn is saying that the decision is Norm’s, but that’s just face-saving on his part. Norm doesn’t have the means to pay his Hundred-Lawyer Horde a hundred and forty-five smackers a decade, much less a week.  Cornyn’s probably taken a look at the NRSC coffers and decided that, what with Teddy Kennedy and Bobby Byrd both out of commission, the Dems won’t have a full complement of sixty senators anyway, so he might as well save some dough for next year.