"No, Not the Supreme Court!"

Al Franken asks governor to preempt litigation and name him Senator

In the latest twist in the Franken/Coleman debacle continually unfolding in Minnesota, it seems that Al Franken really doesn't want to have to go to court in order to become the Junior Senator from Minnesota.

According to a brief filed in a Minnesota district court today, Al Franken wants Republican Norm Coleman's challenge of the results of the Minnesota recount to be referred not to the Minnesota Supreme Court, but rather by the US Senate.

In other words, Franken would (unsurprisingly) rather see all the errors and irregularities in the recount examined by the Democrat-controlled Senate rather than a court of law.

Franken's even go so far as to sent a letter to Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty asking him to sign Franken's certificate of election -- something that is actually unlawful, as Minnesota's election law requires all court challenges of an election result to be complete before a winner can be officially certified.

Tim Pawlenty is a Republican. Accordingly, one can certainly expect that Democrat partisans will accuse him of partisan wrangling in this affair. Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, however is a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labour Party. He's also refused to sign an election certificate at this time.

Yet with partisan Democrats going out of their way to try and marginalize any criticism of the way the Minnesota recount has proceeded, anyone paying close attention to the overall situation cannot ignore one overarching question:

Why is it that Al Franken wants errors and irregularities in the recount result examined not by a (presumably) impartial Supreme Court, but by the Democrat-controlled US Senate?

One could not help but imagine the absurdity of the scene: Joe Biden presiding over a Senate hearing in which his party has both deep partisan interests and control over the proceedings.

There's probably a reason why Franken doesn't want these errors and irregularities to be tried before a court: likely because, despite what various Democrat partisans would have people believe, there may well be more to these allegations than they would like to admit.

Ultimately, it's the same reason why Norm Coleman didn't want this recount in the first place: because he might lose.

It's hard to fault Franken for his own self-interest, even if the means by which he's pursuing those interests risks giving American democracy another black eye. If anything, it's merely confirmation that Franken's transformation from an extradorinary entertainer to a run-of-the-mill politician.

Once Franken announced he was running for Senator, no one should have been shocked about that.

Sadly, in the wake of this new pinnacle in his own partisan excess, it may prove to be hard for Franken to take it to right-wing ideologues like Ann Counter the way he used to.

Al Franken, once a masterful critic of Republican sophists has become little more than a sophist himself.