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The National Republican Senatorial Committee spent almost $1 million last month on Republican Norm Coleman's attempt to win last year's U.S. Senate race. Coleman is attempting to overturn Democrat Al Franken's slender lead. The former senator's appeal of a trial court's decision that Franken won is awaiting a ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court. That ruling could be issued any day. Last month, the NRSC spent $937,917 to help Coleman in that effort. Minneapolis law firm Dorsey & Whitney, home to Coleman attorney Jim Langdon, received $350,171 of that and Washington, D.C., law firm Patton Boggs, Coleman legal spokesman Ben...

Democrat Al Franken's lead in Minnesota's U.S. Senate race has grown to 312 votes now that hundreds of absentee ballots have been added to the counting. A three-judge panel ruled that the rejected absentee ballots should be opened and counted after hearing weeks of testimony in a lawsuit brought by Republican Norm Coleman. Franken led by 225 votes going into Tuesday's count of those absentee ballots. The judges allowed 351 absentees into the count and Franken picked up more of them than Coleman did. Other issues are still pending in Coleman's lawsuit, and he has said he will appeal to...

Anyone following the recount has no doubt heard the bluster and bravado regularly coming from the Al Franken campaign. However, in recent days, Franken and his Washington legal team have seemed awfully desperate for a campaign that is trying to convince people they are winning. They have now tried to shove Al Franken onto the Senate floor through three separate venues – only be to be rebuffed and delayed because their effort clearly violates Minnesota law. Why, if they claim to have a lead, are they so desperately anxious to put Al Franken in a Senate seat? Simple: They know...

Al Franken filed a petition with the Minnesota Supreme Court … that’s a bit like a bank robber stopping on his way out the door to ask the teller for a receipt.” That’s how an e-mail appeal for funds from the campaign of former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman described today’s legal move by the Al Franken campaign that asked the state’s high court to order the governor to issue an election certificate. In another response, Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak told reporters that Franken has gone beyond the “epitome of arrogance … [by] asking to go above the laws of our...

FOX "The O'Reilly Factor"Video: "Minnesota Madness" Segment Aired Friday, January 9, 2008       Bill and two Republican guests(1) discuss Hollywood’s and George Soros massive donations to elected “Porn-o-Rama” Franken. This includes, a rare and calculated move(2), by George Soros who personally held a large post-election Franken fundraiser at his residence in New York City to support Al in the ballot recount/contest(3). I wrote about and published the list of Hollywood/high profile Franken donors three days before this news piece, not that this was new Soros Shadow Party news for anyone that has closely followed/been involved in this Coleman-Franken fiasco....

- - Former GOP MN secretary of state says absentee ballots should not have been included in recount Former Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer is now criticizing the handling of the U.S. Senate election recount in the race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman that ended with Franken on top. Kiffmeyer, R-Big Lake, now a freshman state representative from District 16B, did not speak publicly about the recount while it was ongoing, but is willing to talk about it now that the results are certified and the dispute has moved into the courts. Kiffmeyer, who from 1999 to...

George Soros is the biggest sugar daddy of the Democratic Party, and naturally wants to ensure that the Democrats have a monopoly of power in America. Recently, I wrote an article for American Thinker on the role that George Soros has played in helping the Democrat Al Franken in his race against the Republican incumbent Norm Coleman for a Senate seat in Minnesota. However, there may be one other reason that Soros was determined that Norm Coleman in particular lose his seat. This was personal. Norm Coleman was the chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and as...

Send in the Clown It sounds like the plot of a 1990s straight-to-video Hollywood flick, but barring any dramatic developments – such as a successful court challenge by Republican opponent Norm Coleman – former “Saturday Night Live” cast member and comedian Al Franken will become the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota, likely on the strength of fraudulent votes. Franken’s fitness for office has been a matter of debate ever since he announced his candidacy in February 2007. Having made a career of “debunking” provocative statements made by famous conservatives in books like Rush Limbaugh Is a Big, Fat Idiot, The...

The highly publicized vote recount in the Minnesota Senate race between Democrat Al Franken and Republican Norm Coleman is shining a light on Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, the state’s chief election officer. Ritchie is chairman of the Minnesota Canvassing Board, which on Monday certified that Franken received 225 more votes than Coleman did. Ritchie gave partial credit for his 2006 election to a liberal 527 group, the Secretary of State Project, which says its goal is to “ensure fair, clean elections” by replacing conservative secretaries of state with liberal Democrats. “I want to thank the Secretary of State...

As John F. Kennedy once said, "sometimes partisanship demands too much." Watching Al Franken and the Democrats steal this election, vote by vote, is a horrific sight that makes a mockery of the electoral process, the fundamental element in our democracy. If this travesty is allowed to stand, it essentially means that any close election constitutes an open invitation to steal the victory. We must not allow the Minnesota Democrats to get away with this election heist. The Republican National Lawyers Association is litigating the issue and needs all the support they can get to fund their court case. Those...

The recount process didn't work or, more accurately, could not reasonably determine a winner. Al Franken no more won the U.S. Senate race than your pet cat, Zuba, who somebody probably voted for as a write-in candidate. It would have been more plausible had Norm Coleman won the recount, having won on Election Night but by such a slim margin that it was mathematically unacceptable and thus triggered a recount. In Minnesota, a victory margin of less than one-half of 1 percent triggers a recount. That's ridiculous, because the process that followed resulted in even less than a one-half of...

The Canvassing Board overseeing the vote recount for Minnesota’s tightly contested U.S. Senate race isn’t quite done examining disputed ballots, but the board issued a projection Saturday night that Al Franken will pick up 270 votes when it finishes. Currently the board is determining voter intent in disputed ballots. If the projection proves correct, Franken will beat incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 78 votes.Vote totals have changed a lot since Nov. 4, when Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Correcting typos cut Coleman’s margin to 215, and a recount by all the counties reduced it further to 192. Yet, the...

The state canvassing board finished up its second day of sorting through challenged ballots Wednesday and said it hoped to be done with all challenges in the U.S. Senate race by the end of the week. But Secretary of State Mark Ritchie said the board would not certify a winner Friday, and there were new signs that court challenges lie ahead and could push Minnesota's process of selecting a Senator into 2009. (LEGAL ISSUE 1) One issue that could end up in court involves "duplicate" ballots -- ballots filled in on Election Day if there's something wrong with a voter's...

12.10.08 VIDEO: Secretary of State Mark Ritchie discusses the Recount of the 2008 Senate Race in Minnesota between Norm Coleman and Al Franken. These remarks are part of a forum held on "The Minnesota Tradition of Fair Elections" hosted by the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute at the University of Minnesota. 12.12.08 VIDEO: Ritchie On Counting Improperly Rejected Absent Ballots # # # # # 11.20.08 VIDEO: Minnesota Majority (Standing Together for Traditional Values) blasts commie Soros puppet SOS Mark Ritchie. Announce they are filing a formal complaint with the U.S....

This lowers the bar nicely for the Coleman campaign ... Taking the state Canvass Board's Friday lecture to heart, Franken's campaign says they will submit no more than 500 challenges Tuesday. From their Sunday afternoon press release: Two days after members of the state canvassing board issued an urgent plea for campaigns to withdraw additional challenges in order to allow them to finish their work in a timely fashion, the Franken campaign today announced that it would have fewer than 500 challenges remaining for the board to consider on a ballot-by-ballot basis when it meets on Tuesday.

NewsMax: Left-wing billionaire George Soros is hosting a fundraiser on Thursday night to help Democrat Al Franken win the recount in Minnesota’s Senate election. The gathering at Soros’ Manhattan home will raise money to help Franken’s campaign cover the cost of monitoring the statewide recount. “The special guest: Al Gore, who knows a thing or two about recounts,” the New York Post reports. Republican Sen. Norm Coleman leads Franken by just over 200 votes at last count, out of 2.9 million cast. The results of the hand recount are not expected to be released until mid-December. Coleman remains confident. His...

WHO IS MARK RITCHIE? A COMPLETE BACKGROUND Photo from Team Franken’s Flickr page(1) of non-partisan Secretary of State Mark Ritchie speaking at a Minnesota Democrats event earlier this year. UPDATE: Liberal supporters of Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (Media Matters)(2) are trying to defend him from the accusation that his candidacy had been promoted by the Communist Party USA. As the blogger who broke the story about his candidacy being promotion by the Communist Party USA, please see the links below to my original posts. I wrote my first post about Mark Ritchie in September 2005, and I have since...

- - In Press Release Franken campaign wants church to be treated as a crime scene Republican Party of Minnesota Chair Ron Carey today called the Franken campaign’s decision to call for a forensics investigation of a Minneapolis Church “both offensive and completely out-of-control” and asked for the campaign to stop its harassment of Minneapolis election officials and Church officials. “Today’s demand from the Franken Campaign that government authorities invade the University Lutheran Church Of Hope, essentially cordoning it off and conducting a forensics search, is both offensive and completely out-of-control. At what point does the Franken campaign simply conduct...

ST. PAUL, Minn. - Minnesota's U.S. Senate showdown is veering down a path toward the courts and possibly the Senate itself after a panel's ruling on rejected absentee ballots dealt a blow to Democrat Al Franken's chances. For the first time, his campaign on Wednesday openly discussed mounting challenges after the hand recount involving Franken and Republican Sen. Norm Coleman concludes. That includes the possibility of drawing the Senate into the fracas. The state Canvassing Board denied Franken's request to factor absentee ballots rejected by poll workers into the recount. He sought to overturn the exclusions in cases where ballots...

DFL U.S. Senate candidate Al Franken got a welcome boost on Wednesday with an endorsement from one of the more revered figures in the Democratic Party -- former Vice President Al Gore. Gore, who has become a crusading environmentalist since leaving elective office, sent an e-mail to DFL delegates on Wednesday afternoon that warmly praised Franken, calling him "exactly the breath of fresh air our government needs." Calling Franken one of the party's "hardest working activists," Gore saluted what he said were Franken's "sharp wit and strong convictions." In a nod to the unconventionality of Franken's candidacy, Gore said the...