I don't have a link handy. Just been following this race, off and on for what seems like forever.

Things are looking up for Al. After hearing his show on AAR, I think he will make a fine senator.

...and doggone it, people like him.

Minnesota Secretary of State

Star Tribune

Since the amount of help (and $$$) from promient Democrats have been rather relatively lacking during the whole race (No Obama ads for Suart Smalley) and after, I expect Franken to be his own man in the Senate, having got there all by himself.

There is a county in Minnesota called Yellow Medicine. What the heck is up with that?

The people in Minnesota are morons (Well at least 50% of them are).

Franken symbolizes ALL that is wrong with this Country.

He's a pompous ass. He's not even a good comedian.

Read the book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" (and Al Franken is #37)

The people in Minnesota are morons (Well at least 50% of them are).

Hey, in 2000 and 2004 more than 50% of America was dumb. What does that tell you????


Franken symbolizes ALL that is wrong with this Country.

So does DUHbya......


Read the book "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America" (and Al Franken is #37)

Where was DUHbya and the DICKster. If not on the list then the book must have been written by some EXTREME RIGHT wing hack.

I didn't think Franken's AAR show was always that great (especially when he was just talking: boring) or that it was that funny, but he had great guests, and when he was interviewing them, it was terrific radio, by far the best show AAR had. Plus, it was a very centered show. Franken didn't buy into the "looney left" side of things like conspiracy theories. Today's AAR hosts have even taken shots at him for not embracing their "every election lost was stolen" philosophy given his close Minnesota race.

And I think Franken can be very, very funny - his books are hilarious, even if most of his movies are lame. And I love some of the old SNL stuff he wrote. On the old show, he and Tom Davis wrote all the classic political sketches. Today's SNL totally lacks the political wit of those old shows (Tina Fey's recent turn as Palin excepted).

I don't particularly care for Norm Coleman; I think Franken is a smart guy and will be better if he wins. I'll bet you he runs for only a single term, though.

Andrew

I'm wondering if he's a single termer too. I get that feeling about Al. He's wired a bit differently, like he's got a list he's working from or something.

Maybe he just wants to kick off the difference, like he did with AAR.

Either way, he will be an interesting and I suspect, good quality Senator.

Hannity, et al. will have to call him Senator and that's gonna chap their ass for sure!

Agreed on his show too. It was sometimes boring, but when he had people on, it was great. His USO stuff was great too.

Every election wasn't stolen, but a whole lot of them were just crap. Not definitive. At least Minnesota is stepping up and doing it right. They are a model going forward, for how to handle it when there are troubles.

That election might be really close, but it will be definitive, and that's important. The process is important, and for all the stuff Al didn't say, he handled the process exactly right, so good on him.

The AAR guys only have a tiny bit of mud to sling. Al was more right than he was wrong.

(process improvements need to be on the table though. Not every state has the quality process Minnesota does)

Paul Wellstone is a hunted man. Minnesota's senior senator is not just another Democrat on White House political czar Karl Rove's target list, in an election year when the Senate balance of power could be decided by the voters of a single state. Rather, getting rid of Wellstone is a passion for Rove, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the special-interest lobbies that fund the most sophisticated political operation ever assembled by a presidential administration. "There are people in the White House who wake up in the morning thinking about how they will defeat Paul Wellstone," a senior Republican aide confides. "This one is political and personal for them."

That has made it political and personal for Wellstone. The man who decided to abandon a self-imposed two-term limit on his Senate service at least in part because of his determination to block Bush's conservative agenda wears the target with pride. At a moment when most Democrats are still trying to figure out how to challenge a popular President, the former college wrestler is leaping into the ring. Wellstone is not running for cover; he is running to deliver a message about politics in a state and a nation that he believes to be far more progressive than the readers of political tea leaves in Washington could begin to imagine.

"This race is going to be a case study of whether you can maintain liberal, progressive positions and win in this country in 2002," says Wellstone as he campaigns among Laotian immigrants on a sunny spring morning in St. Paul. "We're not running a race that asks people to vote for me because, as a Democrat, I will be a little more compassionate, a little better for working families and children and immigrants, than a Republican. We want to draw the lines of distinction. I'm saying that there is a big difference between the America the conservatives want and the America I want." He adds, "I don't want this to be just about me. This race has to be about basic questions of whether liberals and progressives can flourish in national politics. That means there is a lot more on the line than whether Paul Wellstone wins or loses."

The Nation

Five short months later, Senator Paul David Wellstone was dead.

Al Franken is a brave man too.

Damn right he is. I wasn't really thinking about that.

I can't help but wonder if the looming reality of that kind of thuggery (they hammered Daschle too, but he didn't die, and that other guy got jailed and is still fighting it) isn't part of the reason why Reid and Pelosi have been just wimps!

We've got the upper hand. It's time to start playing some hard ball on this stuff!

.....We've got the upper hand. It's time to start playing some hard ball on this stuff....

Didn't that same thing bother you when the other side wanted to play that way?

Pay back and revenge in not good for anyone. Stay focused on fixing what's broken. Otherwise, we stay in this same ugly cycle.

There is a difference between just railroading the legislative process and pushing hard to make sure legislation that has broad support sees the light of day, unencumbered with a bunch of crap.

If the Republicans want to fillibuster and play political theatre, it really should cost them. Haven't we paid enough for that?

I think so.

The set of problems to solve is clear. Staying focused on that WILL require hardball. That's not payback, just reasoned pressure to get some stuff done.

Also, on the matter of revenge, pressing for investigations into legal violations is about resetting the expectations the Bush administration set over the last 8 years; namely, if you are President, it's legal.

No it isn't, and we need to fix that.

If these things are done in a public way, transparent, with commentary, and lots of debate, the result we get following through on them will be one we can live with.

That's the hard ball. Thuggery, tricks, bribes, corruption, secret decisions and a whole bunch of crap we don't even know about yet, have to go. The only way they go is if we have government dealing straight up, in the view of the people being so governed.

That's gonna cost a few bad apples. I suspect on both sides. Tough titty.

Resetting expectations about how things work won't be easy. It is however necessary, if we are to see greater success.

This can be done in an inclusive way too, considering liberal, conservative and other opinions on how it is to go down, but there should be NO discussion on it actually going down.

I agree with you, Roger, but I also agree with Missing too.

There cannot be a return to politics as usual on Capitol Hill. Tit for tat partisan pettiness hurts our country and is a dead end street. Big decisions will have to be made cooperatively with intelligent ideas from all sides of the spectrum. All reasoned voices will have to be heard in debate.

At the same time, a decade of crimes have been committed in our name, and the perpetrators should be punished. Justice must be served. No political party or ideology is immune from responsibility or the consequences of breaking the law. Every case has to be investigated, and if evidences merits, prosecuted.

In some cases, it goes far beyond graft and larceny. It goes beyond merely serving time in a barbed wire country club. In some cases, our entire democratic system was compromised, public trust was betrayed, officials committed treasonous acts and war crimes were ordered from the top. In some cases, it was murder.

I am not a big supporter of capital punishment, but I do believe it is great deterrent in the case of crimes against humanity. If such acts have been carried out, or parties have been complicit, it would be equally criminal to ignore the evidence.

Rows of taut nooses taught future generations of Germans -- and indeed the western world -- right from wrong. Nuremberg was not perfect, and not every crime was punished, but it served a very important purpose. Never again could the people of a civilized country assist in the machinations of powerful domestic enemies without bearing responsibility for their actions.

Liberty and freedom must be preserved through truth, transparency and justice.

I did mean "we the people" have the upper hand, not so much the Democrats.

We've elected somebody without corporate dollars this time around. It's a solid shot for us.

Those so elected and appointed owe us big time. We've taken a lot of crap, and didn't hit the streets. (maybe we should have, I don't know)

That's where I was going on hardball. I'm perfectly willing to hammer ANYBODY not towing the American line.