MN-Sen: The insanity continues

So Al Franken now leads the Minnesota Senate vote count by 50 votes, with hundreds of previously rejected absentee ballots left to be counted.

The process for counting these ballots, as specified by the Minnesota Supreme Court, requires both the Franken and Coleman campaigns to agree on a standard for counting ballots – essentially allowing either campaign to muck about with the process and prevent the counting of any ballots they don’t like.

Naturally, this is exactly what the Coleman campaign is trying to do. In heavily Democratic St. Louis County, the Coleman campaign is nixing ballots left, right, and center:

Coleman’s camp, which rejected 59 of the 60 ballots set aside Tuesday in St. Louis County, objected to Graham’s ballot on the grounds that the date next to her signature did not match the date next to the signature of her witness, Jack Armstrong.

In other words, the Coleman campaign rejected 59 of a total of 161 absentee ballots in question – an alarmingly high number, and one we can be rather certain won’t be duplicated in Republican-leaning counties.

Are the Coleman challenges legit? It doesn’t seem so. From Nate Silver:

There are a couple of things in the preceding paragraphs that the Franken campaign ought to be worried about. Firstly, quite a high percentage of absentee ballots were rejected — 60 out of what had been reported yesterday to be 161 ballots under consideration in St. Louis County, or 37 percent. All but one of those objections were made by the Coleman campaign. Secondly, the Coleman campaign is getting away with blocking ballots for asinine reasons. In the case cited above, for instance, the ballot was rejected because the date provided by the voucher did not match the date the date provided by the voter. Not only is there no requirement that the dates of the signatures match — there is no requirement that the signatures are dated, period (see the applicable statutes for yourself here and here).

So in other words, the Coleman campaign is tossing out seemingly legitimate ballots in Democratic-leaning counties at an exceptionally high rate. Given that they’re fifty votes back, I can’t imagine why they would want to do this.

Nate writes that the Franken campaign essentially has two options. The first is to take the high road, hope they win anyway despite Coleman’s shenanigans (which is certainly very possible), and be safe in the knowledge they’ll have solid grounds for contesting the election if Coleman’s trickery is successful. It’s a sure bet that the election results will be contested (and litigated) regardless of who wins.

The second option – the less desirable, but perhaps more effective option – is to take a page from the Coleman book and reject a high number of ballots in Republican-leaning areas. The Franken campaign seems disinclined to pursue this option, as they’ve always maintained they wanted every vote counted.

At this point, even Newsmax has essentially conceded that Coleman probably lost the election, and is running out of options by which he can claim victory. If he can game the system as set up by the Minnesota Supreme Court, he may end up on top…but even then, the election would still be contested.

It does not seem likely that we’ll know who won the election on January 6, swearing-in day.

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Blago is Crooked, Not Stupid

If you stop to catalog the things that Blago has done wrong, expect to go through a couple of pencils in the effort. There’s no doubt that Blagojevich is more tangled than a Twister tournament, and with his “if I can stay one step ahead of the investigation, I could be president!” theories, more than a little bit crazy.  But dim?  No.

In selecting Roland Burris, Blago made the best choice possible to hit the target he was aiming for: causing the maximum amount of heartburn among his critics.

Burris was once a respected figure in Illinois politics.  As state Comptroller back in 1979, and later as state Attorney General he was the first African-American to hold statewide office. The credentials alone make Burris a credible option and difficult to dismiss as a bad choice.

However, we’re also talking about the Roland Burris who was a failed candidate for Senate. A failed candidate for Governor. A failed candidate for Mayor of Chicago. When the Senate seat came open in Illinois, who first suggested Roland Burris for the post? That would be Roland Burris.

In his persistent quixotic tilts at office, Burris has turned himself into the dotty old man of Illinois politics — Ralph Nader without any goal but holding office. Burris was the one guy that Blagojevich knew would jump at the opportunity, no matter the circumstances, while holding enough “oh yeah, I kinda remember him” name recognition to make his rejection more than perfunctory.

You have to hand it to Rod Blagojevich.  When it comes to be an absolute self-serving asshole, he’s the best.

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Chutzpah

Alberto Gonzales, still unemployed because no law firm will touch him,  speaking to the Wall Street Journal:

“What is it that I did that is so fundamentally wrong, that deserves this kind of response to my service?” he said during an interview Tuesday, offering his most extensive comments since leaving government.

During a lunch meeting two blocks from the White House, where he served under his longtime friend, President George W. Bush, Mr. Gonzales said that “for some reason, I am portrayed as the one who is evil in formulating policies that people disagree with. I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

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Exits, 2008

First my father-in-law, a tough old cob who had previously been declared dead on two occasions (Once after being crushed in a mine disaster, and once after being shot in the face with a shotgun. Seriously.) was finally brought down by age, black lung, and the lingering effects of his injuries. Then my father died with a stack of ideas on his desk and a lot of plans for the future, only two days after retiring from the job he’d worked almost forty years.  

The ache that an aunt had felt at my father-in-law’s funeral turned out to be a bone cancer that took her by summer. And then a week ago our 21 year-old niece collapsed after after a blood clot made the short journey from her leg to her lungs. In between, our dog died, our cat died, and all the money that I’d been saving for retirement was reduced to about what I’d need to buy a meal at Steak N’ Shake.  

So how the hell was your 2008?  

Seriously, were it not for the election that cast a momentary bit of light, the year just past would about as dark as a sack of coal dust. At midnight. In a cave.

A review of folks that died over the twelve months just past is one of those maudlin features that appear each year in magazines and on television. But while the Oscars can be counted on to remind you of the big screen names that were lost over the year, and Time and Newsweek will give you their rundown, here are a few more to remember. Some will make those other lists, some won’t and some I’ve added because even on a topic this dark, a little humor doesn’t hurt.

In January, military blogger Andrew Olmsted was killed by a sniper in Iraq.  Olmstead was definitely in disagreement with most of us on the left, but also in disagreement with those on the right who saw Iraq as an opportunity to launch some kind of reverse domino theory. His messages from Iraq were as open and personal as any you’re likely to find. In his final message, posted after his death, he quotes Plato, Babylon 5, Greg the Bunny, and John Wayne. And he had this to say about blogging.

Believe it or not, one of the things I will miss most is not being able to blog any longer. The ability to put my thoughts on (virtual) paper and put them where people can read and respond to them has been marvelous, even if most people who have read my writings haven’t agreed with them. If there is any hope for the long term success of democracy, it will be if people agree to listen to and try to understand their political opponents rather than simply seeking to crush them. While the blogosphere has its share of partisans, there are some awfully smart people making excellent arguments out there as well, and I know I have learned quite a bit since I began blogging.

Also in January, we lost the world’s most famous beekeeper, the founder of Fatburger, and the sultriest voice on TV.  At the end of the month, Alan G. Rogers was killed by an IED in Iraq.  He was the first openly gay soldier killed in Iraq, an ordained minister, and a fighter not just for the military but also for civil rights.

In February, we lost a guy who created a smart ass duck, the man who brought a six-foot rabbit to the screen, and a man who wrote for both a monster and a witch. On the last day of the month, we lost a man who spoke English with an accent all his own — maybe because he spent his earliest years in Mexico, first grade in Paris, got his first instruction in English in a London day school. Even if you never agreed with a word William F. Buckley said, there was no denying that he steered the language with both skill and mad resolve. Modern conservatives may point to Ronald Reagan, or to Barry Goldwater, but the truth is they are pale imitations of Buckley, and not one of them has a fraction of his wits or wittiness. Oh, and none of them are half so dangerous. Buckley defended Joe McCarthy, worked undercover for the CIA, wrote a book a year, and interviewed everyone from Richard Nixon to the Dali Lama. If one tenth of the Conservatives out there had one tenth of Buckley’s skill, then liberals (and the country) would be in deep excretory exudation.

March took the man who learned how to get people to spill out their innermost selves to a few lines of program code, an actor for all seasons, a princess who became a communist, and Kentuckians mourned Mr. Wildcat. Finally, March also removed the man who gave us looming black monoliths, the math behind communication satellites, and a universe of brilliant ideas.  Arthur C. Clarke wrote the story that became the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey along with dozens of short stories and novels that combined an incisive intellect and often wry humor. Several years ago, on one of the best days of my life, I did face to face interviews with Buzz Aldrin and Burt Rutan, then finished the evening by speaking with Sir Arthur by videolink from his home in Sri Lanka. I had the chance to tell him then how much open-mouthed astonishment and pure pleasure his works had given me as a child. If there’s an author out there about whom you have similar feelings, let them know now.

In April, an American vampire died after bombing hotels in Bolivia, folks got their chance to pry the gun out of the hand of Moses, and the guy who painted robots, wookies, and the Elvis stamp, put down his paintbrush.

Geniuses are a dime a dozen, but in May we lost the guy who invented the Pringles can (no wonder it seems like the world is getting less orderly and starting to crumble).

The Cincinnati chemist who invented the iconic Pringles potato chip can was buried in one.  Relatives revealed yesterday they honored Fredric Baur’s bizarre last wish and buried part of his cremated remains in a Pringles can.

While not in the same league as the Pringle’s guy, we also lost one of the designers of the first electronic computer, who happened to be married to a computer (yes, really, and it was legal in all 50 states). And while President Carter continues his work in this country and others, perhaps the most important of the Georgia Mafia is done.

Carter called [Hamilton] Jordan his “closest political adviser, a trusted confidant, and my friend.”

“His judgment, insight, and wisdom were excelled only by his compassion and love of our country,” said Carter

June may be a sunny month, but it brought the darkest note of irony for the year when a leading anti-gun activist was stabbed to death. If you don’t know Diddley, now’s your chance to pull out the 45s and catch up. In the middle of the month, author and editor Algis Budrys passed away. Unless you’re a fan of science fiction, that name might not mean much to you, but it means a hell of a lot to me. I was lucky enough to win an award back in the early 90s that left me sitting in front of Mr. Budrys for a week, learning how to create characters, construct a situation, and hold together a plot — all in three thousand words. Later, I was lucky enough to sell one of my first stories to him. When I talk to people today about how to write fiction, I can do no better than to repeat what he taught me. He wrote ten novels scattered over 50 years, edited dozens of publications, helped generations of struggling writers, and left a mark on the industry far larger than his bibliography would indicate.

Please resist the temptation to say “finally” when I mention that July brought the death of a five-term Senator from North Carolina.

While the networks and most of the press will soft-pedal his virulent racism and reckless disregard for the First Amendment in his hounding of artists, foreigners and many others, Helms stayed his divisive course until the bitter end — at least until the end of his public career.

After building a reputation as a frankly speaking bigot, Helms ended his public life as a liar who whitewashed those previously bold stands.

Of more consequence (and I mean that), was the death of Thomas Disch, who brought us many fine novels and The Brave Little Toaster.

If you spent the long hot summers of your youth drawing chills from EC Comics, you probably shivered at the art of Jack Kamen, who died in August. But a real chill settled over the heat of summer when Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones died so unexpectedly. Representative Tubbs Jones was staunchly opposed to the Iraq war from the outset, even when her opposition drew punitive action from the Bush administration against her district. In 2004, she stood up against certifying the results of the mangled Ohio election results. Fearless and outspoken, hers is a voice we’ll certainly miss.

In September, folks around St. Louis were shocked by the deaths of a local mayor, two councilpersons, and the public works director of the suburb, Kirkwood. Politics at every level can be dangerous. A week after that, writer David Foster Wallace died. Those who had followed his writing over the years certainly had reason to think this end was coming, but our greed for more of his writing made us hope it would not come so soon. Also in September came the death of Oliver Crawford, who had been hauled before Joe McCarthy’s committee and blacklisted for refusing to name names. Mr. Buckley probably viewed him as a criminal, but Crawford survived his time on the blacklist and returned to write extensively for television (including that episode of Star Trek where Spock tries to manage the crew of a stranded shuttle from pure logic and gets people killed, so be grateful he held out).

Just try and get through the rest of the day without going “dah dah dah dah dah dah dah dah” when I tell you that October took the composer of the Batman TV theme. You can now go back to wearing those baggy sweats and stained Keds, since no one is making a list. If you’re reading this on your cell phone, give your thanks (and good byes) to this guy. I don’t care what anyone says, Jim Chee was never as good as his mentor, Joe Leaphorn, but both sprang from the mind of author Tony Hillerman. I never passed through Tuba City or spent the night in Kayenta without looking for Hillerman’s characters.

At my age Halloween isn’t all that frightening, but it certainly was sad this year. That was when we lost Studs Terkel. In his very personal stories from folks at all levels of the social strata, Studs rewrote the rules for how history is related. We did not know ourselves until he held up the mirror. Some people are national treasures, some people are the soul of their nation, some people bring out the best in all of us. Studs was all of that and more. Yes, I know the man was 96, and no one lives forever, but outside the losses in my own family, there was none so keenly felt as this one.

In the excitement leading up to the election, and with the panic instilled by the fiscal collapse, we were still shocked by the death of Madelyn Dunham just two days before her grandson was elected president. Damn it.

“She was one of those quiet heroes that we have all across America,” Mr. Obama said. “They’re not famous. Their names are not in the newspapers, but each and every day they work hard.

“They aren’t seeking the limelight. All they try to do is just do the right thing. In this crowd there are a lot of quiet heroes like that.”

Later in the month, Donald Finkel — A St. Louis poet who showed that there’s still a lot of new things to be done with the English language — lost a long fight with Alzheimer.

The tables slept on their feet
like horses
could wait there
forever if commanded
no matter what men set on them
a strong back was all it took
and a little patience

In December, Henry Molaison died believing it was still 1953. That was when Molaison (known for the last 50 years as Patient HM) had experimental treatment to address severe seizures. The treatment worked, but it also left him unable to form new long term memories. He lived the rest of his life in a tragic confusion, able to reason perfectly well, but unable to hold onto the fragments of a life that went tumbling past. However, his personal tragedy provided information on how the mind worked that greatly affected our understanding. The person who is probably most responsible for the vast right wing machine died this month, so did a political philospher who was a socialist and an expert on Orwell, but who still did some things that seem kind of, um, Orwellian.  

If my list seems chockablock with writers and short on those losses most critical to you his year, I’m sorry about that. I know I’ve missed everyone from the last British World War I soldier, one of a handful of remaining Munchkins, three astronauts, and Nurse Chapel. Heck, I didn’t even cover Tim Russert, whose absence left a shadow over the election coverage this fall. Overall, this seemed like a year for losses.

So how about in 2009, we just don’t let anyone off the ship. Okay?

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Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread

A funny moment from Hardball as Chris Matthews mishears The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel talking about John McCain’s erratic (not erotic) response to the financial crisis:

Sounds like it’s time for a New Year’s Party…or something.

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NY-Sen: Kennedy lobbyist quits effort

If you can believe the NY Post, which is never a given…

Mayor Bloomberg’s top political aide is pulling back on his lobbying campaign to propel Caroline Kennedy into the U.S. Senate because “it wasn’t working,” according to sources.

“Everything was backfiring,” said one source of the intense behind-the-scenes effort by Deputy Mayor Kevin Sheekey.

“He’s not out front any more.”

The source said that Sheekey had hoped to round up overwhelming support for Kennedy very quickly so she would become the inevitable choice when Gov. Paterson selects the successor to Hillary Clinton.

Among the many blunders by the Caroline Kennedy camp was the thought that having the Republican Bloomberg’s people running the operation would somehow be a good thing. Then again, there seems to have been a perception that her entrance would generate starbursts ricocheting in living rooms across NY and the country.

While some people clearly saw starbursts, enough didn’t that yet another “inevitability” strategy bit the dust.

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Charles Emmanuel Case Should Be the Rule, Not the Exception

As we learned Monday, the U.S. Department of Justice wants Charles Emmanuel to go down hard for torture he ordered and supervised when he was part of a Liberian paramilitary organization called the Demon Forces. He commanded the unit when his father, Charles Taylor, reigned brutally over that west African nation. Taylor’s forces dragged children into battle and made hacking off of limbs their signature. Since June 2007, he has been on trial at The Hague under the jurisdiction of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. The indictment includes 11 counts of war crimes, crimes against humanity and other serious violations of international humanitarian law. A verdict is expected in 2009.

Emmanuel, a U.S. citizen born in Boston, was convicted in a Miami federal court on several counts. His victims were tortured with electric shocks, molten plastic, lit cigarettes, hot clothes irons, bayonets and ants. Prosecutors are seeking a 147-year prison term.

The Emmanuel conviction was surely a milestone, as Elise Keppler, senior counsel for the International Justice Program at Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times two months ago. But it’s amazing so many people are unable to extrapolate from Emmanuel’s crimes to the crimes of others.

As the inimitable Glenn Greenwald writes today:

Acts which, when ordered by Liberians, are “criminal torture” meriting life imprisonment magically become, when ordered by Americans, mere “aggressive interrogation techniques.”   And while not all of the “techniques” used by the Liberians were authorized by Bush officials (”hot clothes irons” and “biting ants shoveled onto people’s bodies”), many of the authorized American techniques are classic torture tactics and resulted in the deaths of many detainees and the total insanity of many more.

Worse, AP — with canine-like subservience — mindlessly recites the Bush administration’s excuses (Abu Ghraib was due to low-level rogue bad apples and “there has been no systematic mistreatment of detainees”) without even mentioning the ample evidence proving how false those government claims are.  That’s standard American “journalism” for you:  ”Our Government says X, and even if it’s false and even if it’s intensely disputed, we’ll just leave it at that.”  Doing anything more — as NBC News’ David Gregory pointed out — is “not their role.”

There’s something beautifully illustrative about this torture prosecution.  Apparently, it’s not just appropriate, but necessary and urgent, for American courts to be used to prosecute the leaders of small African nations who order torture exclusively in their own land.  Doing that is necessary to uphold what the Bush DOJ calls “respect for and trust in authority, government and a rule of law.”  

But — say Bush loyalists and our pliant political class in unison — the one thing that we cannot tolerate is for American courts to be used to impose accountability on American leaders who authorized illegal torture.  And, of course, the only thing worse than doing that would be to subject them to prosecution by another country or, creepier still, an international tribunal.  That would be an intolerable infringement of our sovereignty, we say as we prosecute the son of Liberia’s President for acts he undertook exclusively inside Liberia.

Prosecution of Americans for ordering or implementing torture, as  pundits like Ruth Marcus and legal theorists like Cass Sunstein have argued, should be avoided by the new administration. Move on, don’t get diverted, don’t be “vindictive,” they and others say.

Contrary voices are being heard with ever more frequency, however. Syracuse University Law Prof. David Crane, the former chief prosecutor of the UN-backed Special Court for Sierra Leone said today that President Barack Obama “will face a number of rule-of-law challenges” when he takes office next month:

“In his campaign, he certainly has laid down a marker that we will return to the rule of law and respect the rule of law. And…his administration certainly will follow that up. We’ve see grumblings related to Guantanamo … and its possible closing. We see considerations as to what’s going on in the various tension centers in Iraq and Afghanistan. And I think that with his approach of reaching out, I think that we’re going to see…an attempt to move forward with respect to the rule of law,” he says.

But he says it won’t be easy. “It’s going to be a real challenge because of the fact that the rest of the world has looked at the United States through a prism based on the alleged problems that President Bush and Vice-President Cheney have had with the rule of law,” he says.

Publicly repudiating torture under any circumstances would be one step toward building worldwide respect for the United States. But another step is required to make us whole: targeted prosecutions of a few of those at the highest levels who ordered torture. Without that, Charles Emmanuel’s prosecution can only be viewed as the most profound hypocrisy.

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Attempted Pogrom In Antwerp, Belgium

Muslim rioters carrying Hamas flags attempted to assault the Jewish neighborhood of Antwerp in Belgium today. Police sealed off the neighborhood and engaged in running battles with the rioters who caused much property damage.

Meanwhile, A group of men with Middle Eastern-looking features approached Israelis working at a mall in Denmark. A man in the group then brandished a weapon and fired at the Israelis wounding two.

Below is a classic image of a pro-Palestinian protester in New York. What is wrong with his “death to all Jews” sign? We are dealing with morons and moral retards:

The good news is that you can get your very own “death to all Juice” T-shirt here.

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The Morality Gap Between Palestinians and Israelis is as Wide as an Ocean

Below is a small example of the gigantic morality gap between Israel and its enemies. Palestinian Islamic terrorists who would not hesitate to murder children, were trapped in a collapsed arms smuggling tunnel between Gaza and Egypt. Their lives are saved by Israeli soldiers. I personally believe that such humanity shown by the Israeli soldiers who put themselves at risk is in some ways foolish, and that these terrorists should have been eliminated as a matter of simple justice. None the less, here you have it:

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The Blagojevich-Burris-Rush Follies

As the Blagojevich/Burris/Rush psychodrama continues to unfold, it seems that a contest is developing over who can make the most absurd, the most delusional, and the most self-serving remarks in this political soap opera.

In the delusional category we have Blagojevich:

…weighing the option of appointing himself to the open Senate seat … to obtain greater resources if he is indicted as a sitting Senator as opposed to a sitting governor; a desire to remake his image in consideration of a possible run for President in 2016; avoiding impeachment by the Illinois legislature.

…up against Roland Burris’ belief that there will be “a major outcry” if the Senate defies Blagojevich by refusing to seat him:

In the self-serving category, we have the entire criminal complaint against Blagojevich versus Burris’ flip flop from outrage to “no comment”:

On December 13, Roland Burris said Blago should be forced from office, calling the governor’s actions “appalling” and “reprehensible.”

But now Burris has abandoned his call for Blago to be booted from office, and has completely dropped his condemnations of the governor.

But in the absurd category Rep. Bobby Rush is in a class by himself. It began yesterday, when he likened opposition to Burris being seated to a lynching, but he really outdid himself during an appearance today on The Early Show:

RODRIGUEZ: Yesterday we heard you say that they shouldn’t hang and lynch the appointee to punish the appointer. But do you believe that this is the way the only African-American Senator should be seated? Tainted, rightly or not, by a scandal and against the objections of most of his own party?

Rep. RUSH: Well, let me just say this, you know, the recent history of our nation has shown us that sometimes there could be individuals and there could be situations where school children–where you have officials standing in the doorway of school children. You know, I’m talking about all of us back in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas. I’m talking about George Wallace, Bull Connors and I’m sure that the US Senate don’t want to see themselves placed in the same position. I know my friend Harry Reid…

This has to be both the ultimate in “you can’t make this shit up,” and the most blatant, shameless playing of the race card. Ever. To equate objections to a scandal-plagued Governor, caught on tape planning to sell a U.S. Senate seat, appointing anyone to fill that seat, with the ugly and tragic events during the fight for civil rights, is not only appalling, it’s an insult to every man, woman and child who put their lives on the line during that terrible time in our nation’s history. Rush should be ashamed of himself.

Last week, another Illinois legislator was asked to fill President-elect Obama’s vacant Senate seat by Blagojevich. Rep. Danny Davis, who had earlier sought the appointment, turned him down:

I indicated I came to the conclusion there was too much discomfort on my part and the part of my family … it would be difficult to generate the trust level people would have to have in me. I just decided there was too much turmoil, too much disagreement. It was something I wanted to do, but I said I would not take an appointment from the governor.

That’s how a person of integrity deals with an offer from an ethically challenged Governor facing federal corruption charges. Roland Burris and Bobby Rush should take note of that.

Update: A late addition, in the why-leave-it-to-history category, is Roland Burris’ monument to … Roland Burris. This explains why Burris is so anxious to get that Senate seat. He has space to fill.

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