Filibuster Threatened over Franken
The Hill newspaper has this:
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) threatened Friday to filibuster any attempt to seat Democratic Minnesota Senate candidate Al Franken next week.
The newly minted National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) chairman said he had not whipped votes in the GOP caucus, but added that he could not imagine any members defecting and seating Franken without a certificate of election.
Franken will not have that certificate as long as the election is challenged in the courts — a likely scenario, with Sen. Norm Coleman’s (R-Minn.) legal team already attacking the credibility of the recount process.
“This is a very, very serious matter,” Cornyn said. “I can assure you that there will be no way that people on our side of the aisle will agree to seat any senator without a valid certificate.”
Some have suggested that Franken could be seated provisionally, which would allow for any court challenges to play out and potentially change the outcome.
But since Minnesota state law won’t provide Franken a certificate of election with an election contest pending, seating Franken could be a risky and difficult proposition.
Franken leads the race by 49 votes with all challenged ballots resolved, but Coleman’s campaign is attempting to include about 650 improperly rejected absentee ballots from areas friendly to the incumbent.
That would be on top of about 1,350 improperly rejected absentees already designated by recount officials.
Beyond that, Coleman is expected to take up a legal challenge to the result.
Cornyn, a former Texas Supreme Court judge, suggested Friday that the case could go to the Minnesota Supreme Court or beyond. . . .
Labels: MinnesotaRecount
posted by John Lott at 3:22 PM
2 Comments:
"Sen. John Cornyn threatened to filibuster any attempt to seat Al Franken next week."
More power to him!
Hello, Mr. Lott... I've known about your work for awhile, but I don't know if I've ever commented at your blog.
Regarding this entry, I mentioned it in the comment I posted, around this time last night, at Cao's Blog - Only I didn't realize it was at this blog. As you can see there, I was thinking that it was at Backyard Conservative; from the template of that site, you can see how I got mistaken... I was looking, in my browser's "History," to try to figure out which blog that was; I didn't realize that I had this window, with your entry, open all along! (I unfortunately have had to hold so many windows, on my Seamonkey, and Firefox browsers, open, based on tasks I need to complete [comments at blogs, e-mails to reply to, topics to blog about] - I really need to find a better way...)
What I wanted to say, in response to this post, is that I was pleasantly surprised to see this news. (Then again, will the Senate Republicans follow through?... We have just found out that the Senate Democrats are rather spineless, when it comes to seating issues - but I'm afraid that my party's representatives in that body might suffer from the same weakness.)
I also wanted to mention that I was recently thinking about what happened in Lousiana in 1996, with the Mary Landrieu/Woody Jenkins vote fraud controversy.
When I recently found that excellent Reader's Digest article, posted at FreeRepublic, I saw the comment posted there, on the Senate Republicans (and "Vacant Lott").
The thing is though, when they were in the majority, the U.S. Senate Republicans allowed for Mary Landrieu to be seated (then again, they did allow for investigations, into the matter - on an 8 to 7 party-line vote). Maybe it takes being in the minority, for Republican federal officials to grow stronger teeth.
While I'm not necessarily expecting either of these to take place, it would be great if, not only were the seating of Roland Burris prevented, for the people of my state, but more importantly, if the seating of Al Franken were stopped, up in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.
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