So what did we learn? The Post says, regarding the inquiry of lawmakers tied to PMA, a now defunct lobbying shop, that “the inquiry was broader than initially believed”. And we learned that there is yet another investigation of Charlie Rangel:

Ethics committee staff members have interviewed House Ways and Means Chairman Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) about one element of the complex investigation of his personal finances, as well as the lawmaker’s top aide and his son. Rangel said he spoke with ethics committee staff members regarding a conference that he and four other members of the Congressional Black Caucus attended last November in St. Martin. The trip initially was said to be sponsored by a nonprofit foundation run by a newspaper. But the three-day event, at a luxury resort, was underwritten by major corporations such as Citigroup, Pfizer and AT&T. Rules passed in 2007, shortly after Democrats reclaimed the majority following a wave of corruption cases against Republicans, bar private companies from paying for congressional travel.

This is in addition to all the other problems that Rangel has, including his not disclosing bank accounts, breaking New York City laws about rent control, and his holding hostage Puerto Rican grandmas for his rum buddies.

David Corn at Politics Daily has a smart take that Rangel will ultimately become a symbol of a corrupt Democratic Congress and Nancy Pelosi’s broken promise to drain the swamp.

Why might the Post article and this widening investigation of ties between lawmakers and lobbyists — neither of which relate to Rangel — matter for him? Though the probe has not yet found any of these House members guilty of wrongdoing, this episode will place pressure on Pelosi and her colleagues to show they’re not a party of sleaze. Consequently, Rangel is more vulnerable to the Republican’s campaign against him. If the PMA investigation heats up, he would make a great sacrificial lamb. And if the GOP continues to pursue Rangel, his party, burdened by this other ethics investigation, will have a tougher time protecting him.

In a development that is depressingly predictable, the New Jersey Democratic party is asking the state to provide provisional ballots for all these voters. Those ballots could, presumably, be used to overcome any narrow lead by Republican Chris Christie over Democrat Jon Corzine on Election Day.

Now, let’s be clear how the absentee process works in New Jersey. Third parties can pick up and return absentee ballots.  A couple of weeks ago, a Democratic operative in Atlantic City plead guilty to a lesser charge of tampering with ballots. One practice mentioned in the indictment was the person picking up ballots from people and throwing them out if they weren’t for his candidate.  Another example was:

They allegedly solicited applications for messenger absentee ballots from individuals not qualified to receive them and had the voters not fill in the name of the messenger, so they could fraudulently designate themselves as the authorized messengers or bearers.

And:

They allegedly obtained messenger ballots from the county clerk and submitted them to the board of elections as vote s on behalf of voters who, in fact, never received or voted the ballots or, in some cases, were given only the security envelope for the ballot and were told to sign it. Those voters were not given the opportunity to vote in most instances.

So when ballots are getting into the hands of people who didn’t even ask fro them, you have to wonder what is going on.

Donors in Puerto Rico poured $36,600 into Mr. Rangel’s war chest, an amount surpassed only by the $138,400 from donors in his home state of New York.

In four of the five previous years, the Virgin Islands ranked in the top 10 sources for contributions to Mr. Rangel. Puerto Rico didn’t make the list in any of those years.

Contributions to Mr. Rangel from the Virgin Islands totaled more than $167,00 between 1999 and 2008. More than half of that - $84,800 - was given during the 2007-08 election cycle, just as the islands sealed the deal to relocate Captain Morgan and give the liquor company about $2.7 billion in tax credits and other subsidies over 30 years.

The Virginia State Board of Elections argued in their most recent filing that they have no legal obligation to send out military absentee ballots in a timely manner. Restated, the State of Virginia has argued in a federal court filing that they can legally send out absentee ballots to active duty soldiers the day before an election. Restated again, theDemocratic Chairwoman of the Virginia State Board of Election (appointed by the Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine, in his capacity as Virginia Governor) Jean Cunningham just claimed a legal basis for massively raising the barrier to voting for soldiers at war.

Really. Read on for details.

The details of the legal proceedings are at the invaluable Election Law@Moritz. Let’s start with the most recent filing on behalf of the defendant

There is no federal statute that requires States to mail absentee ballots to UOCAVA voters a minimum number of days before an election. The Complaint in Intervention is based entirely on a “determination” by the Federal Voting Assistance Program of the Department of Defense that such ballots be mailed at least 30 days before an election, and a “recommendation” that States allow 45 days for round-trip mailing of absentee ballots.

This is remarkable, and the implications of this should be understood. First of all, some counties in both Virginia and New Jersey haven’t sent out absentee ballots yet in violation of their own laws. Whether due to maliciousness or simply being overburdened and understaffed is always up for debate. If Virginia prevails, there would be a legal argument for putting the ballots of active duty military at the back of the bus, as it were.

Second, this whole debate concerns only federal elections. States have to pass laws that allow for military voting in non-federal elections. I do not believe that either state has done that. Virginia’s filing notes that many of these questions are irrelevant in many ways because of the Federal Write-in Absentee Ballot, but their flier on military voting notes “Virginia allows you use the FWAB as an absentee ballot for Federal Offices only”. In other words, not state and local elections. In fact, state laws have to do more to let active duty military vote in state elections.

Third, if ballots were even to be sent out in a reasonable time, a question is them getting back in time. Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Rep. Dan Boren, Sen. John Cornyn, and Sen. Mark Begich have a proposal to have DoD pay for ballots to be returned by express mail, but Steny Hoyer and Nancy Pelosi are blocking consideration in the House, even though it passed the Senate last year.

In discussing last year’s issues, Marc Ambinder noted, “Democrats insist they’re biased towards access… so will they try to intervene on behalf of these voters?”

Good question.

(cross-posted from The Next Right)

But it is worth pointing out that this story will not go away. In two months, Obama will be heading back to Copenhagen for another failure, the UN Climate Conference. He will be going to Copenhagen empty handed, with no climate change bill to show. Indeed, the top story right now at the official site notes that “the honeymoon appears to be over” and compares Obama to former President George W. Bush. Indeed The Economist echoes this language, in a story dated yesterday entitled “The honeymoon between Europe and Barack Obama’s America is over.”

European Union politicians and officials are dismayed that, with a poisonous debate over health reform chewing up his political capital in Congress, Mr Obama may not secure legislation fixing binding emissions targets for America before the climate-change summit in Copenhagen in December. They also think the health-care impasse explains the lack of progress on the Doha world-trade talks. Nor did Europeans enjoy the G20 meeting that Mr Obama hosted in Pittsburgh. Despite hogging a ludicrous number of seats at the table, the EU came away with only one big Europe-specific agreement: alas, for them, it was a plan to cut their voting power at the IMF.

Today, we saw that Obama’s international celebrity is not matched by his international clout. And this message is going to get nailed home with issue after issue, whether it is Afghanistan, the next Copenhagen meeting, or whatever else happens.

It must be tough having to live with a persona and a rhetoric that has nothing to do with reality.

It turns out that today, his pick to lead our troops (and all of NATO) in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal, will be in London giving a speech about how to win in Afghanistan. I guess McChrystal he is allowed to tell our allies how we can win, just not Congress or the White House.

Perhaps Obama could stop by London and listen to the speech or chat with his general? But perhaps not. According to Kass, Obama told the head of NATO that he doesn’t have the time to chat about NATO and Afghanistan:

“I’ve got so much to do here,” Obama told NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “So, I will sleep on the plane. I’ll land. I’ll speak. Then fly right back.”

It turns out that the Troy, NY municipal elections are highly contested this year. And when elections are close, and especially in primaries, the stakes get high. And the fraud starts. In this case, the fraud was over the Working Families line. And the ballots themselves explicitly link the fraud to Democratic Party officials and Working Family Party officials to that fraud. From the Albany Times Union:

Documents at the county Board of Elections show the fraudulent ballots were handled by or prepared on behalf of various elected officials and leaders and operatives for the Democratic and Working Families parties. A Troy housing authority employee, Anthony Defiglio, who sources said oversees vacant properties for the Troy Housing Authority, also handled many of the fraudulent ballots, according to public records and interviews with voters who said they were duped.

Victor Gonzalez, a resident of Griswold Heights, told the Times Union he was visited several weeks ago by Defiglio and another man who asked him to sign an absentee ballot application. Gonzalez is registered on the WFP line. But Gonzalez, like many other people interviewed, never saw, signed or submitted the absentee ballot later filed at the Board of Elections under his name.

Also, someone else wrote on the Gonzalez’s ballot application that he couldn’t vote in person because of a work conflict.

”I’ve been out of work for about six to eight months. I’ve been laid off and looking for work,” he said.

Now Erick has been on a tear about Bertha Lewis, the CEO of ACORN, the former head of NY ACORN, and the Co-chair of the New York Working Families Party. ACORN has regularly been accused of fraud and there seem to be significant convictions every year, but they just through the staff under the bus. In this case, it seems it goes up into WFP leadership. How do we know? Read on for the answer.

We know because the applications say so:

Some of the suspicious absentee ballots list Defiglio as the person who could pick it up for the voter. Residents of Griswold Heights said he is a familiar figure around those complexes. Other ballots were handled by, or returnable to, Democratic or WFP party officials, or candidates for citywide office, including: Troy Council President Clement Campana; City Clerk William McInerny; Councilman Gary Galuski; Rensselaer County WFP Chairman James Welch; council candidates Michael LoPorto and Kevin McGrath; and Tom Aldrich, a LoPorto campaign volunteer.

Next time a Democratic operative or a reporter tell you that there’s no such thing as voter fraud, send them this story too. Here at Redstate, we are looking forward to covering the trial and convictions.

Here’s what Bloomberg reported:

Barroso’s victory in the EU Parliament stemmed from support by the Christian Democrats, the biggest faction, and the pro- business Liberals, the third-largest group. The vote was 382 to 219, with 117 abstentions.

Socialist and Green members, still unhappy that Barroso supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 when he was Portuguese government leader, refused to back his reappointment while failing to present a rival candidate. The Socialists, the second-biggest faction, said Barroso could pick up their support when putting together his next team of commissioners, who will need Parliament approval as a whole.

The leadership of the European Parliament has an option for the first time in history. They can decide to govern from the center-right. This vote was the first example of this coalition actually working. This follows after a crushing defeat of the left in the European elections and the right governing in the leading European countries: Italy, France, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and others, and David Cameron all but certain to be the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. This gives the right the control of the European Council, in addition to the Commission and Parliament.

Let’s see if the leadership of the European Parliament learns this lesson.

You can stop the health care bill. You can stop a government take over of health care now.

Contact your Representative here: http://www.redstate.com/action.

Tell your family, your friends, your neighbors, people at your church, whoever. Get them on the phone. Send them that link.

Now is the time to act.

The long and short of it is that Chairman Rangel is defending a provision of the bailout that allows the government of the Virgin Islands to subsidize (paid for with US excise taxes) the building of facilities for Diageo, the makers of Captain Morgan rum. Oh. And Rangel has a lot of donors in the Virgin Islands.

This one is a little complicated. So let me walk you through it.

There was a provision in the Bailout (aka TARP) that  allows “Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to pocket $192 million in federal excise taxes collected from rum-makers,” a substantial proportion of which is then handed out by the territories to rum-makers who maintain operations there in the form of “marketing subsidies and production incentives.”

Or at least it is by the Virgin Islands. Puerto Rico was apparently not giving Diageo, the maker of Captain Morgan rum, enough money from the public coffers.  So as of 2012, Diageo will be moving to the Virgin Islands, whose government is more willing to subsidize the company (which, you might be interested to know, had a £2.2 billion operating profit in 2008).  Under the deal cut between Diageo and the Virgin Islands:

…the Virgin Islands is to build Diageo a $165 million, state-of-the-art plant on the island of St. Croix. After assuming a $500 million debt obligation associated with the plant’s construction, the Virgin Islands will hand over the keys and title to Diageo. The Virgin Islands will tap its portion of the rum tax revenue to pay the $18.4 million in annual financing costs.

The 30-year agreement also gives Diageo a $2.1 billion marketing subsidy…

So what, right? Well … Chairman Rangel has a pretty good fundraising network in the Virgin Islands, and this wouldn’t be the first time he championed legislation benefiting Virgin Islands-based Rangel donors:

The chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee has proposed legislation that would effectively halt some current tax audits of people who get a tax break for living and operating a business in the United States Virgin Islands.

Many beneficiaries of the tax break are campaign contributors to the lawmaker, Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York, according to data collected by CQ MoneyLine, which tracks political contributions.

So what, right? Well … Puerto Rico’s Resident Commissioner, Pedro Pierluisi, wants to put a stop to corporate handouts like this.  Sure, he’s got a good, in-my-backyard kind of reason, but it actually sounds like good policy. According to Reuters, Pierluisi “proposed legislation seeking to establish a special rule blocking Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands from using rum rebates to provide ‘unreasonable’ subsidies to rum producers.  The bill defines an ‘unreasonable’ subsidy of more than 10 percent of the rum rebate funds a jurisdiction receives.” This legislation, which goes through Rangel’s committee isn’t moving.

So the question is why Rangel is so determined to give billions in corporate welfare in the Virgin Islands?

Maybe his donors there have an idea.

Or maybe he just “got a in little captain” in him and he’s just “standing up for what” he drinks.

You will recall that HillaryCare never “got out of mark-up”. Will Obamacare get trapped there too?

Here’s an email circulating amongst Republicans on Capitol Hill:

From: Cavicke, David
Sent: Tuesday, July 28, 2009 4:51 PM
To: REDACTED
Subject: Schedule

Democratic Leadership has told Mr. Boehner’s staff that there will be no vote on Health on the Floor before recess and we will leave Friday.
We still have no confirmation of plans to resume or end the Committee Markup.

David L. Cavicke
Republican Chief of Staff
Committee on Energy and Commerce

Let’s go over the facts and see how much this helps Pennsylvania Republicans in 2010.

1. Pat Meehan, one of the Republican candidates for Governor got the initial indictments against Fumo. Tom Corbett, the other one, has his own story to tell about indicting Fumo and his operation. If Chris Christie ends up winning in New Jersey, there will be a ready-made media narrative comparing New Jersey to Pennsylvania.

2. That narrative will be a little emphasized because southern New Jersey is almost entirely in the Philadelphia media market. It will be non-national political news relevant to both parts of the the Philly media market.

3. Corruption is the sort of thing that suppresses Democrat-leaning independent turnout in formerly Republican suburbs in Bucks and Montgomery countes, and, to a lesser extent, in Chester and Delaware counties. And the South Philly turnout operation that Fumo was so effective at selling is probably somewhat reduced in effectiveness. Democrats can’t win statewide without huge margins out of southeast Pennsylvania. You couldn’t build a better script for reducing those margins.

Grab the popcorn. This will be fun to watch.

(Cross-posted from The Next Right)

Case 1: The IMF. At a G-20 meeting earlier this year, Barack Obama came away empty-handed. The only success was to send money to the IMF. $100b. This wasn’t going to pass on its own, so they attached it to the Supplemental that paid for our troops. And claimed that $100b leaving the treasury costs nothing. According to the Politico, Orzsag had a totally unprecedented meeting with the OMB scorers putting political pressure on them to cook the books. Only a little comment at the time. Oh … and no one bought Orzsag’s nonsense, and the amount became a focus of attention as a bailout of European banks.

Case 2: CBO Whitehouse meeting. Earlier this week, the President meant with the Director of the CBO. According to Jake Tapper, there was a lot of pushback against the unprecedented nature of the meeting:

Said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky: “I noticed that the CBO director was sort of called down to the White House yesterday. It strikes me as somewhat akin as the owner of the team asking the umpires to come up to the owner’s box.”

McConnell said that “if the CBO is to have credibility, they’re the umpire. They’re not players in this game.”

CBO is tasked with providing “objective, nonpartisan, and timely analyses to aid in economic and budgetary decisions on the wide array of programs covered by the federal budget.”

Case 3: Keith Hennessey puts it nicely, “CBO Kills the President’s Medicare Comission Proposal”. You see, the CBO found that Obama’s great plan to limit costs was to create a commission only saved $2b. One half of one percent of the total cost. So what happens? Orzsag goes after Elmendorff in all but name:

A final note is worth underscoring. As a former CBO director, I can attest that CBO is sometimes accused of a bias toward exaggerating costs and underestimating savings. Unfortunately, parts of today’s analysis from CBO could feed that perception. For example, and without specifying precisely how the various modifications would work, CBO somehow concluded that the council could “eventually achieve annual savings equal to several percent of Medicare spending…[which] would amount to tens of billions of dollars per year after 2019.” Such savings are welcome (and rare!), but it is also the case that (for good reason) CBO has restricted itself to qualitative, not quantitative, analyses of long-term effects from legislative proposals.  In providing a quantitative estimate of long-term effects without any analytical basis for doing so, CBO seems to have overstepped.

What is going on is crystal clear. The CBO is not caving to extended political pressure. After weeks of Pelosi “scolding” and Baucus aides “expressing frustration” it has come to open attacks on the CBO, its director, and the institution’s integrity.

Well. I have to say, finally Barack Obama is bringing change I can believe in. Chicago-style change.

Not Indiana. Under Mitch Daniels’ leadership the state reported a $1.3b surplus. The State Auditor Tim Berry noted that they even raised school funding:

Berry stood in front of charts Friday that show Indiana increased school funding, avoided a tax hike, and maintained a surplus of about 10%. [...]

“Measures that were taken early on by Governor Mitch Daniels to restrain spending have amounted for a large amount of these fiscal reserves,” Berry said.

The Louisville paper notes that tax revenue was even down $1.2b below projections:

The state had $1.33 billion in its main checking account and reserves when the fiscal year ended June 30. That’s roughly the same as one year ago, even though state taxes brought in $1.2 billion less than originally projected.

How’s that for successful governance? No wonder there is a draft movement for Mitch Daniels for President.

(Crossposted from The Next Right)

For example, in Colorado, appointed Senator Michael Bennet is “stuck in neutral” on card check, according to the Denver Post. In Arkansas, Blanche Lincoln won’t support it. Pennsylvania’s Arlen Specter is famously wrapped around the axle on it.

With card-check, cap-and-tax-and-trade, and Obamacare in the pipeline, how much soon until these Senators back away from the President?

State Treasurer Tim Cahill this week will change his political party designation from Democrat to unenrolled, the first step in mounting an independent challenge to Democratic governor Deval Patrick in the 2010 general election, two advisers said today.

The thing is, this might create an opportunity for Republicans. A 3-way race could be winnable, even in a state as blue as Massachusetts. This leaves an opening for someone like Charlie Baker, who has both political or business experience. Baker would have to step down as the CEO of a health care company, a subject that happens to be one of the state’s major problems:

The centerpiece of Massachusetts’ 2006 health reform bill is Commonwealth Care, a government program that provides free and subsidized insurance plans to low- and moderate-income patients. It’s spending has doubled in the last two years, jumping from $630 million in 2007 to an estimated $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2009.

Last year, rising costs lead Commonwealth Care officials to approve a 12 percent rate increase, meaning that basic insurance costs will cut even deeper into the incomes of most participating patients.

Alternatively… Mitt Romney could run. He won once. He made the problem, but has complained that it wasn’t implemented as he would have.  He could run, win, and fix it… I’d even endorse him.

But probably not. Probably we will have to support Charlie Baker in his fight to save his state.

Going into the elections, there were several questions. First, would the center hold? With caveats, it did. Second, what impact would the global economic downturn have? Signficantly, the socialists were rejected, to the benefit of the right. Third, how strong would the anti-EU sentiment be in the UK? Very, and this could have some complicating results for the larger European project. And fourth, what does this tell us about the upcoming election in Germany and, potentially, the UK? Labour in trouble in the UK. Probably still good news for the Christian Democrats in Germany.

So, let’s start with the core details, the results, mostly cribbed from the BBC, with additional notes, which are all after the jump.

In answer to the first question, the center significantly held. The European Peoples’ Party (EPP), the party of the center-right, dominated the evening. They had allied with the “European Democrats” to form the EPP-ED parliamentary group that had led the last parliament. the “European Democrats” were, primarily the British Conservatives (”Tories”) and the Czech ODS party. The Tories won 24 seats, up 1 from the previous Parliament, while ODS won 9.  In other words, the old EPP-ED coalition won 297 seats, up 15 from the previous Parliament, while the Liberals added 5, and the Socialists lost 26. Net loss for the center is 6, or less than 1%.  Now this fudges some details like why the Tories and ODS left, but we will get to that.

The center holding is even more remarkable when you look at particular countries. For examples, in France, the socialists lost 13 seats, but Sarkozy’s UMP picked up 11 of those. The Greens also picked up 8, all but 1 of their net gain. In Spain, which has the highest unemployment in the Eurozone, the Socialist government lost 2 seats, with the EPP and the Liberals each picking up one of them. Similarly, in Germany, the EPP lost 7 seats, but the very free market Free Democrats/Liberals picked up 5 of those.

To summarize what happened and to answer the second question, a pro-free market polarity carried the day. Between the EPP and the Liberals, while the Socialists were roundly defeated in nearly every country. In a time of economic unrest, Europeans turned to the right for answers to economic questions.

This is not to say that there were not significant shifts. The most obvious is the underlying cause of the “European Democrats” leaving the EPP-ED, concern about the scope of the European project. In European politics, opposition to EU expansion and the broader European project occupies a similar role as the immigration debate does here. The European Union is the most obvious mechanism of loss of national identity. It is taking people’s money, it is allowing poorer workers who don’t share language and customs from the East, it is more unaccountable and its politicians are in Brussels, not national capitals, etc. The Tories and Czech ODS are openly more skeptical of the European Project. In the UK, the anti-EU UK Independence Party picked up a seat and the far-right British National Party picked up 2. In Austria, Romania, and the Netherlands, this shift has been most clear. There is a clear anxiety about the European project out there that has even  been suggested by German Chancellor Angela Merkel in her recent statement about the European Central Bank.

The clearest manifestation that this anxiety will take will be in how the Lisbon Treaty process is resolved. The Lisbon Treaty is the “Constitutional Treaty” that failed in French and Dutch elections several years ago, and recently in Ireland. In recent months, the Polish and Czech Parliaments have approved it, although the Presidents have refused, so far, to sign the bills. Ireland still has to put it on the ballot again, and, importantly the UK has to do something. The collapse of the Labour Party in the UK, combined with a majority of the vote in the UK for either anti-EU parties (BNP and UK) or skeptic parties (Tories), means that the British government has a crisis on their hands. The old Tony Blair promise of a referendum on a new “constitution” may become politically necessary. The UK may be the block to Lisbon, not Ireland. And all this is prior to the analysis of what The Economist calls “record abstention.”

Finally, the upcoming national elections. The UK Labour Party was crushed. Manuevering has started to remove Gordon Brown, even if Labour Party rules offer no mechanism to allow it. In Germany, Angela Merkel and her preferred allies took 48% of the vote, and a clear majority of the European Parliament seats. Unless something changes, a new, more free market approach is likely coming after the next German election in September. In France, even though Nicolas Sarkozy is no longer personally popular, the Socialists continue to be discredited as a party of opposition.

Well, it turns out that there is video of it:

H/T Election Journal.

Anyways, the problems:

These state law issues, regrettably, are not straightforward. Indeed, as I’ve mulled them over since Coleman filed his brief last Thursday, at times I’ve found them mind-numbingly complex, and I’m someone who specializes in election law and has followed this vote-counting dispute from the beginning (meaning since Election Day, last November 4). It worries me that legal questions concerning the resolution of disputed important elections can be so complicated, since I consider it an important value in a democracy that the rules for resolving these disputes be publicly accessible and understandable. But the situation is what it is, and thus all I can do as a specialist in this field is to lay out the issues as best as I can, clarifying or illuminating them when possible.

This complexity is particularly problematic in the context of Minnesota Secretary of State’s claim, “…recounts are for really the loser to understand and see and then believe that they in fact did not win the election and for their supporters to come to the same conclusion.”

After the jump, we talk through some of the sample problems that occur in counting absentee ballots.

Consider one question: what was the process for counting absentee ballots, do they need to be properly witnessed, and how could the counters check? It turns out that there are two methods for counting the ballots: by precinct poll workers and by a county absentee boards. Partisan challengers are allowed at the precinct but not at the county boards, which lead to different ways of challenging them later in the process.  And precinct workers have no way of checking the validity of witness registrations, while county boards do.

This is just one problem. Foley raises concerns about process:

What should one make of all this uncertainty over the state-law issues in this appeal? I’ve only considered the first of the nine scenarios identified by Coleman, and it seems more than complicated enough. Perhaps the issues will seem clearer after Franken’s brief and Coleman’s reply.  But I’m not betting that complete clarity will reign in time for oral argument.   And, of course, there are still the federal constitutional questions, even after all the state law issues are resolved (as well as other, non-Bell, issues of procedural bar, which might preclude reaching some of these issues on the merits).

One begins to wonder if practical considerations should overtake rigorous legal analysis in the minds of the Minnesota Supreme Court justices. According to opinion polls, the public is clamoring for this disputed election to be resolved. A remand to the trial court might spark a public outcry.

But, he points out that you can’t short-circuit a legal process once started:

Still, Minnesota law undeniably permitted this appeal. Because it did, the Minnesota Supreme Court should adjudicate the appeal according to law, not politics. Therefore, as difficult and complicated as both the state and federal law issues in the appeal may be, the court’s justices must grapple with those issues as best they can using the impartial methods of judicial inquiry.  The justices must follow the law wherever it leads them, even if that place is an uncomfortable one politically.

This is going to be a mess, and it’ll be long.

Frank Fannon Alicia Hughes

—–

Jim Geraghty over at National Review has the basic facts. Democrats lost two seats on the Alexandria, Virginia city council:

Boy, how long has it been since I’ve been able to report good news on an election night for Republicans? With results from 26 out of 26 precincts, and absentees included, Republican Frank Fannon and GOP-endorsed independent Alicia Hughes appear to have won seats on the Alexandria City Council. The Democrats will still control a majority of four out of six seats, but this is a couple rippes of red in a deep blue community in a purple state - the best news for local Republicans in a long time.

But the implications are bigger. Barack Obama won this county 72-27. Senator Mark Warner is from Alexandria. Democratic National Committee Chair Tim Kaine is the Governor of Virginia.

Barack Obama lost today. The Democratic National Committee lost today.