franken

As the debate over health care reform rages on, there’s been almost no attention to the fact that health and medical malpractice insurance companies since 1945 have been exempt from the federal antitrust laws aimed at keeping every other private market competitive. The McCarran-Ferguson Act has allowed insurance companies to dominate markets and reap enormous [...]

In a sign that he may be giving up hope in his bid to hold onto his U.S. Senate seat, Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has taken a consulting job with the Republican Jewish Coalition, The Hill reports.
A Coleman spokesman insists that the move is purely financial and reflects no sense of pessimism about the race.
“The senator [...]

In the latest news from the never-ending saga that is the Minnesota Senate race, DFLer Al Franken is asking the Minnesota Supreme Court to force state leaders to certify his electoral victory and send him to the U.S. Senate.
Yesterday, Franken sought Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) and Secretary of State Mark Ritchie’s (D) signature of the [...]

DFL Senator-apparent Al Franken today asked Minnesota’s governor and secretary of state to certify his election victory so that he can provisionally join the U.S. Senate while his opponent, former GOP Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal challenge is resolved.
At the end of the statewide recount, Franken led by 225 votes, and today he sent letters to [...]

Wow, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial on the Minnesota recount was the screed heard ’round the world. Here’s Bill O’Reilly, the Sinestro to Al Franken’s Hal Jordan, citing the WSJ to argue that Franken “cheated” to win the recount. Here’s Joe Scarborough doing the same (and you really have to read Mika Brezezinski’s sassy onomotopiea [...]

Al Franken, calling himself “the next senator from Minnesota,” said Monday afternoon he is ready to go to Washington to get to work just as soon as possible.
But Franken didn’t respond to reporters’ shouted questions about exactly when he would go to Washington and retreated up the front steps of his downtown Minneapolis townhouse with [...]

The Minnesota Supreme Court issued an order late Monday morning (pdf) denying an emergency motion from the Norm Coleman campaign to stop the State Canvassing Board from certifying the vote in the statewide Senate recount. That clears the way for the canvassing board to certify this afternoon that Al Franken received the most votes in [...]

Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.)* is promising to sue for another recount if, as expected, Al Franken is declared the winner of Minnesota’s Senate race this week. Republicans are promising to back Coleman by filibustering any attempt to seat Franken.
When did this Republican love for extended recounts start? Sometime after the 2000 elections, probably. Back then [...]

In eighth-grade civics, I learned that the U.S. Senate had, and would continue to have, 100 members. Well, Mr. Miller, seems you didn’t tell me the whole story.
When the new Senate is sworn in next week, it will most likely be a team of 98, following declarations by Senate leaders that Minnesota and Illinois will [...]

In a previous post, I ran some calculations to explain why it’s not in Sen. Norm Coleman’s interest to allow all of the improperly rejected absentee ballots to be counted in the U.S. Senate race in Minnesota. Basically, if the voting patterns follow the election-night trends, challenger Al Franken will gain a net 52 votes [...]