Politics

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.” MORE »

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 the Nov. 4 election as determined by the recount that followed.

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Two opportunities to speak out on budgets, local and state:

The Minnesota Coalition for a People’s Bailout and the Welfare Rights Committee are organizing a campaign to demand a “People’s Bailout” of increased and extended aid to the poor, protection of public education funding, and no layoffs. The campaign kicks off with a protest at the state capitol on Tuesday, January 6 at noon, during the opening session of the state legislature. MORE »

by Jeff Fecke

Norm Coleman’s attorneys vowed to go to court to make up the ground Coleman lost today after more than 900 absentee ballots that had been mistakenly rejected were tallied, increasing Al Franken’s lead to 225. “We’ll take whatever legal action … to remedy this artificial lead,” said Coleman recount attorney Fritz Knaak. MORE »

The Minnesota Supreme Court ordered (pdf) Friday afternoon that the campaign of Al Franken respond by 9 a.m. Saturday to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s Dec. 31 petition to start over on the current court-ordered effort to count wrongfully rejected absentee ballots. The justices also directed seven Minnesota counties to tell the court whether they reviewed additional rejected absentee ballots the rival campaigns want counted — and if not, why. (In regional meetings this week, Sherburne County officials, for example, refused to consider three additional ballots the Coleman campaign asked them to review.) MORE »

It’s been quite a year in the Twin Cities, and the Daily Planet has been on the scene. With the help of our media partners and our tireless citizen journalists, in 2008 we published over 10,000 articles, blog entries, photos, and event listings. When we saw that the Minnesota Independent had tallied their top ten most-read articles for the year, we were inspired to check the stats and see what articles Daily Planet readers found most fascinating in 2008. MORE »

The Daily Kos writes that the “smell of desperation is approaching lutefisk levels in MN. (EPA warning for elevated levels of airborne toxins).” The Strib reports that the Coleman camp rejected 59 of 60 absentee ballots that elections officials in St. Louis County said should be counted. Among those rejected by the Coleman reps was election judge Shirley Graham, who voted absentee because she is an election judge in a precinct other than her own. Final irony, says the Strib: she voted for Coleman. MORE »