So what if they're preaching to the choir? Sometimes you have to equip your side with arguments. All those preachers preaching bigotry to the people in the pews are preaching to the choir, but they won that election. Besides, it's not like college students are unanimously supportive of equal rights, just more likely to support them than older people. Even on campus, there are converts to be won, and what a creative protest.

Just to offer counter-spin, or counter-counter-spin, Cao won because of corruption, but Democrats won in the wake of Republican corruption, and we're hopeful Mark Begich keeps his senate seat. Or should we write it off, assuming he won only because Ted Stevens was a crook? Corruption can off an opening, and the lucky winner sometime holds it. Besides, New Orleans is a changed city since Katrina, much less Democratic than it was thanks to low income residents being obstructed from returning. Georgia was red before, but clearly we didn't make as much progress turning it blue as we hoped. Maybe this end of the Republicans was always oversold. Consider it more an opportunity than a done deal.

Of course, suddenly Blagojevich is a good Christian. The inevitable point of every scandal.

Maybe the auto industry is just 2% of the economy, or a budget cut is just 5% of the budget or requires 15% from a given agency. It's like these guys never stop to think somewhere behind the 2% or 5% o r15% is somebody for whom this means their job is gone, or their house is gone, or the retirement plan is gone. For such a somebody, this isn't a 2% cut or a 10% cut, it's a 100% cut. as we let industries collapse and make across the board cuts, there are a lot of such somebodies. Maybe it can't be avoided, but can Republicans at least stop blaming the victims, even if they have zero sympathy when it isn't their own personal loss? Hate unions all you want, but think about explaining to the unemployed (maybe long-term) auto worker the macroeconomics that make it make sense to let an industry just collapse.

And spare me the crap about "Should we have saved the buggy-whip industry?" The buggy-whip industry was never so core to the economy, and it withered away instead o collapsing. And there's still somebody making buggy-whips. There could be no cars built by an American company in short order. Only a fool thinks that not the same thing.

I don't what DC's laws are, but usually felons can vote. It depends on state law. Also, it's news to me that a law license is required to lobby or become a conservative think tank "scholar".

New York has only one vote to count, yet people complain picking a senator in Minnesota is taking a long time.

I couldn't understand building a roofless stadium for the Twins when baseball likes to start the season in late March and the playoffs go through late October (will the home plate umpires have little snow shovels?). I saw no need for a U of Minnesota football stadium when the Metrodome works just fine. I see the silver lining now: in a couple years, the Minnesota Wild will have a facility to host the Winter Classic.

Fortunately, the state supreme court tends to jump quickly on election cases, so I don't think it will be months unless Coleman loses at the state level and manages to get into the federal courts. I hope federal courts will push the case to the front but if a partisan judge gets a hold of it, who knows. And of course, I hardly trust the conservatives on the US Supreme Court to play fair.

However, if the case stays out federal court, it won't take long.

Alex, why are you trying to make it sound like the recount is taking an unreasonably long time? The New Hampshire recount in 1974 went half way into 1975 before they called a special election. The 1962 governor recount in Minnesota took into March. Florida 2000 didn't take this long, but, that's right IT WAS STOPPED. Some people think Minnesota has been incredibly orderly and transparent, people such as those of us who have actually paid attention. We found a hole with the rejections of absentee ballots, and that's what's holding things up now, and there has been a whole lot of GOP obstructionism, but nonetheless, that 50 vote margin actually appears accurate, not a best guess.

Alex, could whatever state you're in have handled this as well? How about complaining about New York and Colorado instead. They have only one vote to count and they still don't know who the senators will be. Just who is taking forever?

The main Coleman claim is about rejected absentee ballots. When they went through absentee ballots local election officials decided were wrongly rejected, Coleman asked to consider over 600 ballots from Republican precincts that local officials decided were correctly rejected. They had rejected them when they came in, and when they went looking for errors. Some counties agreed to review the ballots again, and some didn't, and that's Coleman's claim that there wasn't one standard. The weakness is that those counties went further than what the court instructed. Also, the ones that reviewed the ballots rejected them a third time.

Without winning on this issue, Coleman almost surely can't win. If he loses on the double counting allegation, he has no hope, and he's offered no proof, besides looking only at selected DFL-leaning precincts. His spokesman hinted that possibly all results from those precincts could get tossed, putting Coleman in easily.

The last issue is the missing ballots and the use of the machine count, but there are multiple precedents from prior recounts.