So it would be terrible pr for a Supreme Court that believes in States' rights to intervene in a State election that was resolved by the State Court.

But who knows what could happen, not just because the Court is unpredictable. The media is totally corrupt and capable of making any stupid argument, which the public will fall for like a ton of mentally challenged bricks.

The GOP has no conscience. They will do whatever it takes to keep Franken from being seated. They don't care if Minnesota is without a representative in the senate. Party over country is all they care about. If they can't have that seat, no one can.

The appeal will have a large serving of Bush v. Gore, which this court tried to restrict as precedent. Will the right wing of the court recognize that this case could take them down a path -- applying equal protection to election law -- that they explicitly cut off eight years ago?

The reason this whole affair is dragging on is because of something Minnesotans refer to as "Minnesota Nice."

This so-called psychological attribute is thought of as a positive thing by Minnesotans. They view "niceness" as next to godliness, although both are misguided.

AT any rate, most Minnesotans would rather have a hot poker jammed through their eyeball than say or do anything that might seem to be the least bit toward. The kind-hearted Germanic and Nordic populous is bent on congeniality, even when pleasantness is in direct conflict with their best interests.

When Minnesotans don't care for something, instead of saying, "that sucks," they prefer the innocuous, "gee, that's different."

Of course, if you're not a Minnesotan by birth, you can quickly grow frustrated by this seeming self-castration those from the Land of Ten-Thousand Lakes seem to prefer. Its a disease.

There is another theory. Specifically, Minnesota Nice is code for Passive-Aggressive Behavior. Instead of directly confronting Norm Coleman and telling him to hit the road, the typical Minnesotan will sandbag the man, forcing him to spend all his dough, as well as considerable monies provided by the GOP as Coleman presses forward with his suit.

Passive-Aggressive Minnesotans are chuckling with their backs turned toward Coleman and Franken, both of whom are clearly outsiders. Don't let Franken's birthright fool you. He left The Cities for Hollywood and is thus considered a clown or buffoon.

In the end, Minnesota may have two senators. By their standards, it doesn't matter when or how the office will be occupied. The Minnesota mindset is to sabotage any and all efforts by whomever is attempting to stand above the group - in this case either Franken or Coleman.

Minnesotans hate anyone who thinks they are superior and Minnesotans will do whatever it takes to shame and humiliate persons they deem guilty of said attitude. Minnesotans will not, however, do so in a direct manner.

I think you're being a bit harsh. As a Coloradan who's lived in Minnesota, as well as many other places, I'm pretty impressed with how well "Minnesota nice" generally works in day-to-day life. And in fact I think it has a lot to do with how amazingly clean and transparent the Franken-Coleman battle has been, compared to other well-known close elections in recent memory. Seriously. Despite the heated rhetoric, what we're seeing here is a model for how disputed elections should be handled nationwide.

...when the GOP will thoroughly criticize Franken for accomplishing next to nothing his first year as senator (never mind the reason why...).

If a losing GOP candidate has a Republican Governor and/or Secretary of State who won't certify until the legal issues are "settled" and the legal case is an obvious loser can he sue anyway and keep the other candidate out of office as long as possible?

If there's financial support for the losing candidate to do so and even if the cases are dismissed or refused what's to keep this strategy from being used to keep someone from being seated as long as possible?

I'm glad btdenver pointed out what I've been jumping up and down about ever since this ridiculous delaying game began: The Minnesota Republicans are brazen enough to employ the same tactics that they blocked the Democrats from using in Florida after the 2000 presidential election.

While I will be happy to see Coleman out of the picture, I somewhat doubt that Franken would have conceded the race without a legal fight if the tallies were reversed.

As a fairly recent transplant to the Twin Cities I whole heartedly agree with the translation of MN Nice as passive aggressive. While I do think the recount process has been done fairly and openly here, Minnesotans are incredibly passive aggressive and are generally not accepting of anything that comes from outside the state. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the Germanic and Scandinavian heritage, but the long, grey, depressing winters seems to put a mean streak in people too, especially in the pasty white ‘burbs.

I highly doubt Franken would have kept it going this long.

As a Minnesotan I hate to disprove what you said about Minnesota Nice, but, you don't have the first idea of what you're talking about. We have an established legal process. Court cases take a long time, as is known to anybody born before last week. if you superior non-Minnesotans have the magic words to tell Coleman to face reality, please stop mocking and just tell us. If there's some aspect of election law we've completely missed, please enlighten us poor passive-aggressive people.

Jay Weiner in MinnPost.com quoting Raleigh Levine, William Mitchell College of Law's (St. Paul, MN) elections expert, "...if the Minnesota Supreme Court should rule in Franken's favor and rule that there wasn't enough evidence to even raise equal protection and due process issues, then, that would 'insulate their decision from U.S. Supreme Court review.'"

Based on the lines of questioning pursued during oral arguments today, it's quite likely this will be the nature of the ruling of the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Reality is, the Coleman team doesn't seem to have been able to come up with evidence to prove anything. No evidence existed to support their claims because what they speculated MIGHT or MUST have happened simply had no basis in reality but was only wishful thinking.

Hopefully, this will all be over soon (experts here in MN expect a ruling in two weeks or less). We can only hold out further hope that such a ruling orders the governor and secretary of state (now that all appeals covered by the MN Constitution have been exhausted) to issue an election certificate.