We had the first round of pretrial arguments in front of the ECC (Election Contest Court), our first sighting of Judge Kurt Marben, and 2 lawyers new to the scene. (And if you look at their qualifications/background you might see which side chose more wisely.)
We also still have Franken +225 and Harry Reid giving Al some Cliff's Notes of Senate committees, bills, motions & such so that WHEN he is seated he doesn't have to be seated for long but can get up and start running with his colleagues.
Whew. Tight schedule getting this diary out: late shift yesterday and choir practice last night ran late, then early shift this morning. I will try to be online but the computer in the wine & spirits dept. was having serious issues yesterday....so serious that a tech support person was supposed to come visit us. They didn't make it so today presumably. There were deep whispers about "fried motherboard" and "hash brown hard drive" so maybe I'll get breakfast out of it but I may not be able to comment until lunch.
To the fold, the ballots, the courtroom, and beyond....
Election Contest Court (ECC) IX
Just after 10am the ECC let it be known video cameras WOULD BE ALLOWED in for Wednesday afternoon's pre-trial arguments. Our new favorite the UpTake was there but local CBS affiliate WCCO had a better feed; so did KARE11 news and CNN (all at their respective dot coms.)
And why? Well the shoestring operation of the Uptake was at the end of its shoestring. As Jennifer pointed out, WCCO & KARE11 both have satellite trucks; THE UpTake is working off its wireless card picking up and sharing bandwidth inside the room. Here's a case where bigger, better tech wins---but the UpTake had a MUCH better liveBlog, so there!
Uptake blogger:
[Comment From hopemonger]
if al gore would have won we'd all have internet2 by now and bandwidth wouldn't be a issue anymore
Hearing started on time at 2:30 and went about 1 hour & 10min. Subject: Franken's Motion to Dismiss (take Coleman' entire soft taco case and let it melt in the nearest snowbank.) Arguing in favor of Operation Snowbank (both open and closing; Coleman's side got to do rebuttal in the middle of an A-B-A pattern) was Franken lawyer David Burman-- a new name, but apparently not new himself to election standoffs. NW US Kossacks can fill us in on background but Burman was involved in the lengthy 2004 Washington State Governor's recount between Gregoire(D and now governor) and Rossi(R-Fishkill, and I don't mean New Jersey). That race ended up in court and was finally settled by a margin of 133 IIRC, so for Burman +225 must feel like a near landslide. Sounds like the right kind of guy to be arguing your side, and...extra bonus points....reinforces the Reich-wingers paranoia about a Vast Left Wing Conspiracy!
("Soros and Kos have this flying squad that goes around the country, staying in the basements of ACORN people. They steal elections like governors and senators and why won't the real conservative fight back instead of making nice and caving all the time? McConnell and Cornyn are such wimps for not filing for impeachment of Obama! I mean its been 48 hours! What more do they need than an improper oath of office?...")
(Burman: winner, 2003 Washington State Bar Association Award of Merit--- their highest honor; 2005 Goldmark Award for legal work on behalf of the poor. Areas of practice: Constitutional law, civil rights, intellectual property. University of Wyoming, BA, 1974; Georgetown University Law, JD, 1977; clerked for US Supreme Byron White.)
General impression was Burman was very matter of fact, plain-spoken and kept away from most Latin/legal jargon (lawyer occupational hazard I'm sure; "Et tu, Brute?" was heard on the way to court I think). He did needle the Coleman side by reminding the ECC that at certain (weak) Coleman points the law "specifically requires that degree of specificity." (I suppose the Coleman side would consider the point "picky" but the law is full of nits to be picked at, Norm, including some very specific ones.) 3 judge panel pretty quiet through Burman's opening but a Motion to Dismiss is pretty drastic.
Uptake bloggers:
As an attorney I can add my 2 cents that this attorney is doing an excellent job.
Did I mention this guy is good? "One set of humans looking over the shoulders of another set of humans"... nice.
(AHA! All that "human" talk is an obvious sign of anti-lizard people bias by Team Franken!)
Team Coleman also sent in a new face: attorney James Langdon, part of a big Mpls Law firm Dorsey & Whitney. (Langdon: Northwestern U, BA, 1979; Columbia Law School, JD, 1984; Areas: Intellectual property, financial industry: banking, bonds, warranty law; arbitrator for NASDAQ and NY Stock Exchange). I'm not seeing how his qualifications/ background help his case.....this lawyer for this case seems like (you'll excuse me) jury-rigged and makeshift.
Langdon had a tougher time of it on rebuttal. Both women on the panel (Hayden & Reilly) were vocal and questioning. Langdon seemed to spend a lot of time tearing down the Franken case (which is his job for Pete's sake) but doing it NOT by statute law or case law or precedents (which seems to me in a pre-trial is how you do it) but mostly by attacking Burman and Franken "Alice in Wonderland"; "3 card monte on the streets of New York"; "Listening to Burman's lengthy and erudite speech..."(as in dmaning with faint praise); " human abacus"..........
Bloggers were NOT impressed:
I don't think he (Langdon) should be referring to Alice in Wonderland unless he's looking in the mirror.
[Comment From Ian]
I'm guessing he means anyone who reads the WSJ
[Comment From FrankenRulez]
~500 words of yakking from Coleman: 0 content, 0 legal force.
And somebody who maybe read my diary yesterday:
Surely the onus is on the Coleman lawyer to provide some evidence that what they're seeking would change the result. This is ice fishing without a hole in the ice and without an ice hut.
Judge Marben was fairly quiet all day but Denise Reilly and Elizabeth Hayden were pushing Langdon for specifics and some pointed questions.
"How does your (Coleman) request now (to open up all 12,000 rejected ballots; or maybe Tony Trimble's 6-7000 from yesterday) jibe with their earlier agreement that the smaller pool (1600 or whatever) were the "ones" that were improperly rejected?" from either Judge Hayden or Reilly
Things got, well, strained in the courtroom; on the UpTake's live blog things were, well, BLOG-like! No pie fights but mighty.... open:
I'm trying my best to listen to this objectively but Coleman's lawyer's arguments just make no sense. I think he's the one in Wonderland.
Someone lowered the ultimate boom on Langdon's performance:
[Comment From SM]
Is Bush arguing this case?
Then Burman got to do his rebuttal and everyone was impressed: tone of voice, argumentation, backing the right candidate, and, you know, the LAW:
[Comment From WobegonGal]
It seems Burman is bringing up specific MN law to back him up. Compare that to Coleman's lawyer, who couldn't state specific illegalities or errors that would benefit Coleman's numbers.
AND......then it was over, recessed and "we will consider our decision." They didn't grant the Motion to Dismiss (I didn't expect them to) but they didn't throw out the Motion either. To use an old phrase I think they're putting it in a lockbox with 3 keys. They DID ask for a quick meeting with attorneys from both sides for "scheduling", which may mean someting or nothing given Friday there is already a "pre-trial conference" on everybody's Blackberry and/or day planner.
2) Coming Attraction: Friday in Court with the ECC
Wednesday was Franken's Motion to Dismiss, a sort of "Lets see if we can spike this thing in one swoop and avoid the whole trial." Friday will see the same thing in reverse: Friday, 9:00amCT the ECC hears arguments in a pre-trial Motion for Summary Judgment.
This is the COLEMAN spiking effort to get the ECC to hear their side is so true and pure and the Coleman case is so strong, self-evident, self-starting, self-opening, self-arguing, self-closing and just all-around Sarah Palin You betcha WONDERFUL full of maverick-y Goodness!... that the Court might as well save everybody a lot of bother and just rule on the spot for Coleman.
They will be on the other side (I think) of the A-B-A pattern, so Coleman's lawyers will open and close, with Team Franken getting the rebuttal sandwich in the middle. Will we see Langdon and Burman again? Or some of the other legal teams for either side?
Oh and what are the odds the ECC will grant Motion for Summary Judgment? I thought Franken's Motion to Dismiss was no better than 10%, so the fact that the ECC didn't throw it out en toto is a partial victory in my book. But grant Coleman a Summary Judgment? HAHAHAHA.......there are undiscovered subatomic particles that doubt the existence of micro-subatomic particles which still consider the micro-subatomics more likely than Coleman gets a Summary on his behalf.....HAHAHA.
But there are 3 things to watch for: 1) can Burman or whoever is speaking for Franken really keep from bursting out laughing during the Coleman open or close? 2) can the Judges also stay "sober as a judge" (in the non-laughing sense)? 3) Will any part of the Motion for Summary Judgment be retained.....or putting it the other way, will the panel throw out the Motion for Summary completely?
Tune in tomorrow, 9:00amCT. Choice of media outlets; not sure if TheUpTake will overcome their technical challenges. (For Friday the UpTake will probably be broadcasting via Mike McIntee's "MacGyver" model wire-rim glasses linked to his Swiss Army pocketknife magnifying lens and iPhone FireWire Port and running the signal through an Apple Newton codec hack (v. 12.6!) and beamed out to a waiting world of Kossacks through 11 twist ties from the iphone/ Doxa wristwatch solar charged battery wired to a window screen in a 4th floor janitor's closet.)
Thursday Morning Minnesota Media
Diaz & Doyle's Star Trib story http://www.startribune.com/... quotes Franken lawyer Burman eloquently defended the election process while making the case against BOTH Coleman AND the Lizard people ("we will fight them on the beaches, and in the hedgerows, and the courtrooms...we will never surrender! We could fight them by conventional means. That would take years, cost millions of lives. Or we could make this.....")
......"Lawyers for Franken accused Coleman of launching a "fishing expedition" in his challenge of the recount. They urged the three-judge panel to dismiss the lawsuit seeking a wide-ranging court fight over the outcome.
"Ballots are filled out by human beings," said David Burman, a lawyer for Franken. "Elections are run by human beings. ... At some point, Minnesota has to say, 'We've done the best job that human beings can reasonably do.'"
I LOVE the humble, respectful tone of that...
Still, on some points Burman was arguing the US Senate and not the ECC, was the place to finally settle these things. Not sure I agree. A) there needs to be an end. B) The Senate can decide its members. C) There is MN law that seems pretty clear here about this court.
There is something to Langdon's argument:
Coleman's attorney James Langdon told the court that Minnesota law was designed precisely so that the court could look at issues that could not be fully examined during the recount.
"We believe that now is the time and here is the place — this court — for this long election process to be concluded," Langdon told the three judges.
So why not A) seat Franken provisionally; B) move this case through the ECC; C) tell Coleman & Co. that "legally rejected absentee ballots in piles 1-4 are just that, properly rejected for legal reasons by the local officials empowered to do so. They made 1346 mistakes and the Supremes wanted to let them correct those. You 2 camps only thought 954 mistaken ballots should be corrected. We the ECC think the other 392 should be fixed too. Go do it. Now what?"
But thats just me....but who knows? Maybe the ECC reads Daily Kos too (but only for the articles!)
OK I'd better get this up. For now thats all the latest from yust southeast of Lake Wobegon. Happy commenting to all.
Shalom.