None of this changes the fact that as a senator
Al Franken is not legitimate. The election was stolen at the precinct level, during the recount, and during the post-election litigation.
Never forget the role that
ACORN played in this.
As ACORN-aligned Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, a former community organizer, presided over the vote-counting process, Coleman's original lead dwindled. The morning after the election, Coleman led Franken by 725 votes. Over the next five days, Coleman's lead had dwindled to just 221. Election officials claimed they had to correct typos on vote tally sheets and that these corrections gave Franken 435 votes and took 69 away from Coleman.
There were mountains of other irregularities which I'm not going to bother detailing here and somehow in the end Franken came out on top.
Ritchie was elected Minnesota secretary of state in part because of outside help. He defeated two-term incumbent Republican Mary Kiffmeyer in 2006 after receiving an endorsement and financial assistance for his run from a below-the-radar non-federal "527″ group called the
Secretary of State Project. The entity can accept unlimited financial contributions and doesn't have to disclose them publicly until well after the election.
The founders of the Secretary of State Project, which claims to advance "election protection" but only backs Democrats, religiously believe that right-leaning secretaries of state helped the GOP steal the presidential elections in Florida in 2000 (Katherine Harris) and in Ohio in 2004 (Ken Blackwell).
The secretary of state candidates the group endorses sing the same familiar song about electoral integrity issues: Voter fraud is largely a myth, vote suppression is used widely by Republicans, cleansing the dead and fictional characters from voter rolls should be avoided until embarrassing media reports emerge, and anyone who demands that a voter produce photo identification before pulling the lever is a racist, democracy-hating Fascist.
In 2006, the Minnesota ACORN Political Action Committee endorsed Ritchie and donated to his campaign. According to the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board, contributors to Ritchie's campaign included liberal philanthropists George Soros, Drummond Pike, and Deborah Rappaport, along with veteran community organizer Heather Booth, a Saul Alinsky disciple who co-founded the Midwest Academy, a radical ACORN clone. One article on Ritchie's 2006 campaign website bragged about the fine work ACORN did in Florida to pass a constitutional amendment to raise that state's minimum wage.
It was revealed during
a panel discussion at the Democratic Party's convention in Denver last summer that the
Democracy Alliance, a financial clearinghouse created by Soros and insurance magnate Peter B. Lewis, approved the Secretary of State Project as a grantee. The Democracy Alliance aspires to create a permanent political infrastructure of nonprofits, think tanks, media outlets, leadership schools, and activist groups-a kind of "vast left-wing conspiracy" to compete with the conservative movement. It has brokered more than $100 million in grants to liberal nonprofits including ACORN. The aforementioned Pike and Rappaport, who gave money to Ritchie's campaign, are members of the Democracy Alliance.
According to IRS 8872 disclosure forms, the Secretary of State Project received donations from Democracy Alliance members including Soros, Rob Stein, Gail Furman, and Susie Tompkins Buell.
Meanwhile, for conservatives, it hardly needs to be pointed out that this
Frankenstein is a fundamentally unserious and untested figure worthy of ridicule. After being isolated in the echo chamber of the entertainment-media-academia complex where he got nothing but praise for decades, Franken is quite unsuited for the world outside. He cannot tolerate criticism and characteristically responds to it with over-the-top vitriolic attacks. He is the living embodiment of all the horrible things that conservatives fairly or unfairly impute to DailyKos bloggers.
A professional comedian originally, Al Franken remains a joke.
After the Minnesota Supreme Court unanimously rejected his lawsuit today, Republican Norm Coleman graciously conceded the bitterly disputed contest over the second U.S. Senate seat for Minnesota.
