Senator Al Franken!

MINNEAPOLIS (REUTERS) -Democrat Al Franken will be declared the winner of the tight U.S. Senate contest in Minnesota, emerging from a ballot recount with a slim margin over Republican Norm Coleman, state officials said on Sunday.

But the party of smaller government wants the courts to continue to intervene until something falls in their favor. Remember 2000?

But Coleman, the incumbent, has asked Minnesota's supreme court to require that a few hundred additional absentee ballots be included in the recount -- and he could then ask the court to investigate the contest all over again.

...Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, [who's job it was to oversee the recount process] said unless the supreme court acts on Coleman's request and orders more ballots to be counted, he will reconvene the state's Canvassing Board on Monday to certify Franken as the winner of the November 4 contest.

Even so, Coleman's campaign said it will likely challenge the result, which would require the state supreme court's chief justice to appoint three judges to investigate its claims.

Now of course you know that the wingnuts will be calling this a "stolen" election because... well... because every eligible vote was counted! Plus they need a new weekly thing to bitch about. But the fact is that if the Minnesota Supreme Court becomes involved and overturns the hand recount required by the state in an election this close, it will be the exact opposite. Franken will be the one who'll have gotten robbed. It makes you wonder what these last four years would have been like had John Kerry stuck to his "every vote must be counted" rhetoric and become President in 2004.

Franken is supposed to be certified at 2:30pm this afternoon, with Republican Senators vowing they will not seat him and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is asking Coleman to concede.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say, "Congratulations, Senator Franken."