When morons elect one of their own...

It's often said that America gets the leadership that it deserves. But dammit, I don't deserve a lazy fool like Al Franken (D)--MN, and neither do most of the readers here or the honest hard-working people of red-state America.

He's good enough, he's smart enough, but doggone it — he just can't keep his eyes open for Senate confirmation hearings.

Al Franken, the onetime comedian and current Democratic senator from Minnesota, used his position on the vaunted Judiciary Committee on Tuesday to doodle a lifelike bust of Sen. Jeff Sessions, the committee's ranking Republican, as Sessions raked Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan over the coals.

But it wasn't all fun and games for the former "Saturday Night Live" star — Franken also found time to get in a good nap during the first day of hearings Monday.

Live video from Senate chambers shows a woozy Franken getting some much-needed shuteye as Kagan explains her intellectual approach to life and teachings in her opening statement to the Senate.

But Franken, the most junior member of the Judiciary Committee, had already been forced to sit through an endless round of statements from his senior colleagues on the 19-member panel as they droned on and on and on in the crowded Washington chamber.

When it finally came time for Kagan herself to speak, Franken had apparently had enough.

"I've learned that we make progress by listening to each other," said Kagan hopefully, as Franken slowly closed his eyes and appeared to doze off.

"I've learned that we come closest to getting things right when we approach every person and every issue with an open mind," she said, Franken now apparently lost to the living.

Kagan herself has expressed a profound scorn for Senate confirmation hearings, which she described as empty "lessons of cynicism" — a "vapid and hollow charade" that replace important legal discussions with repetitive platitudes.

It is unclear whether Franken shares that sentiment about the hearings or was simply bored by the proceedings. Sen. Franken's office did not return calls or e-mails seeking comment.

Thanks Minnesota, you morons. You've made sure that any important decisions that we as a country need to be make will be made based in part not by logic or historical knowledge but just by a whim of a lackadaisical and disinterested buffoon.

Sadly, this is more proof of my theory that some segments of this country just can't be trusted with the vote.

Just when I thought that this week couldn't get any better...Air America finally folds

Yep...on the heels of America giving the Obama/Progressive movement the finger in Massachusetts by electing Republican Scott Brown to Ted "the swimmer" Kennedy's old senate seat and the Supreme Court striking down much of the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance law as unconstitutional, Air America, the radio network established to blast liberal hate for President Bush and American values in general into the airwaves, has finally declared bankruptcy and will shut down for good. Never able to make money on advertising (for the simple reason that it never drew any significant audience...ane who wants to listen to that crap?)and financed by a ring of wealthy liberals and the theft of funds from at least one children's organization, the network that gave voice to such miserable haters as Randi Rhodes, Janeane Garafalo, Rachel Maddow and Al Franken is now going the way of all of those liberal investors' dollars...right down the toilet.

Of course in their press release, they claim that they failed because...well...because all of radio is down right now. It's not because they suck or because no one wanted to listen to them spew hate and derision at everyone else who wasn't to the left of Marx. Of course not. I mean, anyone can see that Limbaugh, Hannity, Ingraham, Beck and the other conservative hosts are losing advertising revenues, too. Oh, wait--no they aren't. The conservative shows are doing just fine and actually picking up more stations. So maybe it is just the nimrods at Air America who couldn't attract an audience or compete in the arena of ideas. That free market's a bitch, isn't it, lefties?

BWAHAHAHAHAHAAHA!!!!!!

Dems appear likely to seat "Senator Vote Fraud"

Well if at first you don't win an election, recount it over and over, adding "newly discovered" ballots (that are all coincidentally and quite improbably for one candidate) and let a bunch of openly partisan wonks handle the recount while excluding observers. If that doesn't do it, look at all of the improperly filled out ballots that were rejected and let those same wonks divine the intent of the voter.

That's what the Dems did in Washington State in 2004 to seat Governor Chris Gregoire and it's what they're doing now in Wisconsin to take the electoral victory away from Senator Norm Coleman and award it improperly to foul-mouthed jack-ass and Air America scam participant Al Franken.

The Wall Street Journal has a good run-down on it here. I'm going to re-print it entirely here just to make sure that it's always available, either as a reminder of what they tried to do, or, if they're successful, as a permanent indictment of the Democratic Party.

By TRENT ENGLAND
Olympia, Wash.

Sorry Minnesota, but the sequel is never as good as the original.

For those who watched the Washington State governor's race recounts in 2004, the ongoing recount drama in Minnesota is just another rehash of the same script -- albeit for a U.S. Senate seat that might put Democrats one vote away from a filibuster-proof majority.

Four years ago in Washington, Democratic Party candidate Christine Gregoire lost the first count, lost the recount, and then won a second, highly dubious recount by 133 votes. In Minnesota, where Sen. Norm Coleman is defending his seat against comedian-turned-candidate Al Franken, the first count showed Mr. Coleman up 725 votes. Today, thanks to another dubious recount, Mr. Franken is apparently in the lead.

Razor-thin margins like these put election systems to the test. As the old proverb goes, they are a crisis and an opportunity. Yet the crises keep coming and the opportunities continue to be squandered. It's time to learn the lessons of the recount wars and address the systemic flaws in our election processes. Indeed, the price of a continued decline in voter confidence is too troubling for most Americans to comprehend.

In Washington's 2004 gubernatorial election, at least 1,392 felons illegally voted, 252 provisional ballots were wrongly counted, and 19 votes were cast from beyond the grave, according to Chelan County Superior Court Judge John Bridges's opinion in a case brought by Dino Rossi, Ms. Gregoire's Republican opponent.

Election workers in King County (where Seattle is located) "enhanced" 55,177 ballots to make it easier for tabulating machines to read them -- even though the county had failed to establish written procedures as required by state law. In some cases, individual election workers modified voted ballots using black felt markers and white-out tape while observers were kept at a distance that prevented meaningful observation. Nine separate times, King County "discovered" and counted unsecured ballots.

Nevertheless, Ms. Gregoire lost to Mr. Rossi by 261 votes.

An automatic recount reduced Mr. Rossi's lead to just 42 votes. The Gregoire campaign demanded a state-wide hand recount, a time-consuming and expensive process that state law says the challenger must pay for (if the result changes, the challenger is reimbursed). Big labor unions joined with far-left groups like MoveOn.org to put up the money for Ms. Gregoire's third-time's-the-charm ballot shuffle.

During the recount process, five counties found new, uncounted, unsecured ballots and added them into their totals. King County officials admitted publicly that ballot reconciliation reports were falsified in an attempt to conceal variations between the number of votes counted and the number of voters who voted (two elections workers were disciplined as a result).

By the end, 3,539 votes more than the number of voters who voted were tabulated. Four other swing counties provided an additional 4,880 mystery ballots. Ms. Gregoire was the victor by a margin of 133 votes.

That margin -- 133 votes -- happens to be the same number of ballots that Minneapolis election officials are currently missing. The initial vote tally in one Democrat-leaning precinct counted 133 more ballots than officials have been able to find for the Senate recounts. The Minnesota canvassing board decided on Dec. 12 to allow Minneapolis simply to ignore the recount and go with the original number. This provided a 46-vote boost for Mr. Franken, about the same as his current projected lead. The board also "requested" that counties reconsider rejected absentee ballots, a new and novel part of the recount procedure that is also expected to favor Mr. Franken.

Something is wrong when a victorious candidate owes more thanks to vote counters than to voters. Such was the case in Washington in 2004, and Minnesota is poised to follow in its footsteps in 2008.

It need not be this way. After 2004, the Evergreen Freedom Foundation produced a 42-page report offering a dozen solutions. While a few were implemented, most were simply ignored by officials content to cross their fingers and hope the next close election is in someone else's jurisdiction.

Some reforms are simply educational and cultural; others are fundamental and essential. Election officials need to understand current federal and state laws and regulations governing the entire election process, including recounts. Those responsible for elections must also inculcate a culture of compliance among election staff, including temporary staff hired at election time.

From the moment they are printed, ballots should be isolated and guarded and their chain of custody recorded. Officials with rule-making authority are responsible for establishing processes that clarify how ballots are to be handled, stored, counted, and, if necessary, recounted.

Most important to maintaining and increasing public faith in elections is improving openness, especially leveraging Internet technology to make anyone a potential election observer. The Minneapolis Star Tribune's project to put all 6,700 contested ballots in the Senate race on the Web, so people can compare their own judgments to those of the canvassing board, is but one example. Election officials who have nothing to hide should be putting as much as possible online as quickly as possible.

Citizens and the media might also take a closer look at some of the individuals and organizations involved in monkeying with and even overturning elections. Both Mr. Franken and Ms. Gregoire were endorsed by the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now -- Acorn -- a group under investigation in several states for suspected voter registration chicanery.

The man overseeing the Senate recount, Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, was also endorsed by Acorn, and his election campaign in 2006 was funded in part by something called "The Secretary of State Project." This latter group, founded by MoveOn.org's former grass-roots director, exists solely to install far-left candidates as secretaries of state in swing states.

Close elections will always stir controversy. They will often require recounts to validate the results. Yet the Washington and Minnesota recounts offer cautionary tales. The democratic process is too important to be disregarded until a virtual tie forces us to pay attention. Regardless of which candidates win our elections, the voters -- not the vote counters -- should win every time.

Mr. England is director of the Citizenship and Governance Center at the Evergreen Freedom Foundation.

If they get away with this again, it will repudiate the entire electoral system and show us all that the idea fair elections is a bygone concept. Hopefully the GOP will grow a spine and find some way to stop Franken from being seated, but failing that, the people of Minnesota should probably be barred from any more national elections until they can pull their heads out of their asses. Remember that these are the same idiot voters who thought that it would be funny to elect a pro wrestler as their governor. Clearly many of them don't take voting seriously, and the fact that they allowed the Democrats to put Franken on the ballot and push him into the Senate in their name indicates that the people in that state just can't be trusted with ballots any more.

And one thing is certain concerning Franken. I'll never call him "Senator".

More here at The Shekel.

A Gay-basher in the Senate next year? It's OK--he's a Liberal.

Well actually it's not OK with anyone not a lefty-whack-job supporter of hate-spewing Al Franken, one of the top dogs at the oh-so-corrupt and oh-so-bankrupt Air America radio network. Fresh from pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars from the network that was only able to put him on the air by ripping off the funds of the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club of New York,(Read about the scam and indictments here.) Franken says that he wants to run for a seat in the US Senate. Of course he wants to run as a Democrat, no doubt in the footsteps of that other great Dem humanitarian Senator Robert Byrd, (D)--KKK. And like former Klansman Byrd, Franken has a documented history of hate speech towards a minority group. According to these reports from Gay Patriot and Lloydletta's Nooz, Franken used to think that it was funny to mock gays and tell anyone who'd listen that he wanted them all dead. This is a quote from Franken when the Hasty Puddling show reportedly refused to put a gay-themed skit that he'd written on stage:

I just don't like homosexuals. If you ask me, they're all homosexuals in the Pudding. Hey, I was glad when that Pudding homosexual got killed in Philadelphia.

Real nice. Real tolerant. And so typical of the Left that this gets ignored by the media, gay-rights groups and the Democratic Party.

But it's not going to be ignored here. Al Franken's foul comments will remain here and on sites of other people who are dedicated to making sure that vile stuff like this continues to be a part of Franken's baggage. This guy in the Senate? I hope not. But Byrd is old and the Dems'll be shopping for a replacement bigot before too much longer so I guess that anything's possible, especially if the rest of us let it happen.