4/8: Norm's Road Gets Tougher

Now that the counting of improperly rejected absentee ballots has extended Al Franken's (D) lead over ex-Sen. Norm Coleman (R), liberal bloggers are calling on Coleman to end his legal battle. The netroots are arguing that Coleman has "no good reason" to keep fighting and are warning the GOP that it will do "severe lasting damage" to its future prospects in MN if it prevents the Senate from seating Franken soon. Lefty bloggers are also making a big deal of the fact that a prominent conservative blogger (Ramesh Ponnuru) is now calling on Coleman to concede. However, few (if any) conservative bloggers have joined Ponnuru in urging Coleman to give up the fight, although they are clearly pessimistic about his chances.

In other news, liberal bloggers are delighted that the VT House and Senate voted to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto of a gay marriage bill. Most conservative bloggers haven't commented on the decision, but those who have are either praising it or declining to criticize it. Rod Dreher writes: "I am opposed, as you know, to gay marriage, but if states are going to have it, Vermont just got it the right way: democratically, through legislative action."

Finally, Pres. Obama continues to take significant heat from the netroots after his lawyers adopted some of the George W. Bush admin.'s legal theories in order to conceal information about the controversial NSA surveillance program. To say that Obama's actions thus far have been disappointing to civil libertarians would be a major understatement.

MN SEN: Give It Up, Norm

Now that the counting of improperly rejected absentee ballots has extended Franken's lead over Coleman, liberal bloggers are calling on Coleman to admit defeat:

• Beeton: "Thanks Norm! As a result of the former Senator's lawsuit, these ballots were opened and counted and the result reinforces what we've seen since election day: the more votes that are counted, the more Al Franken's lead grows. Tell Norm to give it up."
• The Reality-Based Community's Jonathan Zasloff: "Republicans now need to consider whether the possibility of delaying Senator Franken for a few more months, or even up to a year, will be good enough if it does the GOP severe lasting damage in the state itself. During the most severe economic crisis since the Great Depression, it's clear that the Republican Party -- and only the Republican Party -- is responsible for Minnesota being underepresented. [...] Does the GOP want to write it off for the next several election cycles?"
• BooMan: "I know that there is no good reason, but why would Norm Coleman bother to appeal now that the remaining ballots have been opened and added 87 votes to Franken's count? He has no hope of overturning the case and the whole process will cost him (and his donors) money. He may even have to pay Franken's court costs if he appeals. And his reputation isn't going to improve among Minnesota's voters. Is Coleman seriously willing to do all this just to delay by six months the day when Al Franken is sworn in as a U.S. Senator? With [AR Sen.] Blanche Lincoln and [PA Sen.] Arlen Specter both saying that they will filibuster the Employee Free Choice Act, there isn't even a pending piece of legislation that might justify excluding Franken for the remainder of this session. The EFCA is killed for this Congress regardless of Franken's situation. Any possibility that Coleman won't appeal? At what point should the Democrats attempt to seat Franken even without a certificate signed by [Gov. Tim] Pawlenty?"
• Moulitsas: "...Republicans ceased making this about justice and democracy a long time ago. At this point, they're merely fighting to prevent that 59th Democratic vote from being seated in the Senate."

MN SEN II: Listen To Your Friend Ramesh -- He's A Cool Dude

Liberal bloggers are also buzzing about the fact that a prominent conservative blogger -- NRO's Ponnuru -- is now calling on Coleman to "give up this fight":

• Zasloff: "Ramesh Ponuru is by most accounts a decent guy, and he showed it today, coming out clearly to say that it's time for Coleman to 'give up this fight.' Yes, yes: it shouldn't have even have gone this far, but you can't accuse Ponuru of just trying to string things out forever."
• Aravosis: "It was bad enough for Coleman when some in the media starting asking if it was time for him to give it up, but with lead conservatives joining the chorus, things are looking increasingly over. The only remaining question is whether Coleman himself realizes that."
• MyDD's Jonathan Singer: "With today's news that Al Franken's lead is actually growing, narrowing Norm Coleman's already extremely narrow path to overtaking Franken, Ponnuru's right. I'm surprised to hear him say this, and I'm not holding my breath for other conservatives to say the same thing (though who would be the next to chime in on this -- David Brooks?). Nevertheless, a semblance of reality from The National Review doesn't often happen."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "[Coleman] has enjoyed considerable patience as he's dragged this process out, especially since he vowed in November to drop out, in the interests of public healing, if he trailed Franken in the vote totals. In light of this general tolerance, Coleman has felt practically no pressure -- from the media, from Democrats, from voters -- to face facts and get out of the way. Just the opposite; he's felt emboldened to keep going. But that's why I find Ponnuru's comment interesting -- it suggests even patience among Coleman's ideological allies is wearing thin."

Meanwhile, conservative blogger Allahpundit is pessimistic about Coleman's chances: "Three months ago I said [Coleman] might as well claw all the way to the bitter end, but we're near the bitter end now and at some point the costs of clawing will exceed the benefits. From what I can tell of this byzantine case, his last legal challenge in state court is essentially an equal protection argument modeled on Bush v. Gore. If that fails then he has to decide whether to start over in federal court, as the Senate GOP leadership wants him to do. I'm pessimistic. [...] If this drags on without any realistic chance of victory, the Democrats get red meat for their narrative of the GOP as an obstructionist 'party of no' and the likelihood of a months-long reprisal court challenge from the left (in [Jim] Tedisco's House race, maybe?) will rise. There are consequences potentially for Coleman, too: If and when Pawlenty moves on bigger things, he might want to run for governor, in which case a gracious concession even at this late date could polish his image."

GAY MARRIAGE: Vermont Strikes A Blow For Equality

Liberal bloggers are excited that the VT House and Senate voted to override Gov. Jim Douglas's veto of a gay marriage bill -- which marks "the first time [that] gay marriage has been legalized in a state through the formal legislative process" (as opposed to court-ordered legalization):

• Atrios: "This is awesome."
• Mother Jones' Kevin Drum: "Score one more for the good guys."
• The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen: "This is a breakthrough moment in the history of social justice, and Vermont -- my adopted home state -- has every reason to be very proud."
• MyDD's Todd Beeton: "What an amazing week this has been for equality."
• digby: "This time they can't say it was judicial activism or executive fiat that 'gave' gay people the right to marry. The legislature did it. (I'm sure they will find some way to make it seem illegitimate anyway, but it's going to be tough. It's democracy in action.)"
• Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas: "Congratulations to Vermont, which is now the fourth state to offer full marriage equality to its residents, and the first to do it via the legislature. Being a [Howard] Dean partisan back in the day, I remember vividly how controversial it was when the state's judiciary imposed civil unions in the state. Remember, Dean had to walk around in a bulletproof vest for some time given the howls of outrage and the death threats that now-mundane move generated. Today, just six years later, civil unions is the 'reasonable' position. Crazy."
• AMERICAblog's John Aravosis: "This is huge. On many levels. First, Iowa and Vermont both making marriage legal within days of each other, that creates the sense of a trend. Second, in Vermont, the legislature made marriage legal. Not the courts, the legislature. Why does this matter? Because Republicans have been arguing for years that the problem with gay marriage is that THE COURTS are making these decisions, rather than the people via their elected representatives. Well, today the people made the decision to legalize same-gender marriages through their elected representatives. What will Republicans say now? We've met their test, and passed. Either the GOP simply hates gays, or they need to admit that we won, fair and square, even by the rules they set down."

Meanwhile, The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan thinks the rightroots have been oddly quiet about the news from VT: "I'm struck by the stunned silence on the bloggy right to Vermont's momentous decision to pass marriage equality. The reason, I suspect, is that the anti-gay right has placed a lot of eggs in the judicial activism argument. They felt safest there, on procedural grounds, even if the logic of their position brought them into a very radical originalist jurisprudence that would largely eviscerate the social and cultural landscape of modern America (on race, particularly)."

GAY MARRIAGE II: Better The Legislatures Than The Courts

Most conservative bloggers haven't commented on the VT legislature's decision, but the few who have seem to accept it:

• Glenn Reynolds: "Though I've argued elsewhere before (coauthor [David] Kopel didn't entirely agree) that judicially recognized gay marriage is reasonable, there's no question that, politically, this is something that's much better done by legislatures than by courts. The big question is whether Obama will have the guts to push for a repeal of the [Bill] Clinton-signed Defense Of Marriage Act. Given Obama's lukewarm support for gay marriage, and his strongest supporters' role in voting in Proposition 8 in California, I kind of doubt that he will. Without that repeal, of course, Vermont marriages won't be respected in many other states."
• Belief Net's Rod Dreher: "I am opposed, as you know, to gay marriage, but if states are going to have it, Vermont just got it the right way: democratically, through legislative action. Of course it didn't start that way in Vermont, but that's how it's ended. A social experiment as radical as same-sex marriage should not be attempted without democratic consensus. Vermont has that now, and even though I think they've done the wrong thing, at least the elected representatives of the people have done this."
• Hot Air's Allahpundit: "[Vermont is] the first state to [legalize gay marriage] the old-fashioned way, i.e. legislatively, instead of by court ruling. [...] Normally this is where I'd gauge whether a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision is feasible or not, but since Vermont's gone off-script I'm without an angle here."

Other righty bloggers are arguing that the VT legislature wouldn't have legalized gay marriage had the VT Supreme Court not "forced the issue" in 1999:

• NRO's Matthew J. Franck: "Vermont has now adopted same-sex marriage, but has done so democratically, with the legislature's override of the governor's veto of a bill. This is how things ought to be done in a democracy, as I argue at The Public Discourse today. But let's not forget that the history of Vermont's struggle over this issue goes back ten years, to the state supreme court's decision in Baker v. Vermont, when the judges illegitimately instructed the legislature to choose between full-fledged marriage or civil unions with all the essential privileges of marriage. [...] Would same-sex marriage have arrived in Vermont in 2009 without the state supreme court forcing the issue in 1999? It's impossible to be certain, but I think probably not. So this is still, in part, a story of the leverage that judicial usurpation can produce in generating social change that legitimate representation of the people would continue to resist."
• AmSpec Blog's W. James Antle, III: "Judges played a role even here -- the civil unions regime was judicially imposed on a state without any mechanism for the people to vote directly; it is highly unlikely that this would have come to pass had that not been the case [...]"

OBAMA: Taking Heat From The Netroots

Liberal bloggers are blasting the Obama admin. for adopting the Bush admin.'s controversial legal theories in order to conceal information about the NSA's surveillance program:

• Salon's Glenn Greenwald: "Obama has repeatedly done the exact opposite of what he vowed he would do: rather than 'seek full accountability for past offenses,' he has been working feverishly to block such accountability, by embracing the same radical Bush/Cheney views and rhetoric regarding presidential secrecy powers that caused so much controversy and anger for the last several years."
• BooMan: "The Department of Justice is making insane and insupportable claims of executive power (.pdf) in an effort to prevent the public from learning the true scope of Bush's illegal warrantless surveillance. They are even making arguments that are broader than anything (except the Unitary Executive nonsense) that the Bush administration attempted in court. It is extremely disappointing, it is unjustifiable, and it is dangerous. If the Obama administration's position prevails we will have fourth amendment rights but no means of protecting them."
• dday: "I agree with President Obama that torture hasn't made us safer, but the continued failure to deal with what the Bush Administration has done CONTINUES to cripple our political influence around the world and our moral capability to lead. [...] It's not just about ending these practices. By refusing to investigate them, and even actively invoking claims like the 'state secrets privilege' to shield any possibility of a reckoning, the Administration implicates itself. Because they must use the same extreme claims of executive power, in some cases more so, to facilitate the cover-up."
• Daily Kos' mcjoan: "In three separate cases in as many months, the Obama Justice Department has used the same arguments that the Bush administration Justice Department used to attempt to stop judicial review of extraordinary rendition and warrantless wiretapping."

Aravosis thinks this could become a political liability for Obama: "I'm getting a number of emails about this. People are pissed. After all, Obama did promise to filibuster FISA, once upon a time."

THOUGHT OF THE DAY: The Role Of The Courts

Think Progress' Matthew Yglesias agrees with conservatives who argue that courts have played a role in pushing the public to accept gay marriage:

"The interesting thing about the Vermont legislature's strong vote in favor of gay marriage is that I think it illustrates that far from provoking a backlash against gay rights, pro-equality legal decisions on this front tend to drive the pace of change forward. One factor is that the more people see gay equality in practice, the less frightening it looks. But another factor is the dynamics of political leaders. This isn't really a topic that politicians want to deal with, even politicians with progressive views and progressive constituents. They would just as soon focus on something else. But a court case smokes the politicians out, and forces the better ones among the bunch to take up the cause and do the right thing.

That, in turn, can help push public opinion forward. Once people see political leaders who they respect debating the issue, it looks like a 'mainstream' topic. And when that happens, for a lot of folks basic values of fairness wind up trumping the fact that they've lived their whole lives with the rules being a certain way and it seems 'unnatural' to change them."

LEST WE FORGET: Historic Senator Robert Byrd Imploded In Controlled Demolition

From The Onion:

"WASHINGTON -- Thousands gathered Monday to watch the demolition of Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 91, who was torn down after nearly five decades as a prominent Beltway fixture. At 2:30 p.m., the once-modern senator was strategically detonated with explosive charges, causing him to collapse in a cascading succession that drew loud cheers from those in attendance. 'Sen. Byrd has been a beloved Washington institution for as long as most people in this city can remember,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of the longest-serving senator in U.S. history, who was marked for implosion due to his leaky, dilapidated exterior and his failure to meet congressional health and safety standards. 'But alas, the time has come to make way for a new generation of leadership.' Sources reported that commemorative pieces of the legislator will be available for sale in the Capitol gift shop."