Al Versus Norm, Part 275

The Senate Race That Will Not End came much, much closer to actually ending this week with a major ruling against Norm Coleman.

The Minnesota election court has just handed down a very important ruling that will determine the entire course of the rest of this trial -- and it's very bad news for Norm Coleman, cutting off multiple avenues he was pursuing in order to get more votes for himself thrown into the count.

Yesterday the court heard arguments regarding the campaigns' positions on 19 categories of rejected absentee ballot envelopes, and whether the voters should be cut sufficient slack as to allow the ballot in. The court has now handed down a ruling on 13 of those categories -- and it's an emphatic No.

Coleman has currently been allowed to argue for the inclusion of about 4,800 ballots, which were selected from the total pool of over 11,000 rejected votes and just so happen to come largely from his own strongholds. What this ruling means is that he is going to have to significantly chop that list down for the remainder of this trial.

This is not the final word on this question -- Coleman will almost certainly appeal it -- but it's been a very rough day.

When Coleman finally runs out of avenues for his bullshit arguments and has to take it to the Supremes, I hope they tell him "Sorry, this is a state matter. You lose, sir. Good day."