Brad Friedman Byon 3/12/2009, 4:18pm PT

Imagine, if you will, that the situation had been reversed, and that it had been Norm Coleman who was found to have received more votes than Al Franken for the U.S. Senate seat in MN.

Imagine if Al Franken's campaign, as opposed to Norm Coleman's, had now been found to have disclosed the names and credit card numbers of their donors on their own website, where they also inappropriately stored the unencrypted three-digit security codes of contributor credit cards, violated state law by failing to notify anybody about it, and then lied about it.

Imagine if everything --- actually, if any one of the dozens of improprieties --- that Norm Coleman has pulled since the November election, had been done by Al Franken instead.

Might Sean Hannity be repeating, over and over, something akin to the following for three hours a day on the radio (over our publicly-owned airwaves), and during his hour-long solo Fox "News" freak show, five days a week??...

"The shameful sore loser Democrat Al Franken, who clearly lost the election against Norm Coleman, needs to move on and stop obstructing the people's business in the U.S. Senate with his endless frivolous lawsuit while we have two wars going on and an economy in shambles. He should be in jail, frankly, for fraudulently attempting to overthrow the will of the voters of Minnesota. "Incredibly, during his sore loser challenge to Coleman's clear victory --- where all of the legally cast ballots were counted transparently for everyone in the state to see, and then certified unanimously by a bi-partisan panel of both Democrats and Republicans --- Franken has repeatedly lied, broken the law, and now he's even been found to have given away the private names and credit card numbers of all of his donors on his website. "When the trial began --- and it seems like months ago --- Franken lied about his website crashing to try and play the victim and get sympathy from his supporters. That backfired on him. "Then he was found by a bi-partisan panel of judges --- on day one of the trial --- to have actually doctored up and altered evidence presented to the court in his frivilous case. "He put admitted forgers on the stand, and tried to get their ballots and those of convicted felons who voted from prison illegally counted. He was found to have hidden witnesses and email from the Republican, Norm Coleman, the clear winner in the election, and he even had to be fined by the judges for his outrageous and illegal antics in the court room. "And now he was found to have broken the law by illegally and carelessly exposing the private credit cards and security numbers of thousands of his unwitting supporters. And then he lied about it. "Doesn't Minnesota deserve better than this? "I remember well when Franken had embarrassed himself, by prematurely announcing himself the winner, before all of the people's ballots were actually counted, and he even criticized Coleman, at the time, for not getting out the way, by claiming that if it were him, he "would step back" rather than ask for a full count all of all the ballots, suggesting it would be a waste of tax-payer money...Let's play that video-tape, it's just 25 seconds... "So, who's wasting tax-payer money now, sore loser Al Franken? "Franken is a disgrace and an embarrassment and needs to step aside to let Norm Coleman, the people's rightful winner of the election, serve in Congress right now. And frankly, Al Franken should be thrown in jail...and he probably will be, since there's still an FBI investigation look into hundreds of thousands of dollars said to have been illegally funneled to him and his wife by shady financiers in advance of his run for the U.S. Senate!"

Such as it is, of course, Coleman, not Franken, did all of the above. But he's the Republican candidate. So, um, never mind.



