After telling us that his wife had been praying the rosary in Rome (?), Norm Coleman congratulated Al Franken on becoming the next Senator from Minnesota. Then he said a bunch of other stuff about voters' rights and the people of Minnesota, but who cares? This fucking thing is done. Hooray for the clown!

Oh, okay: Coleman says he still disputes the process, but "we are a nation of laws, not men and women. The court has spoken, and it's time to look forward and not look back." He's glad he raised the issues he raised in his endless appeals. He's not done yet but there's no sign of an apology for the nearly eight months he fucked with the Senate. Described his phone call with Franken as a "positive discussion."

Update: Coleman fondly recalls some lady with a baby who came up to him at a restaurant one day and said "she wouldn't have had her baby" if it wasn't for him. Wow, maybe Mark Sanford will get some relief after all! Also says he talked to Governor Pawlenty and told him he was going to "make his life a little easier."

Look, at least we're not the only state where democracy is a thing of the past: the Norm Coleman-Al Franken Senate election has been in the courts since freaking November 2008. Today the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled 5-0 that Franken had in fact won the thing, using the old and generally disregarded standard that "Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast," and is thus "entitled [under Minnesota law] to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota."

Think that settles it? The Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, has declined to sign Franken's election certification through several other court reversals for Coleman, and the defiant ex-Senator is expected to take his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, or maybe Mars or Pluto. Ruling pdf here. Image (cc) AFLCIO2008.

Update: Coleman to speak at 3 p.m. We were very excited until we found out this was Central Time, an hour from now.

Update 2: Franken presser at 4:15 p.m. Tweets are delicious: "all Minnesotans ought to be ashamed today," "What am I doing at 3pm????? Why watching Norm (Coleman) EAT IT, that's what," "I CAN HAS TWO SENATORZ?!?" etc.

Update 3: Here is the state of Twitter-jabber on whether Coleman will appeal to SCOTUS. Pro: Franken pushed his press conference to 4:15 from 3:30 because his team got wind of a new challenge and wanted the extra time to prepare a statement; the national GOP has spent too much on this to give up now. Con: Local Republicans are bitching but talking about "moving forward." We can't guess, as we don't understand people who can spend half the year in sub-freezing weather and stay so cheerful.

Update 4: Coleman concedes, Franken will be Senator.

Two men allegedly involved in the election-night beating of a black teenager in Staten Island have been arrested, says the New York Times.

Ali Kamara says he was attacked on Pine Place in Stapleton street by white men who piled out of a car yelling "Obama" shortly before the election was called at 11 p.m. The Staten Island Advance reports that Ralph Nicoletti and Bryan Garaventa (the latter of whom was shown by the Advance in St. Patrick's Day face-paint) are charged with "second-degree assault, a hate crime, and criminal possession of a weapon." The Feds are said to be mulling other charges against the two 18-year-olds.

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One local group not sharing the Obama afterglow: the cops and cop fans of Thee Rant. After following election night closely ("Pennsylvania for the messiah, I hope your coal industry shuts down within two weeks of this lying azzhole getting in"), some offered historical analysis ("Historians will look back and mark this time as the point America started its decline"), while others counseled tolerance ("Don't blame the blacks for him getting elected... Blame the whites who voted for him").

Posters speculated on the mindset of the electorate ("a bunch of spineless puzzies who don't have the stomach for the fight for survival") and makeup of Obama's cabinet ("FLAVOR FLAV TO BE OBAMA'S SECRETARY OF DEFENSE...NIPSY RUSSEL TO BE SECRETARY OF STATE"). A few parsed Obama's victory speech ("he probably was doing lines back stage before the big show," "'Holy mackrel there! I be the head muckety muck'").

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The cop-clash in Williamsburg was supposed to be the only Obama-related local violence of the election, but here we have the Staten Island Advance reporting that 17-year-old Ali Kamara, son of Liberian immigrants, was beaten in Stapleton Tuesday night by four white guys in hoodies yelling "Obama!" The perps piled out of a car, hitting Kamara with baseball bats and kicking him. The young man tells Daily News that his assailants were "not happy." The assault occurred at 10 p.m., an hour before California had been called, putting Obama over the top, but about an hour after his Ohio victory put Obama within striking distance. The NYPD Hate Crime Task Force is investigating.

Here's a piquant scene of the happy Obama celebrants who clogged Bedford Avenue in Williamsburg between North 6th and 7th Streets in Brooklyn early Wednesday morning. The riot cops have shown up and the crowd starts chanting "N-Y-P-D!" and then "WE LOVE YOU!" The cops swept the street anyway; you can see some of that after the jump.

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The voice behind me, as I walked through the streets of Brownsville yesterday, said, "Mister, do you have any work?"

I was a white man again in a neighborhood where I lived as a token for 15 years, starting in 1968, fresh from Grant Park in Chicago, where the revolution that ended at midnight this Tuesday began four decades earlier with bloody batons.

I was on my way to the election precinct where I voted for the second half of my life in Brownsville, then the city's poorest community district.

I was coming home, where my son was born, on a day when Brownsville, once described in the New York Times as "the deathknell of our civilization," was about to officially become just another American town.

Barack Obama did that. He did it on the shoulders of so many I knew in Brownsville who pushed us as a nation towards this day.

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Click to enlarge. From Patrick Moberg, the subway guy

You might be seeing this a lot over the next few days, but maybe we'll show you first?

A couple hundred young people, with reinforcements rotating in and out, clambered over Union Square Park tonight to celebrate the result of the Presidential election. They climbed light poles and the statue of George Washington carrying flags, until the cops made them get down. They banged pots and drums, blew whistles, and waved an Obama banner and newly-printed editions of the New York Daily News with President-elect Obama on the cover. They chanted "Obama!" and "Yes We Can!" and "U-S-A!" -- this last particularly striking, as it has been the exclusive cheer of Republican chuckleheads seemingly forever, and is at last the property of people who live in places like ours.

Up and down the nearby streets kids high-fived passers-by, whooped, and greeted one another by calling out the name of their hero.

A guy who can give a speech like that just might save this fucking country. We feel like helping out, and we're abysmally selfish.

Srsly.