It can't really be over, can it? Recount junkies will be shakily grabbing for the methadone today after the Minnesota Supreme Court slammed Norm Coleman with a 5-0 defeat in his eight-month effort to win back his Senate seat. The Strib team, bylined by Pat Doyle, assembles standard First Day coverage, emphasizing high-mindedness and good sportsmanship all around and tantalizing readers with Coleman's next move. (If anyone among the news corps dared whisper, "stalling tactic," that kind of dark insinuation didn't make it past the copy desk.) A more entertaining read is the comments section, which by dawn today had logged nearly 1,000 reactions.

Rachel Stassen-Berger's story for the PiPress covers most of the same territory, but squeezes in a reaction from Tony Sutton, Minnesota Republicans' new party chairman. Says Sutton, "As we move forward, our deeply flawed election system must be dramatically improved to ensure our state's elections are fair, accurate and reliable." And expensive, too.

The Strib's Mike Kaszuba gets the analysis job and a few good quotes on the Court decision. On the matter of equal protection, which Coleman's critics always regarded as a stretch, particularly when Coleman used the example of Bush v. Gore in Florida in 2000, Kaszuba quotes one law professor saying: "Bush vs. Gore was a case about whether election officials in Florida 'were making up things as they went.' This case shows that the special district court and the [Minnesota] Supreme Court simply applied the statute and the precedents that were already there and they weren't making up anything as they went."

Talking Points Memo collects the best "timeline" of the recount, in the form of a "Top 10 Moments" list, via the reportoing of Eric Kleefeld. It includes this exchange between Coleman lawyer Joe Friedberg and Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann, "Friedberg: In point of fact, even though I did something I wasn't supposed to do with the application, my ballot should still count because my signature is genuine. Deputy Secretary of State Jim Gelbmann: Not according to the procedures we use to determine whether the signature is genuine. Friedberg: I don't care about your procedures. (Franken lawyer calls an objection, is sustained.) Friedberg: OK, I do care ...

Chris Cillizza's "The Fix" for the Washington Post offers explanations for why Franken prevailed. Among them he says, "It Pays To Be Ahead: When the statewide recount ended, Franken led by 225 votes. As we wrote at the time (and many times after that), it's hard to overstate how important the fact that Franken was ahead was to setting public perception regarding the legal fight that ensued. Coleman was forced to be the aggressor legally, claiming that all sorts of ballots had been illegally counted (and not counted) while, through it all, the fact that Franken led by 225 votes hung over the proceedings. Voters tend to lose interest in politics quickly -- particularly after an election as nasty and long as this race was -- and that sort of fatigue played right into Franken's hands."

With the Court's decision largely foregone, much of the tongue-wagging action now turns to Coleman's next move. Mike Kaszuba and Pam Louwagie sniff out opinions on Coleman and the Governor's race. "He's increasingly attracted to the idea of running for governor," said Larry Jacobs, a University of Minnesota political science professor. "What I'm hearing from some folks is that Norm Coleman's made recent phone calls to some of the top Republican donors to him, asking them to hold off making any commitments to other candidates. This does not mean he's going to run. But he's trying to freeze them."

MPR has Jacobs, everyone's favorite quote machine, offering a brief commentary essentially admonishing Franken to hew to the conventions of the Senate. Jacobs asks, "How will Franken respond to the simple word, "no"? Franken has held no elective office and little real world experience in working in a collaborative body that is booby-trapped against the uncompromising advocate."

The Powerline boys, Scott Johnson and John Hinderaker, react to the verdict with assertions of legal missteps and institutionalized unfairness to Republicans. Says Johnson, "In my opinion, bringing criminal defense attorney Joe Friedberg in to try the election contest and argue the appeal was a mistake. Whoever thought it was a good idea for Coleman lawyer Ben Ginsberg to criticize the election contest panel in the press while the case was pending before the panel should probably ply his trade elsewhere, as should those advisers on whom Senator Coleman relied for guidance before he immersed himself in the post-election proceedings." The more contentious Hinderaker says, "We are left with the realization that every Republican in a statewide race here in Minnesota starts a few thousand votes in the hole, due to the disparate standards for judging absentee ballots used in Republican-leaning versus Democratic-leaning counties. Of course, that understates the case: the Republican starts out farther behind than that, due to illegal votes that cannot be prevented because of the Democratic Party's blocking of a photo ID requirement. We have no real idea of the magnitude of this disadvantage." Would you like veal with that whine?

The eye-roller of the day comes from the Strib's editorial page. After assiduously avoiding anything approaching a judgment on the political strategies at play in the long court fight, the paper's "official" reaction to the Supreme Court verdict sounds like something Fred Rogers or your sweet Norwegian grandmother might have written. "Tuesday's events were met with sighs of relief all over this state. It was a Minnesota-worthy denouement -- calm, civil, orderly -- to an epic political drama that riveted the nation's political establishment for eight months." Now, what do you say we all have some nice milk and warm cookies?

The PiPress's version of an editorial isn't any sharper. First, it says, "We need a senator who recognizes the division within the state and shies away from extreme, gratuitous partisanship. This is what we hoped for when we endorsed Coleman; this is what we hope for as Franken heads off to Washington." Then, it concludes by saying, "[the recount] ends with Coleman bowing out graciously and saying he may have an announcement about his plans soon. If those plans include a new campaign, it will be Act I of a new dramatic adventure."

The recount may be over, but we'll always have Denny Hecker. The PiPress's Jason Hoppin has the story of a lawsuit slapped on Hecker by State Farm Insurance (which knows a thing or two about lawsuits). The accusation is that Hecker's Advantage Rental Car operation systematically inflated repair costs on crashed vehicles and pocketed the difference. Hoppin writes, "The civil suit accuses Advantage of racketeering by collaborating with third-party companies to create the fraudulent claims and alleges wire and mail fraud by Advantage because the claims were transmitted through the U.S. mail or by fax."

Finally, maybe you've noticed the sudden explosion of burger joints -- ranging from retro drive-in to kitschy upscale. Rachel Hutton of City Pages produces what seems like 5,000 words reviewing the shamelessly fatty, juicy landscape. You probably don't want to see the Bill Pohlad-produced documentary, "Food, Inc.," before ordering that triple double with bacon.