At the risk of dancing on a pin, I feel honor-bound to link to a short comment by Prof. Rick Hasen in which he disagreed with my short comment of Friday that by waiting until at least the 7th day the available 10-day period for filing his notice of appeal to the Supreme Court (today is Day 7), Norm Coleman had blown the opportunity to send the message that he is not stalling.

Hasen is a highly-regarded election law expert and the keeper of the excellent and bluntly named Election Law Blog. He has linked to me before, usually sympathetically.

The professor seems to agree with Coleman Campaign Manager Cullen Sheehan who, as I reported in my own piece, said the reason for Coleman to take a week to fill out the form notifying the Minnesota Supreme Court that he is appealing the ruling of the Election Contest Court is that his lawyers want to make sure they have plenty of time to write the appeal brief.

My own point, to which Hasen didn't respond directly, is that there is no apparent reason to believe that the MN Supremes will provide an unreasonably short time for the appeal. So I'm sticking by my comment. But, as I said in the first place, the fact that the maximum delay possible in this step of the process is nine days makes it a relatively small, symbolic matter. If Coleman cares about the growing perception that he is stalling, he missed a chance to rebut it at little cost.

But when as smart an expert as Hasen disagrees with your humble ink-stained wretch, BlackInk readers should know about it.