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Larry Wall

Denison, TX
Commenter for
4 years 13 weeks

Recent Comments

Posted on 05/21/09 at 01:49 am in response to House passes landmark credit-card regulation bill

Maybe soon we will be strapping guns on our hips and carrying them everywhere we go. Just like the days in the old Wild West.

Except now we don't have a Matt Dillon to at least keep pistols off the streets of Dodge.

In the meantime, I guess I'll just have to keep my family away from the National Parks.

And when a politician eventually introduces an amendment to an otherwise good bill that permits people to carry loaded handguns anywhere they go, I guess I'll just have...

Posted on 05/19/09 at 12:19 am in response to Obama: 'Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.'

Maury,

You are correct. He did say that at some level there would never be mutual agreement on certain topics.

But his point was that we should be able to live together in respect and harmony, even though we may have different opinions.

I know most of us have friends and relatives (and even spouses) with whom we sometimes strongly disagree. But hopefully that does not keep us from mutual respect for one another, as well as maintaining extensive fondness for good...

Posted on 05/16/09 at 12:25 pm in response to Team Coleman tells court how to deal with ballot disparities

Per my prior post #5, even if the Court rules that an equal rights violation has occurred, I do not believe a remedy requiring more votes to be counted will be selected.

The only reasonable alternative would be to declare the election invalid, thus necessitating the legislative branch to require a new election to be held.

I am personally insufficiently knowledgeable of law or case history to venture a legal opinion of the likelihood of the MnSC ruling that an equal rights...

Posted on 05/15/09 at 08:50 pm in response to Team Coleman tells court how to deal with ballot disparities

I can understand the argument based on "substantial compliance" when evaluating fresh, new ballots. It is essentially a "presumption of innocence" philosophy - and has a practical value if there is a scarcity of resources available on Election Day.

But for ballots already rejected for being non-compliant, how can that be ignored?

It's a case of what you don't know may or may not hurt you. But what you know to be factual cannot be dismissed so lightly

If a ballot were...

Posted on 05/05/09 at 11:52 am in response to Coleman/Franken and "Equal Protection," part the fourth

"And Coleman's argument an absentee ballot envelope with a particular flaw might have been rejected in one county while a similarly flawed ballot was accepted in another county, is not a terrible argument."

The perspective associated with this issue continues to amaze me.

The issue has not been quantified. No one knows if there are 10,000 ballots accepted that shouldn't have been counted, or if there were none (none - as in "0").

The possibility of incorrectly accepted...

Posted on 04/18/09 at 01:10 pm in response to A step-by-step forecast: Franken will likely be seated by May or June

I doubt that there are as many as 3,468 erroneous ballots within the pool of counted absentee ballots.

But there might be. And the source of data is there to determine the answer.

The ballot applications and secrecy envelopes for about 280,000 counted absentee ballots should be available for scrutiny. They could be examined with the same rigor as that used by the Contest judges. But this time it would be inverted. It would be to demonstrate conclusively that the ballots...

Posted on 04/18/09 at 01:08 pm in response to A step-by-step forecast: Franken will likely be seated by May or June

“Minnesotans cannot be totally sure who would have won the election if all ballots had been judged against the proper legal standard.”

If only Mr. Black of MinPost would replace the words “cannot be totally sure” with “might wonder”, I would agree with this statement.

I have worked in the sciences most of my life, where the concept of 100% confidence (akin to the words “totally sure”) is an impossibility to achieve. In the scientific world we live in a world of probabilities,...

Posted on 04/15/09 at 10:53 am in response to A step-by-step forecast: Franken will likely be seated by May or June

Hiram,

"I think the Court issued the decision that it did because that was the decision that secured a majority."

I agree with you. But that was my point.

Had the justices been able to act as a cohesive body to reach a unanimous decision, and then submitted an opinion with the right tone and language, I believe the legacy of the Court would have been enhanced in the eyes of Americans. Instead, the Court today finds itself in exactly the opposite position.

"I...

Posted on 04/15/09 at 09:52 am in response to A step-by-step forecast: Franken will likely be seated by May or June

"If Coleman waits until day 10 to file his notice, I will consider that the first dilatory tactic. If he files in the first days of the window, will his critics concede that he has passed up a chance to delay the case further?"

I believe I have read that Mr. Gindsburg has stated that the notice of appeal may be delayed for awhile.

I suspect he wants the extra time to put together power point presentations, exhibits, so forth in order to put forth the most persuasive argument of...

Posted on 04/13/09 at 01:02 pm in response to A step-by-step forecast: Franken will likely be seated by May or June

Hiram,

You make some excellent points.

A constitutional crisis was indeed a possibility at the time. And since the election was essentially a tie, the fact that the Court stepped in to make the ultimate decision may well have been intended to be for the greater good of the nation.

But where the Court failed was in its ability to act as a cohesive body (for at least this one decision), its use of murky language, and the decision by three of the justices to attack the...