Even if all missing ballots are found and all the typos are corrected, the Minnesota recount is still doomed. Just considering precincts where every ballot is accounted for — where Coleman and Franken observers are not challenging votes — there are mistakes.
How can we know this? Before the recount began, the state ran a post-election review to gauge the accuracy of the voting process. The review involved auditors going into select precincts and, like the recounters, counting by hand, doing the most careful job humanly possible. So in some precincts, we have not just a recount but a re-recount. Both auditors and recounters were hypervigilant to possible sources of error, and yet they disagree on their tallies by about 20 thousandths of a percent.
In an ordinary race, errors this tiny wouldn’t be a problem. But the Coleman-Franken race is so close that this error rate is more than double the margin between the two camps. And that’s just taking into account the precincts where there are no challenges. Throw in the weirdo ballots with lizard people, stray marks and indecipherable dots, and the error rate grows even more. Throw in the missing ballots, and the situation is hopeless. In truth, the counting errors dwarf the tiny numerical difference in votes between the two candidates. If, at the end of the recount, Mr. Coleman or Mr. Franken is ahead by a few dozen or a few hundred votes, that would be because of errors rather than voter preference.
-- CHARLES SEIFE
Bush grew more agitated at the mention of [John Bolton] his own former senior diplomat. "Let me just say from the outset that I don't consider Bolton credible," the president said bitterly. Bush had brought Bolton into the top ranks of his administration, fought for Senate confirmation and, when lawmakers balked, defied critics to give the hawkish aide a recess appointment. "I spent political capital for him," Bush said, and look what he got in return.
-- PETER BAKERSo, Obama wants to give a speech in a Muslim capital sometime in his first one hundred days. What capital should he select?
He hasn't been sworn in yet, but Barack Obama has already surpassed Ronald Reagan in one measure: Transition news conferences, In fact, it's a rout. Because there's been something of an, ahem, myth shrouding the 40th president, it's easy to forget this fact about Reagan: The Great Communicator gave more televised speeches than his predecessors, and of course literally invented the White House photo op -- but he also gave fewer news conferences than the presidents who came before him (and most who came after, at least until Bush 43). Answering questions off the cuff as not his forte.
-- WILL BUNCHI wrote some pretty harsh things about the Clintons during the primary, most of which I stand by. But, I always thought it was true that there is a particular sort of political animal, whose habitat spans the political range, that is just utterly infuriated by the Clintons, and wants them to fall of the face of the earth.
The multibillion-dollar talk radio industry faces existential challenges and dramatic opportunities in the upcoming Age of Obama. Depending on responses from leading conservative talkers, this rude, raucous indispensable medium will either rise to new heights of mainstream influence, profit and credibility, or else collapse as a declining vehicle for an increasingly angry and alienated fringe.
Chris Matthews is dead serious about running for the Senate in Pennsylvania — and is shopping for a house in the state and privately discussing quitting
MSNBC as proof of his intense interest, according to
NBC colleagues, political operatives and friends.
Even so, some NBC insiders think it’s all simply a negotiating ploy to jack up his contract.
-- MICHAEL CALDERONE and JOSH KRAUSHAAR
So, we have this great big circular firing squad going about whether to purge moderates, or socons, or fiscons, or libertarians, or Methodists, whatever. No, Virginia, there isn’t a smoke filled room somewhere where a bunch of Ivy League, Wall Street, K Street elitists conspired to deprive the Republican Party of a victory in 
the last two elections. We lost because nobody in their right mind would trust us to run a government. That we did as well as we did is a tribute to the fact that they don’t trust the Democrats much either.
In seven years we demonstrated to the American people that we really didn't mean what we'd said for all those years; we weren't against spending, we were against Democrat spending. We weren't against big government, we just wanted it big in the places we like. The people caught us in the lie and held us responsible for it.
A half black, half white man with the name Barack Hussein Obama just became President of the United States. He wasn't even legally a United States citizen and doesn't have any documentation whatsoever to prove that he was baptized or that he ever attended a single day in school. We are not sure he was actually ever born at all. He beat a war hero whose running mate was an amazing woman who went all of the way from the PTA in Wasilla to the Governor’s mansion in Juneau. And she has documentation proving that she attended five colleges before finally getting a BA in journalism. And on her baptismal record it actually states that she was chosen by God to drill in the area that is arguably one of God's most beautiful creations to bring oil to the rest of the free world.
Top illustration by Tucker Nichols
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