On Friday, Byron York of the Washington Examiner  focused attention on an unfolding story the liberal media doesn't want to highlight.

Some key parts of the Patriot Act are set to expire in December. When the anti-terrorism law was passed in the days after 9-11, Congress put eight-year time limits on the most far-reaching provisions. Since the Democrats didn't really favor a War on Terror, their preference for the civil liberties of terrorist suspects over the civil liberties of future terrorist victims is becoming clear. York looked at one exchange in the Senate with freshman Sen. Al Franken:

Even roving wiretaps, a widely accepted, common-sense feature of the Patriot Act, have come under question. At a Sept. 23 committee hearing, Sen. Al Franken, the newest member of the committee, challenged the constitutionality of such wiretaps, and in the process left an Obama Justice Department official -- who supports the law -- muttering in frustration.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor and Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn. on Capitol Hill, Thursday, July 9, 2009. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

It looks like we might finally have to put a picture of Randi Rhodes on milk cartons. Last April, your humble correspondent declared that such milk carton photos of Randi would be unnecessary because, despite being MIA since February when she left Nova M Radio, Premiere Radio Networks would begin broadcasting her show again in May. Well, a couple of months have gone by and, oddly, Randi seems to be even more hidden from public view than when she wasn't on the air. Even Google searches have proved fruitless. Yes, I know Randi is on the air (or so it is rumored) but her impact is somewhere between nil and none. If Randi has a publicity director, he/she must be doing worst job imaginable.

Therefore it seems like it is up to me to once again bring a little public notice to Randi. Why am I being so charitable to that leftwing talk show host? As I explained in April, it is because I feel something of a proprietary interest in Randi since Yours Truly played a part in launching her onto the national stage by prominently mentioning her in a movie review of "The Italian Job"  in 2003 when she was still stuck on a local radio station in West Palm Beach.

The good news for Randi Rhodes is that she is about to be thrust back into the news for her highly critical on-air comments about Al Franken who was an Air Amierica colleague of hers.  Ironically, those comments were made back in January before she left Nova M radio and fell into almost total obscurity followed by her even greater obscurity on Premiere Radio Networks. As relayed by the Radio Equalizer, here is what Randi said about Al Franken in January while the Minnesota senatorial vote was still being contested:

On Thursday's Today, Meredith Vieira tossed mostly softballs to Senator-elect Al Franken, offering no hard questions about the disputed 2008 election, instead fawning, "...Are you more worried about becoming a target for the GOP or a target for Saturday Night Live, your old stomping ground?" In regards to the post-election wrangling for the Minnesota Senate seat, the best Vieira could do is to wonder, "It did get a little contentious, didn't it?"

To be fair, she did reference the closeness of the election. Noting Franken's 312 vote margin of victory, Vieira observed, "Are you conscious of that as you head to Washington D.C. next week?" However, there was no mention of the reports of irregularities in the state. If the co-host wished to challenge the incoming senator, she could have read from a July 1 Wall Street Journal editorial which asserted, "Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election."

Many media outlets are glancing over "Senator-Select" Al Franken with a sentence or two emphasizing the word "finally." ABC news anchor Bianna Golodryga this morning reported "Comedian-turned politician Al Franken expects to be sworn in next week as senator from Minnesota. The state Supreme Court has finally certified last November's election results where Franken won by just 312 votes." What's left out is the Wall Street Journal editorial page story of a "legal street fight" that led to an overturned Republican election-night victory: 

Mr. Franken trailed Mr. Coleman by 725 votes after the initial count on election night, and 215 after the first canvass. The Democrat's strategy from the start was to manipulate the recount in a way that would discover votes that could add to his total. The Franken legal team swarmed the recount, aggressively demanding that votes that had been disqualified be added to his count, while others be denied for Mr. Coleman.

Top-rated "progressive talker" Ed Schultz is concerned about possible improprieties in the Minnesota Senate recount.

At least he was a moment ago.

Almost certainly without intending to, the liberal radio host fueled at least one belly laugh among listeners while he took calls Wednesday.

Schultz talked about incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman's legal challenge to the questionable results of a recount that reversed his initial narrow victory and put Democratic challenger Al Franken, formerly of Air America Radio and "Saturday Night Live," barely ahead (click here for audio) --

Alexander Burns of Politico (featured Sunday on Yahoo!) sees no chance of Norm Coleman retaining his Senate seat, but he devoted an article to Al Franken’s unique position as a potential top-dollar fundraiser – for conservatives and Republicans. "With only a longshot court appeal standing in the way of Democrat Al Franken’s election to the Senate, Republicans are gritting their teeth and bracing for the arrival of a new senator whose every utterance will sound like nails on a chalkboard to them." Already, he’s a drag on the Democrats:

Polling results this week confirmed Franken's precarious position: more Minnesotans have a negative impression of him than a positive one, by a 45 percent to 37 percent margin. Those would be dismal numbers under any circumstances, but for a newly-elected senator they would be particularly alarming.

Even professors favored by the media establishment aren’t sanguine:

... except that's not exactly what the poll says. Minneapolis's KSTP channel 5's headline reads "POLL: Coleman should concede." The article that follows reads,

An exclusive Survey USA poll shows nearly half of Minnesotans surveyed say its time for Republican Norm Coleman to concede the U.S. Senate race to Democrat Al Franken.

But the survey does not hold good news for Franken either.

On election night, each candidate received only 42 percent of the votes. Now it appears they're both even less popular.

Only 38 percent of Minnesotans surveyed said they view Coleman favorably. 44 percent have an unfavorable view.

Franken scored similarly with 37 percent favorable and 45 percent unfavorable.

Now what would you think "nearly half" means? 49%? 48%? What would you think of 44%? Because, as the Minnesota Independent reports, that's the percentage that actually believes Norm Coleman should concede:

Why can't everyone just settle down, get out of the way, get rid of the "distractions," and let Barack Obama do his magic? That seems to be a recurring media meme during this presidential transition period.

Here are just a few examples in just the past 30 days:

• In a December 12 "analysis" piece at Reuters, Steve Holland opened by telling readers that "A political scandal that led to the arrest of Illinois' governor has become an unwelcome distraction for President-elect Barack Obama as he tries to keep his focus on preparing to run the country."
• Amanda Paulson's Christian Science Monitor report on December 23 about Obama's internal investigation of contacts between his team and Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich fretted that "As the saga of Gov. Rod Blagojevich and his alleged “political corruption crime spree” has played out over the past two weeks, it’s been an unwelcome distraction for another politician from Illinois: President-elect Obama."
• And yesterday, Brent Baker of NewsBusters caught ABC World News Tonight anchor Dan Harris worrying that Bill Richardson's unexpected withdrawal as Commerce Secretary nominee might be "a distraction in the key early days."

AFP's Jitendra Joshi offered up the latest example yesterday:

Al Franken has discovered a new use for YouTube: uploading a video to that site in order to emotionally influence the Minnesota Canvassing Board to count the disputed absentee ballots in that state. Here is how Yid With Lid describes the Franken video:

Looking to put more pressure on the canvassing board who will determine the fate of the absentee ballots, Minnesota Senate Candidate Al Franken  has created a sappy "tug at the heart strings" youtube video to try to convince them to allow in the rejected ballots that favor the Comic. The video plays like a bad episode of Queen for a day. It is simply an attempt to discredit the local election officials through cheap Soap Opera theatrics.

In every recount of the senate election from Minnesota, incumbent senator Norm Coleman has consistently been ahead of challenger Al Franken by hundreds of votes. At this point it looks like it will be impossible for Franken to exceed Coleman's total in the recount of the few ballots remaining. So what is the solution of New York Times guest op-ed columnist and associate professor of journalism at New York University, Charles Seife? Why just declare the election a "statistical tie" and flip a coin to determine the winner. Seife explains how he has come up with his laughable resolution for the election in which Coleman continues to lead:

Before the recount began on Nov. 19, Mr. Coleman and Mr. Franken were within about 200 votes of each other. With a little under three million ballots cast in the election, that margin was unbelievably small: a few thousandths of a percent separated the two candidates. So, as Minnesota law requires, election officials began counting, by hand, every single ballot from the more than 4,000 precincts around the state.

The folks at "Fox & Friends" had some fun at Chris Matthews' expense Sunday morning, and managed to mock some other high-profile, liberal media members while they were at it:

As they reported rumors that "the alleged journalist on MSNBC" is looking to unseat Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Penn) in 2010, the gang contemplated what Congress would look like if Michael Moore, Keith Olbermann, and Sean Penn also ran (video embedded below the fold, h/t AmericasNewsToday.com):

Most recent unintentionally hilarious moment on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC cable show -- her interview with Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie over the upcoming recount in the Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger/reformed court jester Al Franken.

The interview on Wednesday night's show began innocuously enough, with a news caption at the bottom of the screen identifying Ritchie.

Ritchie described the mechanics of the looming recount, which is triggered by state law for margins of victory less than one-half percentage point. The next news caption read, "Sen. Norm Coleman (R) Has 206 Vote Lead Over Challenger Al Franken (D)" (albeit all in capital letters, as with all the captions).

Then came this eye-opener of a caption, presented as fact as with the preceding two when it is an allegation and a kneejerk one at that -- "Before Recount, GOP Trying To Smear Minnesota Secretary of State."

Says who ...? All that was needed to make this bird capable of flight were two more words ... "Democrats allege."Adding that, however, might convey an attempt by MSNBC to appear fair and balanced, the last thing its goo-goo viewership wants.

In the Coleman-Franken Senate recount battle developing in Minnesota, almost all media accounts fail to mention that Democratic Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who largely controls the process, is not only a liberal Democrat, but also an ally of ACORN and liberal philanthropist George Soros.

Even fewer media outlets report the fact that both Ritchie and fellow Democrat Al Franken were endorsed by ACORN. Ritchie, like so many liberals, is dismissive of electoral fraud allegations in general. He failed to investigate claims by a conservative group about voter roll irregularities. (See "SOS in Minnesota," American Spectator, Nov. 7, 2008)

Somebody claims they heard something at a Minnesota voting precinct. And that certain someone just so happened to have also been a reporter for a small leftwing newspaper. And upon that very thin gruel, TV station reporter Esme Murphy of WCCO in Minneapolis is claiming that the senate voting results in that state could be overturned. It's pretty ridiculous but let us allow Ms Murphy to make her absurd case:

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) ― Allegations have surfaced of voter irregularities involving a paid staffer of Sen. Norm Coleman, and the ramifications could have a profound effect on the outcome of Coleman's race against Al Franken.

A reporter for the Minnesota Independent, a progressive online publication, was working on a story about voter turnout when she overheard that Republican poll challengers monitoring voting at the precinct had brought in Mahamoud Wardere to help voters translate.

Yeah, there's a real "unbiased" source. The Minnesota Independent.

It could be time to break out those old "Proud Member of the VRWC" coffee mugs collecting dust at the back of your kitchen cabinets.  The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy rides again!

Hillary invoked the VRWC yesterday at a campaign event in Minnesota for Al Franken in his race against incumbent Republican Sen. Norm Coleman.

David Shuster had the report during MSNBC's 4 PM EDT hour today.

View video here.

Katherine Kersten, that rare bird – a conservative columnist at the uber-blue Minneapolis Star Tribune – reported that while Minnesota Democrats endorsed that Harvard-smart Senate candidate Al Franken after he expressed regret for all the comic mileage he’s gotten out of rape and his "penchant for the pornographic," he did not apologize for his most offensive material aimed at religious believers, and Christians in particular. The press hasn’t noticed:

Why hasn't this been aired in public? We in the press are too busy searching through Sarah Palin's junior high yearbooks and tracking down the filing dates of Joe the Plumber's tax returns.

Meanwhile, Franken gets a pass for making a joke of the life and death of Jesus Christ.

CNN contributor Roland Martin used an unoriginal line to attack Rush Limbaugh on Monday’s Election Center program. Host Campbell Brown wanted Martin, a Barack Obama supporter, to comment on something the talk radio host had said about Colin Powell’s endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate: "Rush Limbaugh said today, this is about race. That's all it's about." Martin’s response: "I think I will quote Al Franken when talking about Rush Limbaugh -- is a stupid, fat idiot."

Martin made the comment during a panel discussion with Brown, CNN senior political analyst Gloria Borger, and Kevin Madden, the former spokesman for the Mitt Romney presidential campaign, in which the four of them discussed the Powell endorsement of Obama. After his cliched attack, the CNN contributor accused Limbaugh, as well as Pat Buchanan and George Will, of disregarding Powell’s record and simplifying his endorsement to a matter of skin color: "Colin Powell gave one of the most thoughtful, meticulous endorsements of any candidate, and laid it all out very methodically, and it is an insult for people like Rush Limbaugh and Buchanan and Will and others to somehow say, oh, it's only because he's black."

**Video Below the Fold**

Al Franken has shown himself to be an angry, easily enraged man and after the October 16 Minnesota Senatorial candidate's debate he allowed his overwrought emotional state to send him over the edge once again. After the debate was over and the Media had turned off their microphones and cameras, Franken rushed over to Senator Norm Coleman's table and proceeded to angrily get in his face over some point or another made during the debate. Franken was getting so angry that his own wife had to rush over and force him to back off from a mounting confrontation with Coleman.

This isn't the only time that Al Franken has allowed his seemingly delicately balanced temperament to be tipped to unseemly anger. In fact, he's allowed himself to be driven to physical violence in the past. In 2004, for instance, Franken tackled a disruptive LaRouchie at a Howard Dean speech. He has also been known to get into shouting matches with rally attendees and opponents alike. Not to mention his past usage of intemperate or profane language and mean-spirited use of ridicule in his comedy routines and during his radio shows when he was an Air-America host.

In the summer of 2001, the liberal organization FAIR published a report about what they perceived to be a conservative bias at Fox News Channel. In "The Most Biased Name in News," FAIR's Seth Ackerman wrote:

Even Fox's "left-right" debate show, Hannity & Colmes--whose Crossfire-style format virtually imposes numerical equality between conservatives and "liberals"--can't shake the impression of resembling a Harlem Globetrotters game ...

Now check this out. Two years later, Al Franken published a bestselling book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them. On page 63 (first edition, hardcover), Franken wrote,

For those of you unfamiliar with the Hannity and Colmes dynamic, it's a conservative-versus-liberal talking head show, kind of a combination between Crossfire and a Harlem Globetrotters game.

"Crossfire"? "A Harlem Globetrotters game"? "Conservatives"? "Liberals"? Yikes. Many people would call this plagiarism. And in his 2005 book, Pants on Fire: How Al Franken Lies, Smears, and Deceives, writer Alan Skorski provides compelling evidence that "Franken appears to have plagiarized" several passages of his book from FAIR's 2001 report.