Photo: senate.gov, WDCPix

Al Franken recently sought out songwriting help from Orrin “Eight Days of Hannukah” Hatch, the Minnesota senator tells the ECM Publishers editorial board.

Franken got himself invited to Hatch’s office to sample some of the Utah Republican’s song stylings. ”I didn’t expect much,” Franken said.

But a Hatch song about the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, recorded by another vocalist (“Orrin doesn’t sing,” Franken explained), made Franken “misty.”

With the next Orrin Hatch composition, written from the point of view of a woman addressing her husband in Afghanistan, “I just started to cry,” Franken said.

A Hatch stab at country western songwriting (“Is It Lonely Here With Me?”) reminded Franken of his own attempt in the genre, “We Stayed Together for the Kids,” recorded as a demo in Nashville.

But it doesn’t have a bridge. It just doesn’t have a bridge. It’s a really good song. So i gave it to Orrin and I said, “Would you write a bridge with me?” And so we did this last week. … And we were just laughing so hard. And his staff was going, “What is going on in there?”

Besides co-writing Franken’s bridge, Hatch is a co-sponsor of a Franken bill to get a national backlog of rape-kit evidence tested.

Here’s Hatch’s song about Kennedy:

Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy

U.S. Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Thursday that would encourage states to examine untested rape kits for DNA evidence. The bill would also provide for more health workers trained to administer rape-kit exams, particularly for Native American women.

Another aspect of the bill is that women couldn’t be made to pay for all or part of their rape kit exams — an issue that came up in the 2008 presidential campaign.

“We don’t bill criminals for fingerprint processing,” Franken said in a statement.

The Justice for Survivors of Sexual Assault Act is co-sponsored by Republicans Orrin Hatch of Utah and Chuck Grassley of Iowa, as well as Democrat Dianne Feinstein of California.

The bill follows by only a month Senate passage of Franken’s amendment defunding military contractors that make employees sign away their rights to take sexual assualt allegations to court.

Rape came up during Franken’s campaign for Senate when opponents publicized instances in his comedic past that touched on the topic.

Hatch seemed confident that his legalistic inquiries, touching on abortion, gun-rights and the original intent of the Constitution, are of concern to at least 2 million of the 2.7 million people he represents:

Judge, you’ve been great throughout this process, and I appreciate it. But I have some questions I’d like to ask, but I think you can answer yes or no. Of course, you can qualify if you feel like it. But I would like to get through these, because they’re important questions to me and millions of other people that I represent.

On two of his three questions, Hatch could be certain that at least one other person cared. He said those questions came from individual Utah citizens in response to his call for questions for Sotomayor.

Franken, however, hedged his bet a bit on whether “millions” of his 5.2 million constituents truly sweat the issue he was asking about — net neutrality:

OK. Well, then you know that [the 2005 Supreme Court decision known as] Brand X deregulated Internet access services … This is frightening. It’s frightening to me and to millions of my constituents. Or lots of my constituents.

Franken has been careful not to overstate his home-state support, frequently noting that more people voted against him than for him in November’s election (counting the votes for Republican Norm Coleman and the Independence Party’s Dean Barkley) and vowing to work to earn their trust.

The Hill asked eight Republican senators what their former colleague from Minnesota should do, now that the election-contest court ruling indicates he’ll fail to overtake Democrat Al Franken’s 225-vote recount lead. Here’s a representative sample, from Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.):

Norm is a very sensitive, thoughtful person and whatever Norm is doing I’m sure he believes is exactly the right thing to do and I support that.

The eight take a remarkably similar line on Coleman’s options: An octopus could tally their reasons on one leg. It’s almost as if there had been a meeting to settle on talking points. Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), a veteran on the senate’s Judiciary Committee, was the only one to elaborate much on the theme, with a partisan jab on Minnesota’s vote-counting that even Coleman has lately shied from:

There are very important issues involved — constitutional issues — and I have no qualms about saying that if he can, he ought to push it all the way. We’re so sick and tired of having one set of rules for Democrats they don’t abide by, and then another set of rules for Republicans. The Democrats didn’t count the ballots the way they should and they didn’t put the protections in that they should. It was the Republicans who were better at counting ballots and doing what was right and following the law. … It’s always good to have two senators, but not when one may not be entitled to the position.

Talk like that has succeeded so far in sending out a cloud of ink, some observers say, obscuring the press’ vision and forestalling media from calling out Coleman as a “sore loser.”

But assuming Coleman comes up empty in state courts, one expert says it’s close to pointless for him to pursue a different result in federal courts. Loyola Law School professor Richard L. Hasen writes that the federal judiciary — whether at the U.S. Supreme Court or in district court — won’t likely buy what Coleman’s got to sell.

At the Supreme Court, “the equal protection argument is very unlikely to succeed,” in Hasen’s judgment. And he says “it is hard to see viable federal issues” for such an argument should Coleman file a separate federal court case.

Due process, Hasen writes, “is one other possible claim, and it too is a long shot.”