The letter is part of a concerted effort by Democrats and their allies to put pressure on Pawlenty in anticipation of the Minnesota Supreme Court’s ruling on the contest. A three-judge panel determined that the Democrat won the election by 312 votes and the state’s top court is widely expected to ratify that decision. Pawlenty has been cagey about whether he will sign an election certificate at that point, which would clear the way for Franken to be seated.

The Republican leadership in Washington has made it obvious that they’ll do whatever it takes to keep Franken from taking office, and therefore giving President Obama a veto-proof 60-seat majority. The latest evidence: the National Republican Senatorial Committee recently committed $750,000 to cover Coleman’s spiraling legal bills, reports the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza.

Rick Hasen, a professor at Loyola Law School, lauds the the “careful, unanimous” ruling of the three-judge panel on his blog. “It makes findings of fact and conclusions of law that on first read appear reasonable and conservative,” Hasen writes. “The opinion considers the major arguments made by Coleman and rejects them in a detailed and measured way. It is the kind of opinion that is unlikely to be disturbed on appeal by either the Minnesota Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court.”

Nate Silver, over at FiveThirtyEight, declares that Coleman’s prospects for prevailing have now reached “Calista Flockhart territory.” Silver also comes up with an estimate for how much the former senator might be spending to keep the legal fight going. His (admittedly imprecise) conclusion: $145,000 per week.

While the numbers guru figures Coleman’s odds of prevailing in the courts are incredibly slim, he also doesn’t see too many other options for the Republican politically. “His best bet might be to wait until 2014, when Franken would be up for re-election, but six years is a lifetime in politics,” Silver concludes. “Although Coleman’s chances of prevailing in his legal case are not very strong, they may be better than his next-best alternatives.”

NBC News’ First Read blog is equally dismissive of Coleman’s prospects. “We’ll say it again: The question increasingly is no longer whether Al Franken will be the next U.S. senator from Minnesota; it’s when he’ll be the next senator.”

Not surprisingly, Tim Kaine, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, called on Coleman to concede.
“Enough is enough,” Kaine said in a statement. “It is time for Norm Coleman to concede and for Al Franken to be sworn in as the next U.S. Senator from Minnesota. The voters of Minnesota months ago elected Al Franken to the Senate — and during every step in the legal process that judgment has been confirmed.”

Slightly less predictable was the reaction of MSNBC host Joe Scarborough. “When are the Republicans gonna give up the ghost on this?” Scarborough asked on today’s edition of “Morning Joe.” “Norm, I like you. You lost. Can we seat a senator so Amy [Klobuchar] doesn’t have to do the job of two senators. … It is seriously not fair to constituents in Minnesota to drag this out any longer. It’s over, Norm.”

Here’s the video of Scarborough:

The Twin Cities played a starring role in the selection of both major-party vice-presidential candidates this year — on stage in the case of Republican Sarah Palin and behind the scenes in the case of Democrat Joe Biden. But just as the grand total of Palin’s purchases on GOP credit cards (which started in Minnesota) was a moving target, the details of Biden’s back-door tete-a-tete with Barack Obama in Minneapolis last August have shifted over time. At issue: Exactly how long did they meet in person at Obama’s hotel, and exactly how many others (and of what gender) was Obama still considering for the veep slot then?

The Wall Street Journal told it this way on Aug 25:

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama’s selection of Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate reached a pivotal point in a secret meeting on the night of Aug. 6. Sen. Biden was whisked into a Minneapolis hotel room through a back entrance before Sen. Obama left for his Hawaii vacation. They talked one-on-one for 90 minutes. “It was spirited and pragmatic,” says one adviser who was briefed. … None of Sen. Biden’s vulnerabilities was likely a surprise to the Obama team, which conducted a thorough vetting of the candidates. The team, led by Caroline Kennedy and ex-Justice Department official Eric Holder, initially cast a wide net, but in the end focused more on Sens. Biden and [Evan] Bayh and [Virginia] Gov. [Tim] Kaine. Sen. Obama sought private meetings with the three. Sen. Biden’s turn came in Minneapolis in early August, when Sen. Obama was there for a $1,000 a person fund-raiser. He had Sen. Biden sneak into a downtown hotel through the back door. (WSJ)

On Larry King LIve last week (hat tip: Political Animal), Biden said the in-person meeting lasted more than twice as long, and that only one other person was under consideration at that point:

KING: How did you learn — the moment you learned that Senator Obama wanted Senator Biden to be his running mate?

BIDEN: Well, he had called me about a month before he chose me … And I said, “I’ll be vetted, but I — but even if you choose me, I still want to talk to you before that — before I would agree to accept.” And then several — then I got squirreled out to — he was campaigning in Minneapolis-St. Paul. And I got a phone call, would [I] go masquerade myself out there? They provided a plane for me and snuck me into this hotel. And we spent three-and-a-half hours talking about the role of vice president. And he said, “Well, it’s down to you and somebody else.” And he said, “I’ll give you a call later.”

KING: Did you ever know who the other person was?

BIDEN: Well, I think I do, but I don’t want to, you know, speculate on that.

Biden’s Larry King version squares better with what he told the New Yorker (Oct. 20 edition) although Biden lets on that his lone rival is neither man the Wall Street Journal mentioned but a woman — Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sibelius, apparently:

Biden agreed to let Obama’s campaign team consider him, but with a caveat: “I wanted to make sure we understood each other—that, even if I vetted and he wanted me to take the job, I wasn’t committing to do that. When the time was appropriate for him, if I was the guy, I needed to spend at least two or three hours with him to understand what the role would be.” Biden wanted what amounted to an oral contract between him and Obama, spelling out his specific responsibilities in an Obama White House. On August 6th, Biden said, the Obama campaign “smuggled” him into Minneapolis, where Obama was campaigning, and the two senators stayed up late in a suite at the Graves 601 Hotel working out the details of a potential deal. … [Obama] tested Biden’s understanding of how broad his role would be, as opposed to that of another contender — apparently, Kathleen Sebelius, the governor of Kansas and the only woman known to be on Obama’s short list. “He said, ‘Well, you know, if I offered this to somebody’ — he named her, a person — he said, ‘That person would be very happy if I assigned them to reorganize the government.’ And he said, ‘They’d be very happy doing that. How about you?’ ” That didn’t sound like much of a job to Biden. “No,” he told Obama. “That’s not what I want to do.”