Support BuzzFlash Get a copy of click image MORE BuzzFlash INTERVIEWS WORLD MEDIA WATCH P.M. CARPENTER MAUREEN FARRELL BARBARA'S DAILY BUZZ SOUTHERN STYLE CARTOONS THE ANGRY LIBERAL EDITORIALS CONTRIBUTORS MAILBAG PERSPECTIVES ANALYSIS NEWS ALERTS LINK ARCHIVES SEARCH ABOUT FAQ

Letters from BuzzFlash Readers in Response to Our Editorial on Norm Coleman

BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY

In response to "Minnesota Should Hang Its Head in Shame for Electing Norm Coleman, A True Grand Hypocrisy Party Creep" found here: http://www.buzzflash.com/editorial/03/02/28.html.

* * *

Dear Buzzflash:

Thanks so much for your editorial on Norm Coleman and his support of the Estrada nomination. Those of us who were, and still are, proud Wellstone and Mondale supporters went for the barf bags the morning after the election.

Norm Coleman is the kind of politician you get when you drag the bottom of a sewer. For years we have been a proud and progressive state electing people with moral clarity and principle. My fear now is that we have forever surrendered this tradition.

Over the next few years the people of Minnesota won't have to wonder what Norm's position will be on any issue. Simply listen to what our unelected president says, then look behind him at the obedient little puppy licking his shoes and begging for a biscuit.

Bill Chickering
White Bear Lake, Minnesota

Buzz,

I was shocked when Coleman won that election. Today, after all of the fraud that went on during the election, I have had to wonder about Norm Coleman and that election...if there was any indication of voting fraud. I was surprised that Minnesota went with the opposite of Senator Wellstone, who was such a beloved man.

I certainly didn't buy into what the Republicans wanted people to believe and that was that people were turned off by Senator Wellstone's memorial service, which should never, ever have been apologized for. Naturally, the Republicans would dislike it...they disliked him and his beliefs. He gave the Republicans much more patience and credit than they ever deserved.

Well, your article brought back those horrible memories and I was just wondering if anyone had looked into the voting procedure in effect at that time, now that there is so much fact and suspicion of other races between Democrats, who were predicted to win, and Republicans, who were not expected to win.

Just wonderin'. . .

Thank you and I always love the work put into your site, which sometimes I take the time and read everything and that takes hours.:)

Shirley Smith
Longview, TX

Following is my letter to Norm Coleman over Estrada. Coleman responded to me saying that Estrada had received the ABA's highest rating, that he's going to support "strict construction" judges, and that the judiciary is starved with a high level of vacancies,
therefore he's going to support Estrada's nomination.

Please feel free to drop Senator Coleman a note and let him know his support of this partisan is doing neither Minnesota nor justice any favors.

Dan Brown
Saint Paul, Minn.

* * *

The Honorable Norm Coleman
United States Senate
DB40-3 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-2304

February 26, 2003

Senator Coleman,

Thank you for your response outlining your stand on trying to get Miguel Estrada appointed to the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia.

While not surprised, I was disappointed by your continued support of this right-wing partisan's climb to power through our court system. As a former Chief Prosecutor and Solicitor General of the State of Minnesota, you of all people should recognize the importance of building an impartial judiciary.

Mr. Estrada is anything but impartial, having been among the partisan lawyers who worked furiously in the dark days of December of 2000 to invalidate the will of the voters of the state of Florida in order to controvert the will of the plurality of voters that made someone else the winner of the national popular vote for President of the United States.

Likewise, Mr. Fred Fielding, the sole American Bar Association attorney who recommended Mr. Estrada's "well qualified" rating to the ABA's Standing Committee on the Federal Judiciary, is surrounded by controversy regarding his partisan Republican activities during his tenure on the Standing Committee. Mr. Fielding worked for the Bush-Cheney transition team, accepted an appointment from the Bush administration, and helped found a group to promote and run ads supporting Bush judicial nominees, including Mr. Estrada.

(Actually, the fact that his close friend Ann Coulter in her bile-filled screed "Slander" lauds Mr. Estrada glowingly as a helpmate should be enough by itself to convince you of Mr. Estrada's partisan predilections.)

The ABA estimates there are somewhere above a million lawyers in this country. The US Census indicates there's about one lawyer for every 360 citizens. More judicial nominees, both numerically, and as a percentage approved of total nominations, were approved by the Democrats who held the Senate during the first two years of this administration than the corresponding years of the Clinton administration, when Republicans held back Clinton appointees. It's beyond disingenuous for Republicans to now try to leverage a supposedly starved judiciary that they had such a huge role in causing, to justify forcing partisans onto the court.

Out of a million lawyers, surely you can find one who did not have a hand in trying to subvert the Constitutional voting rights of millions of citizens.

Out of all the lawyers that the ABA might consider well qualified, surely you can find one whose qualification rating is not tarnished by the partisan conflicts of interest of his advocate at the ABA.

I am aware, of course, that as the handpicked candidate of Vice President Cheney, your ability to work toward ensuring the best interests and best justice for your constituents here in the State of Minnesota may be understandably impaired.

I believe you can rise above your dual loyalties, however, and I am enclosing articles outlining Mr. Estrada's and Mr. Fielding's partisan background and positions. Having provided you with this information, I can be satisfied that you are finally completely informed as to the partisan backgrounds and conflicts of interest surrounding Mr. Estrada's nomination.

I hold out hope, naturally, that you will find the political will to do your best for your adopted state, and resist high-level edicts to support the building of a partisan judiciary that does no one justice, least of all your constituents here in Minnesota. I am, therefore, confident that now that you have the full picture, you will cease your support of this political plum appointment and Republican attempt to subvert the objectivity of the court.

Should you continue in your support of this partisan nomination, however, I shall spare no effort to inform your constituents who oppose his nomination of your support of this political attempt to undermine the establishment of an impartial judiciary.

Thank you for your measured consideration of this important issue.

Sincerely,

Dan Brown
Enc.

http://www.gdclaw.com/fstore/documents/media/RscuSqdAmLawReprnt.pdf

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/politics/ny-
usaba233144576feb24,0,7963282.story

Dear Buzzflash,

As a Minnesotan who worked on the Wellstone campaign, I am still in a state of mourning along with a majority of the citizens here, many of whom believe that Paul was murdered. Please consider a follow-up to your editorial regarding Coleman. Just before his death, Wellstone was close to sixty percent in the polls and climbing fast. The forty percent hard-core dittoheads who support the right wing no matter what were in disarray. Wellstone was enemy number one of cheneybush inc. His death destroyed the ability of the DFL party in Minnesota to function, as Wellstone was the undisputed leader and his death left us all in shock. A final blow to the citizens of Minnesota came when the right wing scandalized the Wellstone memorial with slanderous accusations of political manipulation, failing to offer simple human compassion to the sons who had just lost a father, mother, and sister (what was the lesson of Carnahan and Ashcroft? Kill the wife too) and the best friend who all did their best to carry on and give comfort to the rest of us. It was one of the most heinous acts of political abuse I have ever seen, and be assured that we in Minnesota do not need to be reminded of the shame of Coleman. Please, reflect on what happened to Wellstone and know that we did the best we could.

Thank you,

A Grateful Buzzflash Reader

I'm another Minnesota Buzzflash reader who got the very same letter after I contacted Norm Coleman about the Estrada nomination. Another hypocritical component of this letter is Coleman touting Estrada's ABA rating. When Bush first became resident of the White House there was a much publicized trashing of the ABA ratings by the GOP because they considered the ABA too liberal. So, from what I can tell, the ABA was too liberal when they
wouldn't endorse Priscilla Owen, but they're just fine when they endorse Estrada.

The other recent news story that puts the lie to this ABA nonsense is that one of the members of the supposedly non-partisan ABA committee that makes judicial recommendations was revealed to be a GOP party activist. Somehow, I doubt that this will cause Coleman to reconsider his position.

There really is no other word that describes Coleman better than 'opportunist.' He became mayor of St. Paul as a Democrat and switched parties midway through his second term. He endorsed Wellstone in '96 and then trashed him in '02. The most telling thing about Coleman is this: In his election to the Senate, do you know how many precincts he won in the city he governed for eight years? Zero. He owes his election to conservative suburbanites, because the people who really knew him couldn't stomach him anymore.

Joseph Ford
Minneapolis, MN

BuzzFlash,

The editorial is great! The last few days i've been thinking about how much this country misses Wellstone's voice and how he'd be leading the antiwar movement.

Check out these two Coleman-related items below, for current or future reference. First is Coleman making it sound like be beat Humphrey and then lost to Jesse, and the other one is even worse... Coleman, whose mantra was that he'd work hard for the people of Minnesota, has been flying around the country giving speeches to Republican groups, who are positioning him as some kind of giant-killer because he beat Mondale, a guy who had five days to campaign and faced a mostly Republican-manufactured national backlash following Rick Kahn's speech at Wellstone's memorial service. When they were running against Mondale, they were saying that he was too old, out of touch, blah, blah, blah...and now that they've beaten him, Mondale is suddenly being lionized. Also, note the sickening spin about Coleman -- who has spent two months in the Senate -- being touted as a VP candidate in 2008.

When Coleman was elected it felt like Florida all over again. Only this time it's a six-year sentence instead of four.

Congratulations on your traffic gains... and here i was feeling all excited about breaking the 10,000 mark!

Best,

Mike Tronnes
Cursor.org

Hello,

I received the infamous letter from Senator Norm Coleman, the letter in the editorial on Buzzflash that states what type of person Coleman is and how he is willing to go along with the liars in the Senate regarding Estrada's nomination.

Having read the editorial and while reading it I thought about Norm and what his response or feelings on it must be so I went to his Senate website to email him again but the email address had been taken off his site !!

Strike a nerve or cause embarrassment? I hope both!!

I got an answer to my questions didn't I.

Keep on Buzzin!!

Tom Koop

Dear BuzzFlash,

In one interview during the Mondale/Coleman runoff, Coleman was asked if he would owe President Bush a lot if he were to win the election (since Bush had promoted him and campaigned for him a lot). Coleman's answer stunned me. He said 'no, President Bush will owe me a lot. I walked through hell to get here." Wasn't that remark odd? What hellishness did he commit in order to win, I wonder.

A BuzzFlash Reader

Subj: Norm "Tuna Sandwich" Coleman

Hi Buzz--I just read the letter from Shirley Smith, a Texas reader, about the utterly inexplicable election of Coleman. She wonders whether there was anything suspicious about the election, given this bizarre outcome.

I'm deeply sorry to say that it was probably a legit win, even though this implies that a majority of voters in this otherwise sensible state experienced a momentary access of dumbassitude.

Because Wellstone was killed so close to the election, and it took several days to settle on Mondale to replace him, there was a mad scramble to figure out a way of dealing with the ballots that would be both equitable and practicable. The upshot was that voters got a separate ballot just for the senate race; they checked a box on that separate slip, which was then placed in a separate box, and the slips were counted by hand, then the number of slips checked against number of regular ballots cast and number of ballot tickets (kind of a receipt that you hand the poll worker in exchange for a blank ballot). It seems to have functioned smoothly enough, at least it did at my own precinct, where I worked the polls.

Unfortunately, some number of people who had cast absentee ballots got shut out because there was no way for them to request a new ballot and return it before the polls closed on 5 Nov. I don't recall that there was a large enough number of absentee ballots cast to have changed the outcome in any case.

So I fear we can't even console ourselves with the possibility that Coleman's victory was due to chicanery. As Garrison Keillor put it, it was just a dumb, low-rent mistake, like ordering a tuna sandwich in a great steak restaurant. One thing that does make me gleeful, however, is that Tuna Boy could not carry EVEN ONE SINGLE PRECINCT here in St. Paul. Not even the one he lives in! Months after the election was over, his neighbors still had their big Wellstone lawn signs up.

Regards--Mary Burke (St. Paul, MN)

BUZZFLASH READER COMMENTARY