Hilarious

From TPM:

In a briefing going on right now with reporters, Al Franken's lead recount lawyer Marc Elias made a stunning announcement: According to the campaign's methodology of tracking the recount results, they believe Al Franken now leads Norm Coleman by a margin of 22 votes.

This would be the first time that Franken has claimed a lead in this drawn-out process, and was clearly made possible by the discovery yesterday of ballots in the suburban St. Paul town of Maplewood, which gave him a net gain of 37 votes.

A few caveats are necessary. The Franken camp's methodology involves taking down the opinions of the local election officials regarding the challenged ballots, and assuming that all the challenges will result in those local officials being upheld by the state canvassing board. As such, we are dependent on the Franken camp being complete and accurate in their homework, and also on their underlying assumption proving to be correct.

There are also still about 138,000 ballots left to count, which could contain a whole lot more surprises.

Given that I intensely dislike Norm Coleman, I would love it if Franken was somehow able to pull out a win.

On a completely unrelated subject, I thought this was interesting:

Commerce Secretary-designate Bill Richardson tells Esquire how his new boss saved him during a Democratic primary debate:

"As I'm chatting with Obama, the moderator says, 'Governor Richardson, what do you think of that?' And I look at him like a deer in the headlights. I was about to say that I hadn't heard, when Obama puts his hand over his mouth and says, 'Katrina.' So I gave my four-point plan on Katrina. When I was done and the debate moved on, I looked over and said, 'Thanks, you're okay.' He said, 'Nothing to it, brother.'"

And here is some good stuff on Sarah Palin:

Georgia Sen. Saxby Chambliss, fresh off his victory in a runoff election against Democrat Jim Martin, says Sarah Palin gave him the boost he needed. "I can't overstate the impact she had down here," the Republican Senator said in an interview on Fox News Wednesday morning.

"We had John McCain and Mike Huckabee and Gov. Romney and Rudy Giuliani, but Sarah Palin came in on the last day, did a fly-around and, man, she was dynamite," Chambliss said. "We packed the houses everywhere we went. And it really did allow us to peak and get our base fired up."

"When she walks in a room, folks just explode," he added. And they really did pack the house everywhere we went. She's a dynamic lady, a great administrator, and I think she's got a great future in the Republican Party."

Please God -- let Sarah Palin be the future of the Republican Party. That's not too much to ask, is it God?

And finally -- payback can really be a bitch sometimes.