Debunking evidence-free, sore-loser wingnuttery from John Fund and fiends. Again...
By Brad Friedman on 7/3/2009, 9:45am PT  

In an unbylined Wall Street Journal editorial (why a liar and sore-loser like WSJ/GOP operative John Fund is so ashamed to put his name on his own writing we'll never know...okay, maybe we do), the once-respectable paper shamelessly asserts: "Mr. Franken now goes to the Senate having effectively stolen an election."

In response, we'll associate ourselves with TPM's Eric Kleefeld's take on it, calling it "an essay that is so full of factual errors and distortions about what happened, it can drive you nuts if you'd spent countless hours following all the gritty details like I did."

It's all par for the cowardly John Fund course, of course.

But since the sore-losing, sour-grapes, tin-foil hatted conspiracy theorists of the Wall Street Journal have taken the opportunity to propagandize the transparent Franken/Coleman election results by comparing them to the 2004 Washington state Gubernatorial race, where the Democratic candidate Christine Gregoire defeated Republican Dino Rossi during a long, sloppy post-election contest and court case, let's remind folks for the record, here in the reality-based community, what the judges in each case found in regard to the keyboard wingnut claims of "fraud"...

Judge John Bridges' finding in the '04 WA contest, as we noted in June '05:

"There is no evidence that ballots were changed, the ballot box stuffed or that lawful votes were removed from either candidate's ballot box," Bridges said.
...
On the Republicans' fraud charge, the judge repeated the fact that there was no official fraud claim in the case, but then said that in any case, he saw no evidence of fraud.
...
There is no evidence that the problems in King County had anything to do with "intentional misconduct or someone's desire to manipulate the election" or "partisan bias," the phrase Republicans used to allege wrongdoing.

"There is no evidence before the court to question ballot security as to those ballots actually counted," Bridges said, knocking down another Republican claim about King County.
...
[Republican Secretary of State Sam] Reed criticized the Republican efforts to claim vote fraud without producing convincing evidence.

"I think if they were going to allege fraud, they should have done it in the initial filings of the case and I think they should have had proof of fraud, and obviously they didn't do that."

And from the MN Supreme Court's ruling in the '08 MN contest, as we noted yesterday:

The 5 to 0 unanimous ruling of the bi-partisan Minnesota Supreme Court noted "[n]o claim of fraud in the election or during the recount was made by either party" and that "Coleman's counsel confirmed at oral argument that Coleman makes no claim of fraud on the part of either voters or election officials."

In both cases, the Republicans were so thoroughly spanked by the court, that neither of the two candidates appealed the judges' decisions. Apparently the lack of any actual evidence of fraud presented by the Republicans in both months-long cases, is not enough to keep the cowardly Fund-ies from shouting "fraud!" any way.

Wingnuts, the photo above right, taken yesterday in the halls of the U.S. Senate, again courtesy of Kleefeld, is for you. Get over it. Move on.

Here endeth the 2008 Election.

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Article Categories: Election 2004, Election Fraud, Election 2008, Mainstream Media Failure, Minnesota, U.S. Senate, Washington State, John Fund, Al Franken, Wall Street Journal