A few days ago I wrote about Al Franken’s struggles to get elected Senator from Minnesota.  The blog TPMDC has an update.

Today’s announcement by the Franken campaign — that they will provisionally rest their case tomorrow — has likely changed the timeline of the case dramatically, a top election expert in Minnesota tells TPM.

Professor David Schultz, a teacher of election law at Hamline University, was previously predicting that a ruling would take until mid-April at the earliest. But that assumed Team Franken would take 2-3 weeks to make its case, as opposed to the week and two days they’ll have actually used. “I would say we could anticipate — we should anticipate at this point — definitely before the end of the month,” said Schultz. “It very well might be in a couple of weeks.”

After that, the next step will be the appeals, which are likely to be fast-tracked straight to the state Supreme Court — and which Schultz expects will come from Coleman, with the court likely to have ruled that Franken is the winner: “It doesn’t look like at this point the Coleman campaign has either made the arguments or has the numbers to switch it over to his side for victory. So I presume at this point that the court will find for Franken.”

Franken himself was in Washington yesterday and told Senators and Politico that he doesn’t expect to be seated until after the Minnesota Supreme Court Ruling.

Correction:  In the post, “Where is Al?”  I said that the Minnesota Supreme Court was now counting ballots.  It is not, the Supreme Court but a three judge panel.

A bit more on Bobby Jindal and Kenneth the Page  from Calvin Trillin in this week’s Nation.   The title is “Bobby Jindal Bombs”

Republicans had hoped they might rekindle
Their party’s prospects through one Bobby Jindal.
But Jindal proved an easy man to mock
(He’s like the dorky page on 30 Rock).
So Sarah Palin might just have her day–
With hopes that Tina Fey will stay away–
Though Romney nurtures still that White House yen.
His imitator’s Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken.