Benjamin Franklin said the Founding Fathers had given us a republic, "if you can keep it." Unfortunately, it appears that we can't:

Democrat Al Franken will be declared the winner of the tight U.S. Senate contest in Minnesota, emerging from a ballot recount with a slim margin over Republican Norm Coleman, state officials said on Sunday.

It would be impossible to find someone less qualified for the Senate than the tax-dodging, corrupt, and conspicuously unfunny professional clown Al Franken. Even the left-wing Minnesota Star Tribune endorsed his Republican opponent Norm Coleman. Unsurprisingly, Coleman won the election.

But the election process in Minnesota is overseen by Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, who has links to George Soros and the extremely unsavory ultra-left outfits Moveon.org and ACORN. Since the election was close, they just kept counting the votes and discovering new votes until they got the results they wanted. As FDR's Uncle Joe said:

Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.

Too bad Ritchie et al. couldn't conjure up imaginary listeners like they can phony voters. Franken would still be on Air America, causing relatively little damage.

Here's the face of the decline and fall of the rule of law in America:

The absurdity of corrupt Democrat apparatchiks seizing a Senate seat from its rightful owner and handing it to a third-rate comedian doesn't do much to mitigate the horror.

On a tip from Varla. Cross-posted at Moonbattery.