Pawlenty hems, haws on if he’ll OK new senator after state high court rules

[struggle4progress]

By Chris Steller 4/13/09 12:59 PM

Gov. Tim Pawlenty says he might not sign an election certificate to seat Democrat Al Franken or Republican Norm Coleman in the U.S. Senate, even after the Minnesota Supreme Court is done with the disputed election.

“I also would want to look at what the courts did with the case in terms of leaving issues for potential appeal, the strength of those issues, how directly and effectively they addressed them,” Pawlenty told a Minnesota Public Radio call-in audience today “I’m not saying that I’m going to, or not going to, issue the certificate at that point. I just want to make sure I have all the facts in front of me before I made a decision like that.”

It’s the second time in a week that Pawlenty, a Republican and a trained attorney, said he plans to cast himself in the role of judicial critic once the courts issue final rulings on Coleman’s legal challenge to Franken’s recount win.

On April 8, Pawlenty told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that before he signed an election certificate, he would want to “see what the case would look like at that point, in terms of how harshly or strongly the issues have been decided or dealt with by the Minnesota Supreme Court” ...

http://minnesotaindependent.com/31961/pawlenty-sign-certificate-senate

[BR_Parkway]

1. could their state legislature impeach him for failure to obey the court?

might be an interesting twist