My job is to protect the interests of the people of Minnesota. Now, how are they to trust you, when you come in and to my face say something that either you know wasn’t true, or you didn’t know, and I don’t know which is worse. How are the people of Minnesota supposed to trust you?

As you can see, Al Franken is not happy about the proposed merger of NBC and Comcast. I can’t really blame him. After all, Comcast, as one of our very few cable companies, is responsible for the fair distribution of content. But they would also become creators of content with their purchase of NBC. It’s hard to see how that wouldn’t become a conflict of interest.

And I would get even more nervous, as Al clearly has, if the CEO of Comcast gave me a reassurance that was the exact opposite of what his lawyers had just argued in front of the FCC.

The whole video (after the break) is well worth a watch. Al Franken is steaming mad at Comcast, and he’s mad because he thinks Comcast is going to take advantage of us here in Minnesota. To be honest, I wish all of our public servants would get so serious about things they think are threats to their constituents.

[via Greg Laden]

The blogosphere — both right and left — has been blowing up since late afternoon yesterday, when Al Franken objected to giving Joe Lieberman an extra minute or two to conclude his remarks. Republicans are furious, Democrats are thrilled, but the whole thing really just isn’t a big deal, despite John McCain’s efforts to make it one.

Just like a lot of liberals who have been burned by Lieberman, I can’t say I didn’t relish him being put in his place, albeit on a very minor matter. But according to Franken, this had nothing to do with Lieberman. The Senate is obviously very much pressed for time trying to complete the health care vote, and Franken was asked to keep things moving. So he did.

And that would be the end of the story, but then John McCain, who has quite frankly become a huge blowhard, gets up and rails about “what’s happening to this body.” Senator McCain, this is when you’ve chosen to make your stand? You know, the only reason these strict time limits are necessary is because of Republican Senators like Judd Gregg, who wrote a manual on how to obstruct the health care debate,  and Tom Coburn, who wasted hours by requiring the text of an obviously-doomed amendment to be read in its entirety for hours. Maybe you should try having a talk with them.

Besides, the Senate seems to be doing pretty well on comity, given the state of things in the House:

Once this starts happening in the Senate, McCain can complain. But somehow, when it happens, I get the feeling it will not be the Democrats doing this to the Republicans.

For instance, take this video of Franken speaking out against Republican talking points on health care [courtesy of Huffington Post]. A clearly frustrated Franken struck back at Sen John Thune’s (R-SD) ridiculous contention that health reform would institute five years of taxes with no benefits being offered.

“We are entitled to our own opinions. We’re not entitled to our own facts,” Franken repeated after the back-and-forth. “The fact is benefits kick in on day one, and the large majority of benefits kick in on day one. And we shouldn’t be standing up here with charts that say the exact opposite.”

That’s a refrain I’ve been repeating often myself. The whole video is worth a watch:

Then they ran into a little snag: The bill started receiving Democratic co-sponsors, including Ohio’s Sherrod Brown and our very own Al Franken. Franken said he had been thinking about enrolling anyway.

To me, this speaks to part of the problem we’re having in getting Republican support for genuine health care reform. To Republicans, the idea that the public option could really benefit millions of Americans is completely inconceivable, while Democrats take it as a given. I would much rather have our representatives fall somewhere in the middle — recognizing the opportunity the public option presents, but scrutinizing it carefully to make sure the plan developed in Congress will work. For that reason, I think Coburn and Vitter’s amendment is a great idea.

In the few months he’s been in the Senate so far, he has been a diligent worker, and his approval rating is slowly starting to rise. Here are the findings of a recent Rasmussen poll:

Fifty percent (50%) of the state’s voters approve of the job performance of Franken who took office in July after months of legal wrangling over the election results with his Republican predecessor Norm Coleman. Twenty-four percent (24%) strongly approve of the job he is doing.

Forty-five percent (45%) disapprove of how Franken is doing, with 29% who strongly disapprove.

Not a stellar approval rating, of course, but a step in the right direction for Franken, who won with about 42 percent of the vote. I have a lot of confidence that Franken’s approval rating will slowly but surely continue to rise as Minnesotans see the good work he’s doing.

I understand there are those who oppose gay marriage, but to support overt discrimination against gays is just shocking. I can’t think of a single valid reason to ever support discrimination, in particular because this bill does not apply to religious organizations. It does not apply to any organization “that is exempt from the religious discrimination provisions of title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.”

Our own Al Franken pointed out at a hearing last week that Minnesota is one of the states where workers are protected against discrimination, and after over 15 years, the sky has yet to fall. Watch his remarks below [via MN Independent]:

The Senate Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on the topic “Medical Debt: Can Bankruptcy Reform Facilitate a Fresh Start?” MyDD has posted a fantastic clip of our very own Senator Al Franken in action at the hearing.

Franken took on Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a Senior Fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, over her claim that a universal healthcare system would somehow increase medical bankruptcies in the United States [conservative readers, feel free to chime in if you think that conclusion is in any way justified, because I can’t possibly imagine how anyone could reach that conclusion.] Faced with such an illogical argument, Franken broke out a weapon that he has used successfully throughout his career: facts.

FRANKEN: I think we disagree on whether health care reform, the health care reform that we’re talking about in Congress now should pass. You said that the way we’re going will increase bankruptcies. I want to ask you, how many medical bankruptcies because of medical crises were there last year in Switzerland?
FURCHTGOTT-ROTT: I don’t have that number in front of me, but I can find out and get back to you.
FRANKEN: I can tell you how many it was. It’s zero. Do you know how many medical bankruptcies there were last year in France?
FURCHTGOTT-ROTT: I don’t have that number, but I can get back to you if I like.
FRANKEN: Yeah, the number is zero. Do you know how many were in Germany?\
FURCHTGOTT-ROTT: From the trend of your questions, I’m assuming the number is zero. But I don’t know the precise number and would have to get back to you.
FRANKEN: Well, you’re very good. Very fast. The point is, I think we need to go in that direction, not the opposite direction. Thank you.

I guess that most people who speak at the Steak Fry eventually run for president. I guess that’s been the history but I’m not interested in running for president. I’m coming because I like Tom Harkin and I like steak. [Radio Iowa, via Political Wire]

The momentum in the Senate race between Al Franken and Norm Coleman shifted when the Franken campaign aired an ad exposing Coleman’s dishonest attempts to pain Franken as angry. The Coleman campaign NRSC took benign footage of Franken telling a story about Paul Wellstone and took it out of context to make Franken look like he was raging.

If you’ve never seen Franken’s ad, it’s still worth a watch.

The GOP, though, apparently doesn’t care about being honest. Shockingly, even after being discredited for these sleazy tactics once, they’re back at it with another ad showing the exact same footage of Franken.

This behavior by the GOP is shameful and pathetic. Franken deserves the chance to prove himself to Minnesotans without smear campaigns by the Republican party. It’s time for the GOP to accept that Franken won the election. At the very least, Franken deserves the basic decency of not being smeared with outright lies.

SORT-OF UPDATE: Ryan Flynn emailed me to remind me that the NRSC ran the initial sleazy Franken ad, not the Coleman campaign. That makes it all better.