As expected, the three-judge panel presiding over Norm Coleman’s recount challenge (or "contest") has summarily bounced the silly motion to move all the ballots to St. Paul so Norm’s "Ballot Inspectors" can look over them.  (Norm, if you haven’t done your own discovery yet, you’re more hopeless than I thought.)  They haven’t yet zapped his summary judgment, but that will likely happen by Monday morning. 

This means that the trial over Norm’s contest will start as planned next Monday.  The schedule is as follows: Monday, Jan. 26- 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m.;  from Jan. 27 until the end, the trial will be in session from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. and 1 p.m.-4:30 p.m. every weekday.

In the meantime, it looks like the Coleman camp got a little creative with the evidence they were submitting (h/t Minnesota Progressive Project):

At a pre-trial hearing in the Minnesota election lawsuit just now, Franken attorney Kevin Hamilton made a striking accusation: That the Coleman campaign has been doctoring evidence.

As an example, Hamilton showed two photocopies of a rejected absentee ballot envelope, one of which he said was the unaltered original, and the other taken from Coleman’s legal filings in his attempts to get more of the rejected ballots opened. The Coleman copy was missing the section in which a local election official explained why it was rejected.

"We would not be able to stipulate to the authenticity of a document where the key portion has been cut out," Hamilton complained.

No kidding.   This is ridiculous.