I am remiss for failing to inform you all that Norm Coleman had to dodge a few eggs last week. This is a common occurrence for him, as City Pages notes.

As speculation grows that Norm may actually formally file his appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court sometime this week [Update: Coleman filed his appeal with the court late Monday afternoon], it might be instructive to see who’s been egging him on these past few months.

It’s not as if it’s any big secret. As Timberjay Newspapers’ Marshall Helmberger states:

Every day, thousands of drivers in Minnesota exceed the speed limit. And that means the cop that writes you a speeding ticket is violating your equal protection rights under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

That, in a nutshell, is the argument that former Senator Norm Coleman and his attorneys plan to take the state’s Supreme Court, and very possibly to federal court. It’s a patently spurious claim, but it could serve a larger political objective of Republicans nationally, which is simply to keep Al Franken out of office as long as possible.

In fact, Norm’s biggest problem is that this is so very obvious. Because it is so obvious, it’s angering a growing number of the folks at home — even a growing number of those folks, such as the editors of the Bemidji Pioneer, who have been staunch Coleman fans for years:

This newspaper has endorsed Republican Coleman for every statewide race he’s run – governor in 1998, U.S. senator in 2002, and most recently in his re-election bid this past fall…

The public perception at this point appears not to be one of letting Sen. Coleman fully seek redress of his legal grievances, but rather one of obstructing the Democrat-controlled Senate to prevent it from reaching that magic number of 60 votes. Adding Mr. Franken would mean 59 Democrat votes in the Senate. To continue to obstruct doesn’t bode well for Minnesota , nor for Sen. Coleman’s career, should he continue in politics.

It’s time to come home, Norm.

Ah, but if he does that, then the very folks who are egging him on will likely refuse to help pay his mounting legal bills. And they may well have other holds on Norm besides the financial ones. So he’s stuck — and so, in all likelihood, is Smilin’ Tim Pawlenty, who knows what the national Republicans will be expecting of him if he hopes to get a spot on the 2012 ticket. (Heh. As if, Tim.)