And waiting in the wings...looking for "God to guide her path" is sweet little Sarah Barracuda.

In interviews with Wolf Blitzer and Larry King, Sarah, when asked whether she might leave the governorship to pursue a Senate seat, said she would go where "God and the people of Alaska want me to."

Well if God gets into this, he's gonna have an interesting mess on his hands.

First, you have to think that Sarah is secretly on her knees every night at home, praying for Ted Stevens to get JUST enough votes to keep his seat and then get ousted from the Senate because he is a felon. That would enable Sarah to go after that seat.

Secondly, she could run for Senator in 2010 against GOP incumbent Lisa Murkowski and wouldn't THAT stir up the pot. First she would be going after a member of her own party in a blatant power grab and second, in so doing, would further exacerbate the splits in the GOP Alaska ranks.

Sarah didn't make a universal set of supporters when she ran as a "reformer" to win the governorship. Those being reformed in the GOP were not amused and you could see signs of the split in the fact that members of her own party supported a legislative investigation of her firing of her State Police chief.

So how does Sarah pull off a Senate seat victory? Her better chance is probably going after a Stevens vacancy, but the way the vote is going, it seems more and more likely that Stevens vacancy won't be from a new term but a loss of h is seat to Mark Begich and thus...no vacancy to fill on Sarah's part.

And if she waits until 2010, she is going to create a real split in the state GOP and make it very difficult to come up with a winning majority. Had she proven a real reformer, she would have had a chance of putting together a centrist coalition, but her brief time in the national spotlight has brought her shortcomings into harsh focus, and her reputation is not going to be as much of an asset if she decides to run.

Besides....we need her as the GOP's standard bearer in 2012....please, please please.. God, if you know what is good for us, you will guide her to a run for the Presidency.

Hey, Steve, guess some of us won't sleep until these last races are in the bag, huh? What about Young vs. Berkowitz? The polls had Berkowitz ahead too. Are they recounting that race?

Convicted felons lose certain basic civil rights including the right to vote and the right to receive certain benefits. I think this puts a Stevens exclusion in a different category than an exclusion on the basis of race or religion.

The problem is that an exclusion may be dicey if done before conviction is final, that is, before all appellate and collateral remedies are exhausted.

Just a nitpick, but Sean Quinn actually wrote that, not Nate Silver.

Dennis: Ack! Thanks!

Stevens probably will pick up a couple hundred votes from the districts where the questioned ballots weren't counted today, which includes Palin's home districts. But Begich should gain over a thousand from the remaining absentee voters to be counted.

Berkowitz is down 15,000 and is utterly screwed (they've only held off this long in calling it because of the still-out ballots, but he's not making up ground). In Alaska, there is certainly some kind of "he's a criminal but he brought a lot of pork so we'll vote for him but won't tell/will lie" to the pollsters effect.

After all the Alaska Senate & House races are the biggest failings of the polling industry in years, possibly decades.

Sandy Levinson thinks that excluding him might be unconstitutional.

Sandy would be wrong, despite protestations, as shown in Art I, Sec 5:

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member."

It's Constitutional. Period. All the other arguments are window dressing.

Isn't this exactly the issue from Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)? That decision basically stated that they could not exclude a member, but once they seated and swore in the member, they could then expel by the constitutional 2/3 vote.

If Stevens did come out on top in the final certified count, couldn't Bush simply pardon him and make the talk of expulsion moot?

Much tidier if Begich simply wins outright...

I think people are going over the top to come up with reasons for ejecting convicted felons from Congress. Stevens' votes were obtained the old fashioned way, with upfront money. These days Congress' votes are bought with "legal" political donations. I prefer to have the crooks identified, instead of hiding behind PACs. It sort of why I thought having Lyndon LaRouche on the ballot was always refreshing - at least you knew for sure that he was a crook.

"Isn't this exactly the issue from Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486 (1969)?"

Yup. I don't know what Sandy's been smoking, but he really needs to stop. This is a very, very, very easy case: the Senate can't disqualify Stevens from office, but it sure can expel him. If it had the votes, the Senate could expel him because he eats peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Yup, they can expel a member for any reason they want.

You could make an argument that you couldn't expel a Senator on the grounds of religion, since the Constitution bars any religious test for holding office. But being a felon? That seems unambiguously within the rules to me.

What the heck is going on up there? Why is it taking so long to count 300,000 votes?

Whenever, some pundit speaks of "playing to the base" regarding the Repugs, it becomes harder to decipher what the "base" means.

Yes, there is the Pro-Life base. There is the anti-tax base. Then, there is the "felon" base. And, they may not be mutually exclusive.

Why is it that in close races, the Repubs come out on top, but after closer scrutiny and better arithmetic Dems get more votes??

This is excellent news! Ted can just keep saying to himself that "it's a series of tubes". Can you imagine Sarah Palin on net neutrality? Time for more Xanax, and that's just imagining!

In addition to Powell vs. McCormack, there's also Article VI, Clause 3, of the Constitution which ends with: "...but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Levinson can't possibly be right. Surely the Senate could refuse to seat a confessed serial killer, and just as surely that prerogative does not extend to refusing to seat people in violation of the 14th amendment, &c.

If Stevens loses, it great news on another level in that his loss eliminates the possibility that the ubiquitous Sarah Palin might replace him if he were to be expelled or imprisoned.

This is a good thing, since Sandy Levinson thinks that excluding him might be unconstitutional.

There's no "might" about it. Excluding him (in the Senate's capacity to judge qualifications of its own members, which is a normal, simple majority power) on the basis of his conviction, which is not a Constitutional bar to office, would be unconstitutional. Similar enough issues have been litigated that this is pretty clear.

OTOH, it would not be unconstitutional for the Senate to exercise its express Constitutional power (which takes a 2/3 vote to exercise) to expel Stevens. There is some legitimate debate over whether or not the Senate could expel him from the next session before that session is seated, but its eminently clear that he could be expelled once seated (and could even be expelled from this session as a warning that he might want to not attempt to take the seat next session, then, if he still choses to do so, be seated and immediately expelled again next session.)

Levinson just fucked up. (He's an embarrassment to Balkin's site, and needs to have his keys taken away.) He later admits in comments that he never even considered the expulsion clause, which is of course the only clause that is relevant, but then he tried to argue that somehow it didn't apply, because this Stevens didn't engage in "disorderly behavior", blah blah. Christ, the man deliberately lied on his Senate financial disclosure forms, and we all know why -- to hide the bribes. The fact that the US Attorney only went after him on the easier disclosure violation doesn't mean the Senate can't consider the fact that the man took bribes. Levinson's a joke.

Hey, we all make mistakes. Levinson's a good guy. I think he's just a little too enthused about his theories of a defective Constitution. There are certainly problems but it's not a defect every single time something in particular isn't specifically covered.

One quibble with the commenters. There can't be a religious test as a qualification. But I thought you guys were arguing that expulsion was separate from that. So wouldn't that mean that the Senate would expel someone based on their religion as well as for eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

If Stevens loses, it great news on another level in that his loss eliminates the possibility that the ubiquitous Sarah Palin might replace him if he were to be expelled or imprisoned.

Not only would it be good for Stevens to be defeated here and now, it will be good for the country since it will sideline Sarah Palin, since she'd have to wait till 2014 to get her "national stage" as a senator. Letting her stay in Alaska with the rest of those dumb enough to move there is just fine.

Hilzoy, apologies for thinking Steve wrote this piece. Apparently, I was reading at 1:00 am but not necessarily up.

Weeee! Now I'm waiting for Al Franken to make it through!

I believe the quote we are lloking for here went something like, "God will do the right thing this election". Will one of her interviewers please get some nerve and ask her how she feels about what god has done. I am so tired of her god non-sense and the 1.17 interviews/day (ipd's) never btroaching the subject even after she says something as stupid as "Oh god, please don't let me miss an open door".

Second, give me a break. Like the Senate can't expel a convicted child molester or a convicted serial murderer w/o worrying about excluding race, gender, and religion. That is the stupidest thing I have read all week. Why do I think Sandy Levinson is a right wing hack ?

The Constitution gives the Senate the right to expel its members for any reason that it sees fit:

"Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two-thirds, expel a Member."

Make no mistake about this: The Senate already can expel a member for being gay, or Muslim, or black, or a woman, or having bad breath. Whether that's a good thing or a bad thing is neither here nor there, with regards to debate about it; there is no debate. The Senate has always had this power, since 1787, and the courts cannot (legally) a damn thing to stop it.

It could only be stopped by the Senate itself, or by the final arbiter of American government: the People.

Disorderly behavior isn't mentioned in the first item of the 3 items listed, so there is no reason to assume that the third item refers to an action that can be taken only in response to disorderly behavior, so Levinson is wrong even in his back-pedaling excuse.

And rightly so. If David Duke had been elected to the Senate, I would have expected my senator to vote to expel him based on his political beliefs, and I would expect that to stick.

The constitution permits the Senate to expel any member by a 2/3 majority vote. Presumably, being expelled on your first day is the same as not being seated. The last time this happened was 1862 when Confederate senators were expelled.

In fact, each house of Congress is constitutionally the final judge of the elections, returns and qualifications of its own members (article 1 section 5). There are no limits on these powers other than the minimum 2/3 vote to expel.

So yes, assuming that you could get 2/3 of senators to expel on the grounds of race or religion or income or any other reason, they could do it.