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Three months is long enough for Minnesota's unemployment rate to rise more than half a percentage point. It's enough to start and end a war in Gaza. It's even enough time for Christian Bale to go from being known as the much-lauded star of classics like Dark Knight and Swing Kids to the egotistical batshit douchebag who blames his bad behavior on his deep immersion in John Connor's mind. After all, how can Bale be expected to follow the rules of polite society after spending days exploring the nuances of humanity's last best hope for victory against the machines? Minnesota's Senate race has stretched longer than any of these things, begging the question - whilst the interminable court case stretches off into the horizon, should Al Franken be seated, however temporarily, as Minnesota's second senator?

Currently, the only people benefiting from the ongoing disaster and arcane web of regulations and adjudications that is the Senate recount and subsequent lawsuits are the Coleman and Franken legal teams. That situation is unlikely to change anytime soon, especially in light of the thousands of exhibits, ballots and witnesses the court case is swallowing whole like some white whale pursued not by a snarling captain of the seas, but by two vaguely Minnesotan Jews. And in the meantime, Minnesota is left a man down - a situation Al Franken is looking to remedy as he sues to have a provisional election certificate issued.

So should Al be seated? The answer is a definitive no.

No matter how entertaining it may seem to have Stuart Smalley save the Senate, Al Franken should not be awarded the Senate seat, even on a provisional basis. Aside from the fact that state law prohibits issuing an election certificate until all court challenges are settled, there's a principle at stake here. At the heart of the court battles, dueling witnesses, chest-beating, posturing, and judicial wrangling is a simple question - which of these two men garnered the most votes. And until we know that definitively we should not be sending a senator, even a senator pro tem, to do the people's business, especially in a climate where every vote taken holds implications far beyond the usual nigh-masturbatory window dressing taken up by congress.

Even worse than the possibility of having a man without a public mandate taking the future of the country's, and even the globe's, economy in his soft effeminate hands, is the simple fact that no matter who is sent to Washington to temporarily fill the seat and entertain Sen. Klobuchar with lurid tales of Neiman Marcus shopping sprees or what the hell happened to Eddie Murphy's career, there's a 50/50 chance of sending someone who the majority didn't intend to hold one of the most powerful offices in the United States government.

There's no rush. No matter what either side says, there will be no breach of a hell-dimension spewing abyssal creatures forth from a yawning maw that threatens to engulf Ely if we fail to send a second senator to Washington this month. No fiery sphere will streak forth from the heavens to smite the canvassing board for what right-wing shock jockeys are currently calling a joke of an electoral process. Norm's mandate from the heavens to serve as Minnesota's senator will wait for another day. Al's hours of preparation to take the seat will not all be for naught if he waits for the process to play out. It is, after all, about the will of the people - not two wealthy white men with large egos desperate to make good on the $40 million and counting they've spent.