Just when you thought Minnesota could be a state we no longer had to concern ourselves with, a three-judge panel agreed to let Norm Coleman's recount lawsuit against Al Franken move forward.

Franken has all but declared victory in the latest recount, and was expecting to be officially welcomed into the U.S. Senate, lest this whole legal fracas continue. And now, it will.

State election law doesn't undermine the Senate's constitutional power to later judge the qualifications of its members, the judges said in denying Franken's request to dismiss the election contest, as the lawsuit is called.

The panel also rejected Franken's attempt to limit any court review to verifying math and other technicalities of the recount and canvass, clearing the way for the judges to consider Coleman claims that some votes in Democratic areas were counted twice, that some absentee ballots from GOP areas were wrongly rejected and that there were other irregularities.

The panel noted that the Minnesota Supreme Court had ruled that while those claims shouldn't be decided during the recount, they "would be properly heard in an election contest" in court. [Star-Trib]