Stormin' Norm

Looks like soon-to-be ex-senator Norm Coleman had a really bad week.

Coleman is still suffering he consequences of a bonehead mistake he made in January, when he allowed a fully-detailed donor database to become available online-- including the credit card numbers and three-digit security codes for each donor as well. Naturally, someone came along and downloaded the entire database with a simple browser, and then Coleman tried to save face by claiming that "hackers" were responsible.

He then compounded a bad situation by waiting over a month to tell his donors about the potential security risk, after the whole mess was exposed on Wikileaks.org, forcing him to alert his donors to get new credit cards.

Coleman now may have a legal problem, since his failure to report the exposure of private financial data might have been a violation of Minnesota law. But he should have plenty of time to defend himself on those charges, since he continues to lose ground in his protracted battle to hang on to his Senate seat.

Coleman's case in his U.S. Senate trial (against Senator-elect Al Franken)-- once built on the prospects of counting thousands of rejected absentee ballots-- is now down to 1,360 ballots or fewer. Franken's lead hasn't changed for weeks, and still stands at 225 votes. It's been a long and confusing process, which has worked to Coleman's advantage. But, what's not confusing is that Coleman now appears that he will never have enough new votes to beat Franken.