It has been only two months since the last election, but political momentum has already changed twice in the next round of Senate elections. Democrats started out after November 4 with an immediate advantage.  After winning two straight elections,…

Today the Minnesota canvassing board is set to certify the state’s election recount results – which found Al Franken victorious over incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman by 225 votes. A victory for sure for progressive and Council-endorsed Franken, but the race…

Anyone wondering if there was significant progress made in the ongoing ballot recount for the Minnesota Senate race between Al Franken and incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman over the holiday “break” may be disappointed to know that it still is far from over. The primary remaining obstacle? Whether or not to count 1,346 “improperly” rejected absentee ballots.

Each campaign’s lawyers met today at the office of Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie in an effort to come to an agreement over whether or not the ballots should be counted. Franken’s camp wants to count all 1,346, but Coleman so far has only agreed to 136 and made a promise to accept more.

The ballots are yet unopened, but numerous reports indicate that the list “includes ballots from precincts leaning Democratic.”

Without these ballots, Franken has a razor-thin lead – just 46 votes – over Coleman.

According to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a ruling from the Minnesota Supreme Court order requires a resolution to the issue by this weekend, but Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, Chairman of the state canvassing board, has said that it may take up until January 6th to finish tallying the votes.

Even after this date, campaign lawsuits could continue to delay the announcement. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated last week that it is unlikely that the Senate will declare a “vacancy,” for the seat if the outcome of the race is not decided by the time Congress convenes, the only move that would allow Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty to appoint an interim Senator.

If this is the case, Minnesota will lose out on half its Senate representation during the crucial first weeks following the Inauguration – when key legislation on major issues from the economy to national security issues is sure to arise.

In August 1945, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, bringing death to 300,000 human beings, creating pain and endless suffering in the lives of countless others. Now nine countries have nuclear bombs; many more have the capacity to make them.

Today, there are, in combat readiness, enough bombs to kill the world population many times over….. And there is no defense. Nuclear war could happen any day – by accident, by design, by miscalculation, by terrorism, by madness. The weapons are still on hair-trigger alert, in this country and abroad.

The current review conference of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty proved that two groups of nations are in collision. The possessors of nuclear weapons want to stop the proliferators and proliferators demand that the nuclear powers reduce and eventually get rid of their own nuclear arsenals in accordance with their treaty commitments.

The United States needs to re-examine its policies that envision an active role for nuclear weapons in future wars and building a new generation of nuclear weapons. The American case against the nuclear weapons plans of Iran and North Korea would be greatly strengthened if the United States were to cut drastically its own stockpiles of nuclear weapons, abandon plans to build new nuclear weapons and approve the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

What happens in nuclear war?

1. Blast – creates enormous pressure, topples buildings and trees. Kills people by shock wave over pressure and wind, by flying debris, by throwing people against fixed objects and by crushing them in collapsing buildings.

2. Fireball – temperatures up to millions of degrees ignite raging fires and kill by flash-burn. People can be burned at great distances. Causes blindness

3. Prompt radiation – kills people close to the explosion by large dose. Smaller doses can cause acute delayed radiation sickness and possibly death. Affects future generations genetically.

4. Fallout radiation – spreads out to large distances, sometimes killing people hundreds of miles from explosion. Causes leukemia and other forms of cancer everywhere on Earth for decades. Increase incidences of stillbirth, tumors, congenital malformations and cataracts.

5. Environment – pollutes water, earth and air. Destroys forests and agriculture by heat and blast. Death by radiation of animals and birds, while radiation resistant bacteria, fungi, viruses and insects flourish.

6. Social disorganization – disruption of medical facilities and energy production, breakdown of government, authority and disaster relief, spreading of disease and epidemics. Fighting for scarce food supplies, despair at the enormous task of reconstruction – with the possibility of another nuclear war in the offing.

On the December 21, on the Fox Television News Sunday hosted by Chris Wallace, Vice President Richard Cheney, made the following stunning statement:

“The president of United States now for 50 years is followed at all times, 24 hours a day, by a military aide carrying a football that contains the nuclear codes that he would use and be authorized to use in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States. He could launch a kind of devastating attack the world’s never seen. He doesn’t have to check with anybody. He doesn’t have to call the Congress. He doesn’t have to check with the courts. He has that authority because of the nature of the world we live in.”

This post originally appeared on The Relentless Liberal on December 28, 2008.

People looking for clues about the nuclear policies of the incoming Obama Administration tended to draw overly-broad implications from the big-dog appointments announced a few weeks ago: Sen. Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, Robert Gates continuing as Secretary of Defense and General Jim Jones as National Security Advisor.

It is the next level of appointments that will tell us more about the direction of Obama’s nuclear policies.

While you were away (or still are) celebrating the holidays, the first key appointments below the cabinet-level have been made and the news is good.

Take the announcement of Dr. John Holdren as the President’s Science Adviser.  Holdren is a leading expert on nuclear arms issues.

A 1997  he chaired a National Academy of Sciences report entitled “The Future of Nuclear Weapons Policy” that recommended reducing U.S. and Russian nuclear forces to 1,000 total warheads and exploring going below that number, taking nuclear weapons off hair trigger alert and adopting a no-first use policy.

In a 2005 Arms Control Today article, Dr. Holdren argued that the 1997 proposals were still relevant and recommended ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, moving to very deep reductions of nuclear weapons to a few hundred on each side, and trying “create the conditions that would make possible a global prohibition of nuclear weapons along the lines of those already in force against chemical and biological weapons.”

James B. Steinberg, who has served in other government positions, has been named to the number two position at the Department of State. He too has long been involved in nuclear issues.

On January 1, 2008, he wrote “Washington must begin devaluing nuclear weapons.”

In a November 2007 speech, he praised the Kissinger, Shultz, Perry and Nunn proposal for a world free of nuclear weapons and applauded some of their endorsed steps, including ratification of the test ban treaty, a fissile material cut-off treaty and a reopened debate on missile defenses.

In a 2006 OpEd, he suggested that the U.S.-India deal “will seriously undermine the longer-term effort to rein in the spread of nuclear weapons and weapons programs.”

Antony Blinken, most recently staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has been named Vice President-elect Joseph Biden’s Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs.

Blinken joined with Steinberg — and a number of other authors who could well be appointed to key Obama Administration positions — in a July 2008 Center for New American Security report that recommended: “The next president should reaffirm that America seeks a world free of nuclear weapons.”

The report suggested a number of steps in that direction, including:

“The United States should propose to Moscow new negotiations that would reduce their respective nuclear inventory to 1,000 weapons of all ranges. The inspection and transparency provisions of existing arms control agreements that are due to expire in 2009 would be maintained. And remaining forces would end their reliance on hair-trigger alerts to ensure survivability. In addition, the United States should ratify the CTBT at the earliest practical opportunity and propose to negotiate a worldwide, verifiable ban on the production of fissile materials for weapons purposes.”

While there are many other key appointments to be made, these first appointments are a good start and presage significant progress on nuclear issues.

Click here for the full list of open key positions, including transition personnel.