i'm worried about Al

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

12. I'm not.

First of all, expulsion is almost unheard of; it hasn't happened since the Civil War. One senator was expelled for treason in 1797, and 14 were expelled in 1861 and 1862 for aiding the Confederacy during the Civil War. Since then, there have been 17 efforts to expel, but since a 2/3 majority vote is required, none of these efforts were successful. More recently a few Senators (Bob Packwood, repeated instances of sexual harassment; John Ensign, financial improprieties; Harrison Williams, after a bribery conviction), have resigned when evidence of serious misconduct came to light. If every Senator who ever once did some inappropriate thing like Franken did got expelled there probably wouldn't be any male Senators left (though maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing).

Franken performed a very nice little bit of judo when he asked the Senate to do an ethics investigation on himself. This suggests that he knows this was a one-off incident and there's nothing else out there.

Also, even if he did leave the Senate, the governor of Minnesota is a progressive Democrat and he'd appoint another Democrat like Franken. Minnesota has a pretty deep bench. So getting Franken out of the Senate wouldn't help the GOP.