Don't worry, Al hasn't lost his sense of humor, either. On fundraising:

We raised in the first quarter it was about a half of a quarter, about $1.35. And it's going to take like 15 or $20 million. He's getting money, you know, from big insurance and big pharmaceuticals and big oil because he voted for them. And I'm going to get money from big Minnesota. And we had over 10,000 contributors in our first quarter. I'm getting some money from big comedy. Big comedy likes me.

Al has been very impressive on the fundraising, but Norm still beat him in the first quarter with $1.5 mil, and already had about as much in his war chest. But franken can raise that $20 from folks like you and me.

So why has a North Carolinian started raising funds for a northern liberal comedian? Well, I've dedicated the "Senate" portion of my ActBlue page to Al not just because NC doesn't have a Senate candidate yet, but also because of courage like this:

I have heard a lot of talk radio -- now, I will give you an example. CNN has Glenn Beck on. Glenn Beck asked my congressman, Keith Ellison, who is the first Muslim to be elected to Congress, you know, I just want to ask you, how do I know that you're not working with the enemy?

And he said that -- I think he said it on CNN. But he certainly is -- he's on CNN. I don't know why that wasn't grounds for CNN thinking, well, maybe Glenn Beck shouldn't be on. I mean, how dare he say that to a congressman who has just been elected?

And I hear this kind of thing a lot of time. I monitored a lot of right-wing radio when I was doing my show and before it. And I've heard Rush Limbaugh say things that are worse than [what Imus said].

Al isn't afraid to keep the media straight. He isn't afraid to tell CNN to quit acting like the pro-internment crowd acted during WWII. Unfortunately, we still live in a culture where it's hard for a public figure to stand up for people who aren't Christian or Jewish. I'm not talking about Bush's "religion of peace" lip service, I'm talking about really taking a stand against injustice. Al is going to be one of the few people in the Senate who isn't afraid to do that.

And he sure isn't afraid to take Imus to task ... but I won't use that quote because I'm sure that everyone on MyDD is sick of Imus at this point. Actually, so is Al:

You know, I -- Ed Schultz was saying that everyone's talking about [the Imus thing]. I was up in Minnesota today with a group of seniors from seven counties. This wasn't a senior home. This was seniors who were caring about policy. And they are debating global warming and health care, and they were -- they weren't talking about this at all.

That's Al. Al cares about what Minnesotans are really talking about:

I'll tell you why and I talked a little earlier about going up to Minnesota to talking to seniors from seven counties. And at one point we were talking about universal health care. They were. And there was registered nurse, Kathy Kowala (ph) from Cambridge, Minnesota and she stood up and she said, "I work in the intensive care unit in Cambridge. And there are people that come in to the hospital because they can't afford their prescription drugs or they cut them in half or they don't buy them at all and they end up in the hospital." And I hear this all the time. I want to go to the Senate, so we can go to universal health care.

Need I say more? Actually, I probably shouldn't, since if I quote any more of that interview on CNN I'll be seeing a C&D order in my e-mail. But I hope that you're convinced that Al Franken is the real deal. He's good enough, he's strong enough, he's truly moral enough, and I hope you like him.

PS - here's a great clip of Al's relentless pursuit of the truth ... defending someone else on my ActBlue page from Bill O'Reilly.