Welcome to a live chat with politics editor D.J. Tice about the Senate recount. D.J. will be here at noon to answer your questions. You can start leaving questions now.

Every court observer agrees that it’s hazardous to guess what a court will do based on its questioning in a hearing like this. And then they go on to do it.

I honestly can’t judge what the justices are thinking. Clearly, though, they came in loaded -- familiar with the arguments and focused on particular issues that concern them.   They pressed both lawyers hard. I think you could say that they seemed more argumentative with Friedberg, Coleman’s lawyer. But on the other hand, they expressed more concern about the issues Coleman has raised than the trial court ever did, which seemed to slightly disconcert Elias, Franken’s lawyer.

Coleman has raised a federal constitutional issue in a federal election, and few would dispute that the U.S. Supreme Court is the final authority on such a question. Except for the Senate itself, that is. So no, there’s probably not much of a “state’s rights” issue here.

What stood out were questions about the possibility of illegal votes being already counted. Several justices pressed Friedberg on whether the Coleman camp had submitted enough evidence to prove that a large number of absentee ballots were counted even though they did not conform to the standards in state law.

At the same time, they pressed Elias to give an “innocent explanation” for some of the ballots Coleman did put in the record that seem to be illegal under the trial court’s standard.

The question of possible remedies did not get as much attention, at least from the justices.