“I’ve heard things that’ll blow your mind,” says former Gov. Jesse Ventura in the promo for his new TV show, “Conspiracy Theory,” which debuts Wednesday night on Tru.tv. “I’ve been on the inside, and now I’m ready to talk.”
While the show will look at “global [...]
Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak will kick off his gubernatorial campaign Sunday at Dinkytown’s Varsity Theater. Rybak announced the event via Facebook, but not all his 5,000-plus Facebook friends and supporters can come. His chosen venue has a current capacity of a little more than 800, [...]
In a profile in its December issue, the Christian Examiner credits religious right leader Beverly LaHaye, the founder of Concerned Women for America, for Rep. Michele Bachmann’s rise in the conservative movement.
LaHaye’s organization fights against civil rights for gays and lesbians, supports a ban on [...]
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Minneapolis is bucking a trend among Minnesota’s Lutheran congregations — it decided to increase “benevolence” payments to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America because of an August vote to allow the rostering of gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships.
The move [...]
Ballpark Digest has honored the St. Paul Saints for the team’s two-faced Norm Coleman-Al Franken bobblehead doll.
The doll — dressed in a Dracula cape and dubbed the “Re-Count” — was conceived the day after Election Day 2008. Coleman’s legal challenge outlasted the off-season, so [...]
Gov. Tim Pawlenty remains at the bottom of the barrel among presidential hopefuls, according to a new Washington Post poll of Republican and Republican-leaning voters.
With 17 percentage-point support, Sarah Palin was the top pick for president of 804 poll respondents who ID’d themselves [...]
State Rep. Randy Demmer (R-Hayfield) will be challenging U.S. Rep. Tim Walz in the First Congressional District, according to an email obtained over the weekend by Bluestem Prairie.
The email states that Demmer, who was elected to the state House in 2002, will announce at [...]
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Photo: WDCpix
WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats return to Washington today to begin a long-awaited floor debate on the health-reform bill they hope [...]
Politico features DumpBachmann as a standout “hater” site, and Ed Schultz chews over City Pages’ Michele Bachmann issue on his MSNBC show.
Politico calls DumpBachmann “perhaps the most comprehensive anti-incumbent blog” in the nation and mentions co-founder Eva Young. [Via PiM]
Schultz stuffed [...]
Gov. Pawlenty’s enthusiasm for cooking “Swamp Thang” a la Washington, D.C., restaurateur B. Smith made both C.J. and (appropriately) Hot Dish Politics in Sunday’s Star Tribune. But it’ll be tough to outdo Mike Huckabee, who set the standard for GOP presidential candidates’ Southern cooking in [...]
Photo: iStockphoto
Grateful for many things — including some time off — the Minnesota Independent wishes you a happy Thanksgiving. Posting here will be light over the next few days as we spend time with our families and friends.
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Hennepin Energy Recovery Center. Photo: Paul Schmelzer, MnIndy
Stymied by citizen resistance, the operator of Hennepin County’s incinerator in downtown Minneapolis tried — in vain — this month to get the state’s OK to burn more trash with an administrative [...]
Attorney General Eric Holder. Photo: WDCpix
WASHINGTON — When Attorney General Eric Holder announced earlier this month that the suspected plotters of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would be tried in civilian court, he also promised to seek the death penalty for [...]
Just in time for Black Friday, the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT advocacy group, has released a shopping guide that ranks hundreds of businesses on whether their policies support LGBT employees. Many of Minnesota’s top companies — including Target, Imation and General Mills [...]
Twin Cities–based Best Buy has responded to criticisms over an ad circular that wishes Muslims a happy Eid Al-Adha — by standing firm. “Best Buy’s customers and employees around the world represent a variety of faiths and denominations,” said Best Buy rep Lisa [...]
Unsealed court documents have unleashed a wave of press about an American ring allied with a terror group in Somalia. Minneapolis “is the center of it,” the local FBI head tells the AP. “Now we should all be on guard,” he tells the [...]
Octogenarian religious right leader Phyllis Schlafly urged members of her Eagle Forum on Tuesday to rush to Rep. Michele Bachmann’s support to “stand with her through all the vicious attacks being directed her way from the Left for daring to protect our freedom from big [...]
Tarryl Clark, Michele Bachmann
Just as DFL congressional candidate Tarryl Clark uses Rep. Michele Bachmann’s appearance at a conservative conference in Florida in a fundraising appeal, word comes out that Bachmann will be showcased at yet another such affair: the National Tea [...]
Gov. Tim Pawlenty shied away from touching a turkey in his chambers this afternoon (video), inviting comparison to potential 2012 rival Sarah Palin, who last Thanksgiving season carried on with a TV interview unruffled by the turkey slaughter going on behind her.
Pawlenty has [...]
Nearly three-quarters of Iowans aren’t sure how they feel about Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, according to a new Iowa Poll. Despite living just across the border from the state he has governed for almost seven years, only 27 percent of Iowans had any opinion [...]
Xcel Energy won’t ask ratepayers in Colorado to foot the bill for lavish executive perks after all, the Denver Post reports. Public scrutiny that was first raised in Minnesota in September focused recently on the St. Paul-based utility’s attempts to pass costs for luxurious [...]
Investigators have determined that Bill Sparkman, the census worker who was found dead with an anti-federal government message scrawled on his body, committed suicide. There’s some political news here: Coming as it did the day of the taxpayer march on Washington, days after Rep. Michele Bachmann became the most [...]
Allah forbid a major big box retailer send holiday wishes to members of one of the world’s largest religions. But that’s what Best Buy did, including a small message wishing Muslims a “Happy Eid al-Adha” in a circular. And now the Twin Cities-based retailer [...]
Recent criticisms of Tim Pawlenty’s nascent (if undeclared) presidential campaign have focused on the governor’s strategy of trying to appeal to far-right Republicans instead of being true to his more moderate past (his “Romneyfication,” if you will). Yet during his appearance on Sean Hannity’s show yesterday it’s Pawlenty who [...]
Four months ago, Bob Anderson said there was one obstacle keeping him from jumping into the 6th Congressional District race next year: uncertainty about whether the Independence Party (IP) will continue its policy of cross-endorsement.
Last election, when Anderson ran as an unendorsed IP candidate, the party [...]
Could “Mr. Independent” — as Lou Dobbs promotes himself — become “Mr. Independence Party”? A Politico piece this morning ponders news that the illegal-immigration foe, Birther and former CNN anchor is considering a run for president in 2012. What’s not clear is what banner [...]
The director of the Minnesota Legislative Reference Library refused to accommodate police and union attorneys who tried to pressure her to yank the 2008 Metro Gang Strike Force report from its website. “It was pretty amazing,” said Robbie LaFleur. “I have been [...]
Rep. Walz discusses health care reform at Netroots Minnesota. Photo: Paul Schmelzer, MnIndy
“If my vote sends me back to Mankato West to teach geography, so be it,” said Rep. Tim Walz Saturday of the House [...]
When Gov. Tim Pawlenty told MSNBC audiences early this month that “there’s a range of behavior and issue positions you can take” and still be a Republican, it created a small stir among pundits. One, Ariana Huffington, characterized Pawlenty’s sentiment as a GOP “litmus [...]
On Nov. 12, attendees of the National Council of Churches’ General Assembly in Minneapolis — like people around the world that day — read “The Compassion Charter,” a new declaration created collaboratively by leaders from the three Abrahamic religions to highlight a central tenet in world faiths: [...]
More than a dozen Lutheran congregations in Minnesota have vowed to leave the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) after a vote in Minneapolis this summer to allow gay and lesbian pastors in committed relationships to serve as clergy. The fifteen churches will join [...]
“Rather depressingly, Tim Pawlenty could win the Republican presidential nomination in 2012 simply by being the least offensive candidate,” writes The Daily Beast’s Reihan Salam. Pawlenty’s “appeal is clear,” Salam writes, “on paper.” He’s even-tempered and has a “compelling personal story”; he’s got that commonsense [...]
In yesterday’s “On Language” column in the New York Times Magazine, Leslie Savan wrote that while the term “birthers” — “those who insist despite all evidence to the contrary that Barack Obama doesn’t have a U.S. birth certificate and therefore cannot legally be president” — wasn’t [...]
Photo: WDCpix
The rate of uninsured residents in Minnesota’s eight congressional districts is a good predictor of how U.S. House lawmakers voted on health care reform. But, according to data in a new report by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, there’s one [...]
Photo: iStockphoto
While the national unemployment rate of 10.2 percent is a sobering reminder of the depth of this recession and the protracted timeline a recovery will take, the challenges posed by long-term unemployment are far greater.
“We are breaking every record post-Great Depression on long-term unemployment,” said [...]
Capacity concerns lead the headlines this morning: Twin Cities area homeless shelters are in “emergency mode” and scrambling to find overflow sites, thanks to the bad economy paired with state cuts to social service agencies. Meanwhile, in Freeborn County the Humane Society reports it’s [...]
End the Fed rally last April. Photo: Chris Steller, MnIndy
Minnesota’s End the Fed group has something to celebrate Sunday as they march on the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis: U.S. Rep. Ron Paul’s [...]
Religious right leaders announced Friday that they won’t abide by laws that support gay marriage or abortion. One hundred and twenty-five members of the religious right and leaders from the Catholic church signed the Manhattan Declaration. Only one signer was from Minnesota: Archbishop John Nienstedt [...]
The Ritz-Carlton Bachelor Gulch hotel in Beaver Creek, Colo., site of a $113,753 Xcel board of directors retreat
DENVER — With St. Paul–based Xcel Energy on pace to [...]
“Crafty” detainees in Iraq have taken to taunting members of the Wisconsin National Guard about the successes of Minnesota Vikings quarterback Brett Favre.
As if Iraq weren’t already riven enough with its own internecine antagonisms, prisoners there under U.S. military guard are siding with Minnesota in [...]
House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher is getting her second union endorsement for governor in as many days (and her third so far), this one from the 43,000-member Greater Minnesota American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) Council 65, Minnesota Public Radio’s [...]
The year 2011 will be the end of an era in broadcasting. That’s when Oprah will leave her long-running show — and, by coincidence, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty will leave his, Minnesota Public Radio confirms. Today, his “hot” wife Mary sits in [...]
lllustration: George Peters
WASHINGTON — Mortgage giant Fannie Mae’s recent announcement that it will give homeowners facing foreclosure the chance to stay in their properties as renters for as long as a year is the latest aggressive move by the government to help troubled [...]
The Chisholm cultural institution known until last summer as Ironworld will lay off 26 full-time staff members Friday and on Satuday close its doors to visitors. The Minnesota Discovery Center, originally a state-funded effort now struggling as a private nonprofit, has suffered in [...]
A new report by the National Conference on Citizenship (NCOC) finds that, despite the nation’s economic turmoil, Minnesota’s civic health is good — so much so that we’re among the country’s leaders in indicators like voter turnout, volunteerism and charitable giving. NCOC is chartered by Congress [...]
The Minnesota Independent is hiring a reporter/blogger to cover politics in Minnesota at the state, county and local levels.
We’re looking for a passionate reporter who can combine the best of traditional journalism with the new paradigms of the Internet and use blogging to develop the [...]
Burberry, Britain’s once-staid fashion house, can’t help it if Sarah Palin wears their trademark plaid scarves. “[T]he conspicuousness of the pattern also means that the company has little control over how it is seen, or on whom,” the New Yorker magazine observed, in reference [...]
"Go Christmas, Go Hanukkah, Go Kwanzaa..." The Gap's 2009 holiday ad. Source: YouTube
The religious right’s annual “War on Christmas” is ramping up early this year, and at least one Minnesota-based company is on its hit list. For the past few years, the American Family Association [...]
Margaret Anderson Kelliher
State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill [...]
Andy Birkey, Chris Steller, Paul Schmelzer, Daphne Eviatar, Paul Demko, David Weigel, Anna Pratt, Mary Kane, Mike Lillis, admin, Martha C. White, Spencer Ackerman, David O. Williams
