"Are you in favor of reinstituting the military draft, as Democrats in Congress have proposed?" That's one of 15 questions the Republican National Committee uses to drum up funds in a "2010 Obama Agenda Survey" that arrived in Minnesota mailboxes this week. A search [...]
Photo: Jonathunder, Wikipedia
Garrison Keillor rages from the battlements of the War on Christmas in his column this week, telling Unitarians and Jews and other heathens that “Christmas is a Christian holiday — if you’re not in the club, then buzz off.”
Unitarians (who [...]
Last week in Oslo President Obama confirmed that “evil does exist in the world.” Now scientists at a lab in Tower say they’ve seen signs deep under the Soudan Mine that something called “dark matter” also exists. Two particles of the theorized but [...]
Al Franken says he was only following orders to keep the health-care debate moving when he cut off Joe Lieberman’s speech in the U.S. Senate at the 10-minute mark.
Franken told Minnesota Public Radio that Majority Leader Harry Reid had instructed him and others taking [...]
The state of the nation’s water is a glass-half-full-or-half-empty situation: we have federal standards for water quality, but they’re decades out of date. The makes the question less philosophical and more straightforward: Did you really just drink that half-glass of water? The New York Times has a [...]
In New Hampshire Wednesday, Tim Pawlenty said things like “monstrosity being jammed down our throats” (to describe health care reform), “Ponzi scheme on the Potomac” (to describe federal spending), and “red-hot smoking” (to describe his wife, Mary). People in the Granite State returned the favor, [...]
The skies over Northern Minnesota's signature natural areas will get 30 percent clearer - by 2018 - under new rules approved today by a 7-1 vote of the state Pollution Control Agency board.MORE »
Byline Minnesota Independent By: [...]
“Are you in favor of reinstituting the military draft, as Democrats in Congress have proposed?” That’s one of 15 questions the Republican National Committee uses to drum up funds in a “2010 Obama Agenda Survey” that arrived in Minnesota mailboxes this week. A search of current [...]
“The federal government is running a Ponzi scheme,” Gov. Pawlenty told a New Hampshire radio audience Wednesday, and if pending reforms are enacted, federal health care programs are destined for bankruptcy.
Pawlenty was interviewed by phone on WGIR-AM ahead of an in-person appearance in the [...]
Michele Bachmann wasn’t alone Tuesday in probing unlikely links between politics and poetry. Two Minnesota bloggers also used poetry to illuminate the political landscape, adapting familiar lines by the late New Hampshire poet Robert Frost to Gov. Pawlenty’s trip to New Hampshire today.
Bluestem Prairie’s [...]
Rep. Michele Bachmann’s recent choice of words suggests she knew what she saying when she invoked the “sadly ludicrous” Crimean War episode from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade” at a Capitol Hill anti-health care reform rally.
The Minnesota congresswoman’s rallying cry, “[...]
“You give me a water board, Dick Cheney and one hour, and I’ll have him confess to the Sharon Tate murders.” With that line, former Gov. Jesse Ventura cemented a place for himself alongside U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson, rapper Kanye West, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah [...]
Minnesota is still in danger of losing a seat in Congress — with the odds on Michele Bachmann’s disappearing, some speculate — if the U.S. Census count comes in just a bit shy as experts have been warning it could. But the state demographer [...]
Photo: MPCA
The skies over Northern Minnesota’s signature natural areas will get 30 percent clearer — by 2018 — under new rules approved today by a 7-1 vote of the state Pollution Control Agency board.
At that rate it will take a century to totally clear the [...]
A massive proposal to mine for copper and other metals in Northern Minnesota underwent exactly the amount of public debate at two meetings last week that government agencies had planned for: none, according to Lake Superior Mining News. Citizens wishing to speak on PolyMet Mining’s plans [...]
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed again Monday that Christina Romer, chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, estimated health care reform would cost 5.5 million jobs. Last month PolitiFact called that claim “problematic and contrary” to Romer’s statements. Now Media [...]
Minnesota may have hosted the decade’s best regular-season baseball game, but according to The Fix the state can also lay claim to two of the decade’s best U.S. Senate races, including one that went beyond the regular season. Both involved Norm Coleman, defeating Walter Mondale in [...]
Minnesota has settled into climate-appropriate winter weather, but Gov. Pawlenty, just back from summer in South America, opined Monday that the science behind global warming is “unsettled” and cap-and-trade carbon controls are “the wrong direction.” On that second point, he is in agreement with a [...]
Just when Margaret Anderson Kelliher appeared to be pulling away from the pack running for governor with a series of endorsements, charges that she violated campaign-finance rules are settMORE »Byline [...]
The Texas firm hired by the State of Minnesota to vet new hires for legal work status says the state and Minnesota Public Radio can expect a lawsuit, after MPR reported that Lookout Services made employees’ private data accessible online.
MPR’s News Cut quotes [...]
By Gov. Pawlenty’s executive order, the State of Minnesota checks everyone it hires to confirm they’re legal to work. But the Texas firm to which the state farmed out its E-Verify program didn’t safeguard employees’ data, leaving Social Security numbers and other private info out [...]
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann urged her supporters to fight health care reform by calling Congress "every day, when you wake up in the morning and comb your hair and take your vitamins."MORE »
Byline Minnesota Independent By: [...]
“The Nobel Committee gambled and lost,” says Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, assistant professor of justice and peace studies at the University of St. Thomas. President Obama’s speech accepting the Nobel Peace Prize was “a defense of war and militarism. … With this speech the Nobel Committee’s gamble became an [...]
Image: fcc.gov
The Star Tribune started it, and now the newspaper has announced an end to the saga of the flat-screen TVs at the state facility for sex offenders at Moose Lake. The facility’s director has been reprimanded and the TVs have been punished.
No [...]
Margaret Anderson Kelliher
Just when Margaret Anderson Kelliher appeared to be pulling away from the pack running for governor with a series of endorsements, charges that she violated campaign-finance rules are setting her apart in ways she didn’t need.
Her Democratic rivals for governor [...]
University of Minnesota wrestling coach J Robinson has had his problems with Title IX rules requiring equity for women’s athletics. Now he has trouble with titles and equity of a different sort. After the Minnesota Daily revealed a web of wrestlers buying, selling and [...]
Photo: bachmann.house.gov
U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann urged her supporters to fight health care reform by calling Congress “every day, when you wake up in the morning and comb your hair and take your vitamins.”
Democrats are purposely pushing health care legislation at holiday time, Bachmann charged during a [...]
In a statement, Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner played down the importance of House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher winning EMILY’s List’s backing for governor.
Gaertner apparently felt she had to say something about the endorsement, as the only other candidate with the gender and pro-choice [...]
Minneapolis residents have to look to the neighborhood-association president level to find an elected chief executive who represents them and might actually be at the office today.
President Obama is in Norway, picking up his Nobel Peace Prize. Gov. Pawlenty is in Chile, meeting [...]
What is it about riding a bike under a baseball stadium that Tom Coburn and John McCain don’t understand? The senators decried federal stimulus spending to extend the Cedar Lake Bike Trail into downtown Minneapolis, prompting a blog retort by Transportation Secretary Ray [...]
Congress’ first Muslim, DFLer Keith Ellison, has drawn an independent challenger with a lot to say — particularly about Islam.
Lynne Torgerson charts her own course, telling the Minnesota Independent in an interview that she considers herself almost “apolitical.”
The Minneapolis criminal-defense attorney unsuccessfully sought election as [...]
The eight people facing felony conspiracy charges from their pre-emptive arrests ahead of last year’s Republican National Convention will go to trial together, not separately.
The RNC Eight are greeting that news as a victory.
In a statement, co-defendant Luce Guillen-Givins said, ”This is an affirmation from Judge [...]
… but don’t let the snow fool you: Gov. Pawlenty says he won’t continue his tradition of making unallotment budget cuts in December. Last year T-Paw gave out lumps of coal to local governments the day after Christmas, but Tuesday he vowed not to [...]
In an endorsement worded as if it was translated from the German, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Minnesota State Council is backing the Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives for governor. Said union president Tom Koehler: “Minnesota needs a peoples-leader [...]
Sarah Palin received her subjects in a rotunda at the Mall of America yesterday, only hours after U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann presided over a rally in the Minnesota Capitol rotunda to amend the state constitution with a spending cap. There was a showering of [...]
Hundreds of Minnesotans braved Alaskan temperatures outside the Mall of America before dawn Monday, waiting for Sarah Palin to sign copies of her book, “Going Rogue.” They warmed up when talking about Palin with the Minnesota Independent.
As at Palin’s appearance with [...]
Former Massachuetts Gov. Mitt Romney pushed back Sunday against Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s attacks on the Bay State’s health care system.Romney appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union.” Host John King baited Romney with a clip of Pawlenty slamming Massachusetts on a past edition of [...]
Two facts were missing from the lamentation by Hennepin County Commissioner Mike Opat in Sunday’s Star Tribune over $8.5 million in maintenance costs for the Minneapolis libraries that the county got gratis. First, the value of the books, buildings, land and financing that the [...]
Michele Bachmann speaks to national TV audiences an average of once every nine days, but the Minnesota congresswoman makes extra-sure that voters in her district hear from her directly: She sent more than 1 million email messages or print mailings to them last [...]
As he packed for a trade trip to São Paulo, Brazil, Gov. Pawlenty issued an emergency executive order Friday creating a task force to find ways to preserve police, fire and emergency coverage through local shared-services arrangements. Left unsaid is that earlier executive actions by Pawlenty [...]
Dr. Steven Miles
A University of Minnesota bioethics expert says new conflict-of-interest rules now under review won’t be enough to prevent another embarrassment of riches like the $1.2 million a med school prof earned from Medtronic. The “U” only learned of Dr. David Polly’s [...]
Photo: Minnesota Independent
Michele Bachmann speaks to national TV audiences an average of once every nine days, but the Minnesota congresswoman makes extra-sure that voters in her district hear from her directly: She sent more than 1 million email messages or print mailings to them last [...]
Supporters of R.T. Rybak for governor shouldn’t think they’re at the wrong place Sunday just because the sign outside says “R.T. Ryback Campaign Kickoff.”
The playbill-style posting at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis’ Dinkytown may have the mayor’s name spelled wrong, but even more unusual names [...]
“There’s nothing to” the Politico report that Norm Coleman would decide by the end of the year about running for governor. That decision is “down the road,” he says … as in “he plans to ’step back and look at the political horizon’ around [...]
Flow charts can simplify any contentious issue, domestic or international. Take the gay marriage debate and Afghan war strategy … please.
These two particularly exquisite flow charts turned up over the last day or so: one from the Joint Chiefs of Staff that explains the counterinsurgency [...]
Photo: René Sinn
News of now-abandoned plans for Sarah Palin’s Dec. 7 appearance at the Mall of America that would have banned non-English-language media and required reporters to call Palin “governor” rekindles questions about free speech rights at the mall.
“This is outrageous,” says Minneapolis [...]
Gov. Tim Pawlenty parried repeated questions from reporters Wednesday on his frequent out-of-state trips in light of dire warnings about Minnesota’s budget deficit. He was dubbed “unflappable” by Smart Politics (a blog that also concocted the sobriquet “The Unsinkable Michele Bachmann“). But T-Paw’s [...]
