Let’s test that proposition, Senator Gazelka

Jan20

January 20, 2020

Begrudging an urban single mom $120 a month in food stamps

by Steve Timmer Stories

I see you’re a Democrat, a reprise (with an addendum)

Jan17

January 17, 2020

Lotsa luck, my friends

by Steve Timmer Stories
abandoned

Guys, keep your grubby mitts out of Minnesota’s schools

Jan16

January 16, 2020

First of all, the fact that Alan Page was a very great football player doesn’t give him standing on this. The proposed amendment would remove the requirement for a “uniform” system of public education from the state constitution. This strategy paves the way for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, which may discriminate against certain students. […]

by Dan Burns Stories

“Eliminate” means kill, Mark and Tina

Jan9

January 9, 2020

From the January 7th edition of the Star Tribune, a letter to the editor: In the wake of Trump’s altogether proper decision to send the world’s foremost terrorist to the hell he deserved, many on the left are issuing the all-too-typical challenges that our president is marching the nation closer to war. Nonsense. This president […]

by Steve Timmer Stories
guns

MN-08: Rep. Stauber’s strange justification for opposing better gun laws

Jan7

January 7, 2020

As a voter in MN-08, I must acknowledge that Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN), who is in his first term, could be a lot worse. At least he doesn’t indulge in the public displays of raving idiocy one sees with the likes of Reps. Tom Emmer (MN-06) and Jim Hagedorn (MN-01). He’s even been known to […]

by Dan Burns Stories
courts

How we got to where we’re at with the federal judiciary

Dec17

December 17, 2019

I saw this: Moscow Mitch McConnell didn’t just casually toss the Constitution into the trash on Sean Hannity’s show Thursday when he promised Donald Trump would be in control of his own impeachment hearing. He gloated over his wanton destruction of federal judiciary, laughing at Hannity for saying that he was shocked President Obama left […]

by Dan Burns Stories

On the court rejecting a mining company permit

Dec10

December 10, 2019

Now with a 12/11 update . . .

by Steve Timmer Stories

PolyMet permitting timeline

Dec6

December 6, 2019

A companion to the eBook: Fourteen Years of Bullshit

by Steve Timmer Stories
abandonedfarm

Is Big Ag really trying to push traditional farmers under?

Dec5

December 5, 2019

First, let’s assess the situation as it is now. – Most farms in the U.S. are still, technically anyway, traditional, family farms. Though the farmers’ kids, and even grandkids, are very often far from kids, age-wise, any longer. Economically, though, what those farmers do is determined by Big Ag and Big Ag-friendly (to say the […]

by Dan Burns Stories

PolyMet: Fourteen Years of Bullshit, the eBook

Dec2

December 2, 2019

With a link to free ePub, azw3, and mobi format copies, and as a PDF, too

by Steve Timmer Stories
mprbuilding

The long, erratic decline of MPR News

Nov25

November 25, 2019

I remember when Minnesota Public Radio’s morning e-newsletter was called “Polinaut.” Back then their reporting in general really was a cut above that of corporate-owned “news” media. That is, it was more grounded in objective reporting of facts, and less in false equivalence and other forms of providing conservative spin. In retrospect, I can’t pin […]

by Dan Burns Stories
hegsethtrump

A Minnesota lad keeps plunging deeper into the swamp

Nov24

November 24, 2019

Pete Hegseth is from Minnesota. He did high school in Forest Lake. He tried for the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in 2012, but lost to Kurt Bills. Bills went on to be obliterated, by something like thirty points as I recall, by Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the general. That Amy stomped Kurt, and Kurt […]

by Dan Burns Stories