Stories

Franken camp: Latest Coleman legal ploy is ‘height of chutzpah’

A new lawsuit (pdf) by the campaign of U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman asks the Minnesota Supreme Court to order the counting of votes from hundreds of absentee ballots that local officials have twice rejected as invalid.
Democrat Al Franken’s campaign responded with scorn. ”Norm Coleman and I are both native New Yorkers, and this is the height [...]

MnIndy Q&A: Cloud Cult’s Craig Minowa on the year ahead in music and activism

2008 was a big year for the Minnesota-based band Cloud Cult. They released a new album and landed a spot on Rolling Stone’s Breaking Artists page — all while expanding on their reputation as one of the greenest touring bands around. As we peek around the corner of 2009, I caught up with Cloud Cult frontman, Craig Minowa, an environmental scientist at the Organic Consumers Association by day, to see what the year has in store — musically, environmentally and personally.

Bachmann earns fifth spot on British “shame” list

Madoff, Palin, Bush, Blagojevich… Bachmann? The Guardian’s Michael Tomasky ranks Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District Rep. Michele Bachmann fifth in “America’s hall of shame.” Her suggestion that journalists should investigate whether Barack Obama and other members of Congress have “anti-American views” — which Tomasky calls “the single most appalling political statement of the year” — merited [...]

Center for Public Integrity salutes MnIndy parent and The UpTake

The Washington, D.C.–based Center for Public Integrity salutes MnIndy’s parent nonprofit, the Center for Independent Media, and the Minneapolis-based citizen videoblogging outlet The UpTake in its “Top 10 Website of 2008″ list today. Citing media “from projects to blogs to websites that help keep our country transparent,” the investigative journalism organization named the entire six-site CIM network, but specifically applauded our sister site in Michigan.

UpTake to GOP: Thanks for watching!

After state GOP chair Ron Carey aped party blogger Michael Brodkorb’s terminology for The UpTake as a “partisan, liberal” blog, the citizen journalism outfit issued a press release correcting an error Carey made — and thanked him for tuning into the same video feeds of Minnesota recount proceedings that media outlets like Fox News and [...]

WaPo listing of Erik Paulsen in Top 5 U.S. House campaigns needs a fix or 2

Minnesota’s U.S. Representative-elect for the Third District, Republican Erik Paulsen, ran one of the best five House campaigns in the country, according to the Washington Post blog The Fix. Paulsen “beat back the anti-Republican trend,” writes Chris Cillizza, “by focusing on his own accomplishments in the state legislature.” The Fix tracked the Third District contest closely throughout the campaign season as one of the nation’s most competitive congressional contests. But in several ways Cillizza’s summary this morning doesn’t exactly square with how home-state observers might recall the race.

Mark Ritchie, MVP: Recount chief among 2008’s top progressives

Secretary of State Mark Ritchie must be a progressive powerhouse. He got dual mentions (of sorts) in The Nation’s list of Most Valuable Progressives: one for his work overseeing the statewide recount and one by way of a nonprofit he founded, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP). The magazine’s John Nichols contrasts how [...]

Senate leaders Reid and Cornyn clash over Franken’s future

A war of words is beginning to erupt in the U.S. Senate over what appears to be the increasingly likely outcome of the statewide recount in Minnesota: Al Franken emerging as the candidate with the most votes. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced that he foresaw a Franken win while U.S. Sen. John Cornyn [...]

Anoka County asks Coleman and Franken to re-try ballot review

The Anoka County Elections Department has invited the campaigns of Al Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman to return Wednesday morning for another try at reviewing uncounted absentee ballots as ordered by the Minnesota Supreme Court in the state’s Senate recount. A scheduled meeting between local officials and campaign representatives to review 35 wrongfully rejected absentee ballots broke down Tuesday morning, according to Elections Supervisor Rachel Smith, after Coleman’s camp refused to proceed — unless additional ballots not selected by county staff for counting were included.

Barkley’s short Senate tenure cited as example for Blago pick Burris

Roland Burris, Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s pick to replace President-elect Barack Obama in the U.S. Senate, should follow the example of former U.S. Sen. Dean Barkley of Minnesota by agreeing to serve only an abbreviated tenure. That’s the suggestion of The Nation magazine’s State of Change blog, which cites nascent impeachment efforts against the governor in [...]