Good Thursday noon (and happy MEA weekend to those of you with school age kids):
Strategic Vision just released a poll, taken last weekend, of 600 likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers and 600 likely Republican caucus-goers. They’ve got presidential horserace numbers, of course,which I’ll provide below. But here’s the question that caught me by surprise:
Strategic vision asked […]

And does a politician who aired and condoned slimy ads on her own behalf forfeit any of her right to complain when she doesn’t like the ads run against her?
Good Thursday morning Fellow Seekers of Wisdom and Truth,
As you may have heard, U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is asking local TV stations to yank an […]

Until recently, Rachel Paulose had told friends and colleagues that she hoped and planned to keep her job as U.S. attorney for Minnesota until the end of Pres. Bush’s term. She has stopped making that statement around the office.
Signs and portents augur that the end of her tenure may (or may not) draw nigh. To […]

No, not Al Gore. My childhood chum and 11th grade chemistry lab partner Roger B. Myerson was announced this a.m. as winner of the economics prize (he won with two others for the development of something called “mechanism design theory.“)
I’m so proud and happy for him. We always knew he was killer smart (although he […]

Pasquino took off Friday from the columns of Paul Krugman and George Will, on themes of rich and poor:
Speak up with an opinion contradicting the president and you will be smeared.
Take the case of the person who delivered the Democratic response to the president’s weekly radio address two weeks ago (as summarized by Paul […]

The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded today to former Vice President Al Gore and to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for its work to alert the world to the threat of global waarming.
Nice goin’ Al. 

Alert reader Mike Campbell caught me in an error Wednesday and I stand corrected.
In my modest scoop about the possibility that Jim Ramstad would unretire, I stated a couple of facts to illustrate that Minnesota’s Third Congressional District, after decades as a Republican redoubt, has been trending blue recently. One of the facts was a […]

My friend Pasquino stumbles on things, then muses on them, like:
I am not an evangelical.  What other people believe about an afterlife is their business.  What makes me think I know more than somebody else about heaven and hell or even if there are such places?  Nobody knows.  Be good and decent for the […]

Good Thursday morning Fellow Seekers,
Turkey is threatening serious consequences in its relations with the United States to protest a vote by the House Foreign Relations Committee declaring the slaughter of more than 1 million Armenians to be an act of genocide.
Armenian-Americans have been lobbying for years to have what happened to their ancestors during World War […]

Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas University, regrets his earlier decision to block a campus appearance by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and is now inviting him. Here’s his statement. Dease had made a bad decision, but I give him credit for knowing how to acknowledge as much, apologize and try to make amends.
More coverage by my […]

Just mentioning, I’ll be on the Dan Barreiro radio show (KFAN, AM-1130 AM) between about 4:10 and 4:20 p.m. today. And on Minnesota Matters show (with host Mark Heaney) on Air America (AM 950) just after the 5:30 p.m. break. I assume it will be all about the modest scoop on Jim Ramstad.
Do I look […]

A second and very reliable source, with insider knowledge of National Republican Congressional Committee efforts to get U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad to run for reelection next year, says the committee believes there’s a better than 50-50 chance Ramstad will do it.
Sure, the NRCC really wants this to happen, and perhaps they’re getting ahead of themselves, but the talks […]

Signs point to yes, U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad has left the door open to retracting his retirement announcement. If he does, it will be a blockbuster development in Minnesota politics with possible consequences in the national race for Congress. (And it would mess up several folks who were preparing to run for the open […]