Effective in the New Year, Black Ink and your humble ink-stained wretch will join MinnPost.com.
Black Ink will become a page on MinnPost’s site and my scribbling (or a link to it) will appear on MinnPost’s cover.
I am parting on good and friendly terms with the Minnesota Monitor, where my work over the past months has […]

Good Thursday morning Fellow Seekers,
The latest statements about and on behalf of U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad can, and probably should be taken to signify that he is laying the groundwork for reversing his September announcement to retire from Congress after nine terms representing the the suburban Third District of Minnesota.
Black Ink has reported for two […]

This is a tiny glimpse into the current state-of-the-art media campaign.
As the Mitt Romney campaign tries to slow down Mike Huckabee’s surge in Iowa, they have long since begun issuing harsh criticism’s of Huckabee’s past actions and statements. On Sunday morning, on “Meet the Press,” Romney called on Huckabee to apologize to Pres. Bush for […]

This post relies on reporting by my Minnesota Monitor teammate Joe Bodell as well as my own.
There’s a fresh wave of discussion in Washington and Minnesota of the possibility that U.S. Rep. Jim Ramstad may change his announced retirement plans and seek another term instead.
A very good source of mine has stated that […]

The latest poll of likely New Hampshire primary voters, published this morning by the Concord (N.H.) Monitor has it Barack Obama 32, Hillary Clinton 31, John Edwards 18, Bill Richardson 8, everyone else less than 5 percent.
If you look at the list of the last 10 or 20 polls taken in New Hampshire, as compiled […]

Three Democrats vying for the DFL endorsement for the open congressional seat from Minnesota’s Third District will participate in a forum tonight on Iraq and related issues sponsored by four peace groups. The candidates who have committed to attend are Edina Mayor Jim Hovland (at left) state Sen. Terri Bonoff (near right), and […]

The staff of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann is in the midst of a significant shakeup, with major departures from both the Washington and Minnesota offices, and a controversial social conservative taking over Bachmann’s Minnesota operations.
Rich Dunn, the chief of staff from the Washington office, told the Minnesota staff Friday that former state Sen. Sean Nienow, […]

Guest poster Karl Bremer of Stillwater is a constituent of U.S. Rep Michele Bachmann.
When I wrote in November about Rep. Michele Bachmann collecting federal farm subsidies through her family’s limited partnership, some claimed that her “no” vote on the 2007 farm bill, which would extend farm subsidies through 2012, cleared her of any charges of […]

For reasons that surpass understanding, the Twin Cities Media Alliance has asked me to kick-off a series of brownbag lunches with journalists where anyone that wants to can share lunch and talk about… well, whatever we want.
It’s today, Monday, noon in the Dunn Brothers coffee shop in the lobby of the Downtown Mpls library. Here’s […]

I stand not exactly corrected, since I may not have written anything that was incorrect, but I fear I took more credit than I deserved in my post last week titled Bush’s Clintonian Parsing?
In that piece, I hypothesized that if you looked at Pres. Bush’s statements before and after August (when he learned about […]

A Newsweek poll out Friday afternoon had the GOP race among likely Iowa caucus goers:

Mike Huckabee: 39 percent
Mitt Romney: 17
Fred Thompson: 10
Rudy Giuliani: 9
Ron Paul: 8
John McCain: 6

If this is right, it’s mighty impressive. This poll had a large sample, was taken Wednesday and Thursday by the most tried and trusted methodology (human telephone interviews) […]

Sorry to be so late with this. Technical difficulties and (fill in other excuses here). But for the Norm Coleman and/or Rachel Paulose obsessed, here’s the audio of my interview from Wednesday with the senator about his role in the rise and fall of U.S. Attorney Paulose. Warning, it’s a little over 30 minutes.
What think? […]

As I see people compiling lists of things Pres. Bush and VP Cheney said about Iran — after they had been alerted by their intelligence chief of new evidence that an Iranian nuclear weapons program had halted in 2003 — I’m noticing recurrent choices of words and phrases that may signal that they were deliberately […]