North Star Politics

No one else seems to have noticed that Trillin's back.

Just like the title says. Do your best not to bash (or gloat to) your Republican relatives.

This map makes me happy: only Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Mississippi, and Alabama have Bush above 50% approval ratings. What's interesting to me, though, is the difference between Minnesota's and Iowa's approval ratings. Iowa's in the 31-35% range, while Minnesota's in the 36-40% range. Now, this might not be much at all - it could only be a 1% difference between the two states, which wouldn't be significant at all, except for the fact that Iowa went for Bush in 2004. And now they're regretting it even more than Minnesotans are. They've got buyer's remorse, and as well they should - Bush's presidency is a miserable failure.

As I've neglected to mention and MN Publius has reminded me, it is an election day again. We've got two MN Senate special elections in SDs 19 and 43.

Keep track of the results here. So far, we're getting smoked in SD19 while we're leading by a small margin in SD43.

UPDATE: MN Politics Guru says it better than I could.

UPDATE #2: John Deitering, the DFL candidate from SD19, has lost by about 1400 votes, with a very strong showing (over 16%) by the Independence party candidate. Thanks for running. Mr. Deitering.

UPDATE #3: Terry Bonoff, the DFL candidate, has won the SD43 seat! Congratulations, soon-to-be-Sen. Bonoff! This is a big win, almost 10% and almost 1000 votes. A one-seat pickup in the Senate tonight? I've got no complaints.

Dammit, Inside Minnesota Politics. This is stupid and you know it.

Does Pres. Bush think Minnesota is a worse place to live than California? Just for turkeys, or for people too?

It's been written elsewhere, but I'll point out that Sen. Steve Kelley, a DFL candidate for governor, will be blogging tonight over at MyDD similar to the way Amy Klobuchar did last week. My double sooper-seekrit sources say thing should get going around 5:30, end around 7, and Sen. Kelley will be using the handle SenSteveKelley. It'll be interesting (if at a fairly awkward time) - do participate if you can.

Direct diary link here.

Call me cynical, but why can I not help thinking that this is happening now (really, happening at all) because the administration needs to say, "hey, we're winning!", in addition to avoiding a ruling that their detention of Padilla was illegal. I don't know about you, but I abhor the thought of habeas corpus being honored only when it's politically expedient to do so. It shouldn't be this way, and if the Bush administration had any respect for the law and the Constitution, it wouldn't be.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

As before, Sen. (Norm) Coleman is focusing on the stuff that matters to all of us ordinary Minnesotans. He's protecting our freedom from the evildoers in a way that I wouldn't trust anyone else to.

Personally, I don't care who owns my internets as long as they work. But all joking aside, I don't really see the point of this for our good junior senator. Minnesotans don't care about George Galloway or who owns the Internet's backbone. They care if Americans are dying in Iraq, if they have to pay the AMT, and if they can afford their heating bills. I somehow doubt that dealing with Galloway is Coleman's burning ambition as a senator, and so he must have some politically ulterior motives, but I just can't figure out what they are; this is stuff that goes way under most peoples' radar, and rightly so. Norm, what are you up to?

Minnesota law prohibits same-sex marriage. Republicans want to pass a constitutional amendment banning it (again) because they don't have solutions for the problems that face Minnesotans.

MDE has a post about Sen. Tom Bakk's (DFL-Cook) reasons for throwing his support behind Kelly Doran rather than Mike Hatch. The important quote is:

"To win, we will need some support from the business community and I think with Hatch that would be tough. He's taken plenty of businesses on and so support for him will be problematic."

This seems like an awfully stupid reason to me. Hatch has gone after businesses that, for better or worse, he believed were violating the law. Businesses have nothing to fear from Hatch or other Democrats unless they're doing something wrong (or giving the appearance of doing so). Sen. Bakk would also do well to remember that businesses have lots of money, but no votes. It'll be an expensive race, sure, but ultimately it doesn't matter how much support Hatch or Doran has in the business community, it matters how many of those who work for those businesses support one or the other. Those workers might even appreciate a man who goes after those who commit corporate crime; stranger things have happened.