North Star Politics

In a new post, RM sez that MN Publius is "ran" by students who attend Dartmouth. This is, as a matter of fact, not entirely true. Matt Martin, the founder, is indeed a senior at Dartmouth, but Zack Stephenson is a senior at Knox College, which happens to be over 900 miles away.

Nice try.

Republican Minnesota: anti-factchecking since July 2005.

I don't really know what to say about this, but it certainly is interesting. Ford Bell's campaign has gone from seemingly DOA a month ago to spitting fire. I doubt that it'll be enough to win the nomination, but it's nice to have a race of it.

Are you kidding me?

Just added Backbone Minnesota to the blogroll (and my daily reading). It's a new but promising blog started late last month, and it's well worth an eyeball. Check it out.

Oh, and as a side note, NSP's layout is going to be completely overhauled, time permitting, in the next few weeks. If you have any tips, requests, whatever, feel free to email me.

...is a good thing. Please do participate - Matthews richly deserves this and more.

RM's latest post is, as usual, total bunk. Besides the monstrously amateurish spelling errors ("looses" instead of "loses") and typos ("If it could to a 4 person primary") it's based on highly questionable analysis. Let's take a look.

Whoever gets the DFL endorsement will get the kiss of death in a primary.

Where the hell is the evidence for this? The winner of the endorsement will come out looking very good against Kelly Doran, who's the only one we know will completely discount the endorsement and is facing an uphill battle in the primary. If the winner isn't Hatch, and if said winner beats Hatch by a reasonably large margin, Hatch will call it a day. Whatever else you want to call Mike Hatch, he's not stupid.

Of course we all know that in a primary, Mike Hatch will win coming out bruised, broken, penniless and having alienated many DFLers.

Again, what the hell is RM basing this on? Mike Hatch is considered by many to be the favorite overall and is almost unquestionably the front-runner at this point, but he is by no means guaranteed the nomination. Especially in that Kelly Doran will pose a substantial challenge between the caucuses and the primary. As a side note, it's not clear that it's going to be a particularly negative battle, or that Hatch will alienate many Democrats. So far, things have been relatively positive and Hatch has largely avoided controversy.

UPDATE: RM has just put up a post titled "This is to easy". Honestly, a typo here and there is unavoidable; I make them every so often. When you're as sloppy about your writing as RM is, however, it becomes that much harder for others to respect your opinion.

UPDATE #2: RM's even-newer post: "Bell's letter go Klobuchar".

...Command Sargeant Major Tim Walz of the United States Army National Guard (ret.), the Minnesota 1st, and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party.

I'm going to be proud to vote for this guy come November.

Take a break (a long one) and read about the most loathsome 50 people in this country. I don't agree with all of these...but they're funny anyways.

MRW has a post up about a Pioneer Press article that cites the Minnesota 6th as one of the few Dem-winnable CDs in the country. I like our odds, though I don't think that the 6th is the only one, or even the only CD in Minnesota that the DFL can win; the 1st CD race, properly funded, is an extremely good pickup opportunity with the chance to knock off an entrenched incumbent.

Once again, if you've got a few bucks, throw them Tim Walz's way. Every dollar will be critically important in this race; the difference between Rep. Gutknecht and some of his better past challengers has been almost entirely money.

UPDATE: MRW follows up.

The Minnesota Daily lays an absolute smackdown on Gov. Pawlenty and his "immigration proposal [that] plays off people’s prejudice and ignorance".

NSP has a new rule to add to Republican Minnesota's blogging formula, as released by MN Publius:

5. Anything that can possibly be misspelled will be misspelled.

As an example, Republican Minnesota's latest post (as I write this) says:

Paul Bagalla on Meet the Press

I don't know if I heard this right (I was eating breakfast at the time) but I think I heard Paul Bagalla say the contributions from the tribes we "Abramoff-directed."

I will try and get a transcript.

Perhaps RM isn't aware, but the man's name is Paul Begala. Not to mention, of course, the "we" in place of "were". It's okay, though, since RM isn't alone; many Republicans aren't very interested in checking of any kind (fact-, spell-, grammar-, etc.).

UPDATE: RM has changed it as of about 9 AM. Of course, it still says "we". But far be it from me to nitpick, of course.