Photo: MPR News Cut

Photo: MPR

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann rallied on a dead-end street outside Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) studios in St. Paul today, where the embattled member of Congress debated Democrat El Tinklenberg for 30 minutes (archived MnIndy liveblog here, archived MPR audio here). At his News Cut blog, MPR’s Bob Collins shows and tells scenes of political theater he judges unrivalled since the days of Gov. Jesse Ventura. The sign-wavers were there for Bachmann to meet and greet before the TV news crews, and a Bible-reading circle convened in MPR’s lobby — “presumably to protect Our Lady of HUAC from getting all contaminated by those evil secular humanist public radio people,” as one Daily Kos commenter put it.