Capitol Catchall: Ellison makes historic Gaza trip as Bachmann gets fact-checked — again

WDCpix

Minnesota Democrat Rep. Keith Ellison and Rep. Brian Baird, D-Wash., are in Gaza getting a first-hand view of the destruction left after Israel’s military incursion into the area and visiting with United Nations officials. The trip, not sanctioned by the Obama administration, marks the first time U.S. legislators have visited the Palestinian territory in eight years, though the pair did not meet with Hamas representatives. (Sen. John Kerry, in a separate trip, is in Gaza as well.) On Friday, Ellison and Baird travel to the Israeli town of Sderot.

Speaking with Minnesota Public Radio from the site of a bombed school built with U.S. taxpayer funds, Ellison today said, “Why would this school, the American International school get bombed? Just thinking about these seniors and all the kids that go to this school and how we’re trying to create kids with a democratic and liberal education, and how now all those dreams have just collapsed with this building.”

In her already infamous remarks on right-wing radio recently, Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann claimed that the stimulus package is, in Steve Benens’ words, a Democratic conspiracy to “‘direct’ funding away from Republican districts, so Democratic districts can ‘suck up’ all federal funds.” As Bluestem Prairie writes, here logic appears to be “bass ackwards”: “Bachmann’s own district is projected to benefit most of any district in Minnesota under the recovery bill.” Finance & Commerce and our own Chris Steller concur.

Rep. John Kline tells American Public Media’s Marketplace that Congress shouldn’t be loaning money to the Big Three automakers. His suggestion: “A Chapter 11 bankruptcy would let the companies do the serious restructuring they need to do. Many companies large and small have done very well, come out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy stronger and healthier than going in.” But even additional loans might not stave off bankruptcy. According to the credit-rating agency Moody’s, there’s a 70 percent chance of such a filing.

A Rochester Post Bulletin editorial praises Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whose workload has doubled since Norm Coleman stopped being a Minnesota senator, and calls for a swift resolution to the Senate contest with Al Franken. “Minnesotans are a patient people,” the paper writes, noting that Klobuchar is both Minnesota’s junior and senior senator. “We have to be, to endure anywhere from three to five months of winter and to wait at least four weeks between ice-out and the walleye opener. But if we still don’t have two senators by Memorial Day, we’ll have a pretty good excuse to get cranky.”

All Norm needs is “a miracle.” That’s the conclusion of Politico’s Josh Kraushaar, who notes that Norm Coleman faces “just-about-insurmountable hurdles” in his bid to get his old job in the Senate back. “It looks like time is running out for Norm Coleman,” the oft-quoted University of Minnesota politics guru Larry Jacobs tells him. “There will be a point where the political and financial costs will have gone too far. And the opportunity to pull this out has dwindled down.” The piece also floats the rumor that Coleman may run for governor, should Tim Pawlenty not seek a third term.

With mid-term elections almost two years off, new television spots are hitting the airwaves — in support of Rep. Erik Paulsen and Rep. Tim Walz, KSTP reports. America’s Agenda, a bipartisan group backed by unions and pharmaceutical industry groups, is running the ads nationwide on behalf of 75 Republicans and Democrats who voted for S-CHIP, the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Paulsen, KSTP notes, is the only Minnesota Republican to vote for S-CHIP.

Rep. Jim Oberstar has urged President Barack Obama to undo a Bush-era change and reinstate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as “an independent, Cabinet-level agency reporting directly to the president.” A new report by the head of the agency that now houses FEMA, the Department of Homeland Security, unsurprisingly thinks that’s a bad idea. Homeland Security Inspector General Richard Skinner warned that the move would cause “considerable upheaval” to FEMA and Homeland Security. And, heaping modest praise, he added, “While FEMA has not again faced a catastrophe on the scale of Hurricane Katrina, it has generally been perceived as performing relatively well in responding to disasters in the past few years.”