AM.MN: Pawlenty’s Southern strategy: cooking ‘Swamp Thang’

Gov. Pawlenty’s enthusiasm for cooking “Swamp Thang” a la Washington, D.C., restaurateur B. Smith made both C.J. and (appropriately) Hot Dish Politics in Sunday’s Star Tribune. But it’ll be tough to outdo Mike Huckabee, who set the standard for GOP presidential candidates’ Southern cooking in 2008 with his fried squirrel in a popcorn popper. Ingredients are key, and Pawlenty is missing more than venison: according to The Swamp, a Chicago Tribune blog, the thing T-Paw needs is “a charisma and name recognition transplant.”

STATE CAPITOL: Pawlenty South America-bound. Overshooting the Southern United States altogether, the boy from South St. Paul heads to the homeland of the Girl from Ipanema on Saturday. [St. Cloud Times]

MINNEAPOLIS: Ordinance would require businesses to recycle. It’s just a matter of sorting one thing from another, says the manager of a bar called The Library. [Minnesota Daily]

VIRGINIA: “1984” on Chestnut Street? The chief says privacy is too much to expect along the main drag, but some don’t want police to install a surveillance camera there, even with federal subsidy. [Mesabi Daily News via Associated Press]

STATEWIDE: State cuts endanger “Greater Minnesota Physician Factory.” Physician and onetime DFL U.S. Senate aspirant Steven Miles says “Hennepin County Medical Center” is a misnomer. [Star Tribune]

WELCH: Protesters want Native remains buried — not more nuclear waste. Sixty members of the Prairie Island Indian Community rallied against Xcel Energy plans to store more spent nuclear fuel casks. [Rochester Post Bulletin]

MSP INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT: Pilots pled “cockpit distractions.” Northwest Airlines radio transcripts don’t explain how its plane managed to miss what is after all the nation’s 16th-largest metropolitan area. [Associated Press]