Posts by Paul Schmelzer

Long before college conservatives were planning videotaped ACORN stings or Tea Partiers were wielding copies of “Rules for Radicals,” The Yes Men were pioneering a form of much-copied culturejamming to lambaste greed and misdeeds by corporations and governments. By posing as bigwigs from the WTO, Halliburton, the Canadian government, and Dow Chemicals, among others — [...]

Updated: Sen. Amy Klobuchar will vote in favor of a second term for Fed Chair Ben Bernanke when it comes up for a full Senate vote tomorrow. Sen. Al Franken’s office told the Minnesota Independent late last week that he’s still “undecided.” Meanwhile, senators from neighboring states, including Iowa’s Chuck Grassley and Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold, [...]

Gawker’s been googling and finds that Joseph Basel, who was arrested with ACORN gotcha guy James O’Keefe yesterday, may be the same Joseph Basel who attended the University of Minnesota – Morris.

In September, Rep. Michele Bachmann hailed as “brilliant” James O’Keefe, who with Hannah Giles orchestrated a sting operation at a Philadelphia ACORN office, posing as a pimp and a prostitute. Today, it appears that may have been an overestimation. Days after the duo was named in a federal lawsuit for the ACORN sting, O’Keefe was [...]

It’s intended to help the GOP drop the “party of no” moniker, but Politico’s Glenn Thrush notes that a “leaked” copy of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s “Declaration of Health Care Independence” — intended to be revealed at a Wednesday press conference, according to a note on the document — is “mostly a litany of Bachmann’s favorite [...]

Two hours before the Minnesota Vikings took to the field to face off against the New Orleans Saints for the NFC Championship, Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Joe Repya issued a press release stating that he thinks the state should hold a majority interest in the team. A Gov. Repya, he writes, “would agree to public [...]

As if to illustrate Allen Quist’s November comment that he and Rep. Michele Bachmann are “two peas in a pod,” the First Congressional District candidate’s campaign announced Saturday that the pair will share a podium on Feb. 1. Bachmann will be taking part in a health care forum the campaign is organizing in Rochester.

The congresswoman who once called herself a “foreign correspondent on enemy lines” in Washington, tells Mpls.St.Paul Magazine’s Steve Marsh that the AR-15 semiautomatic assault rifle is her favorite firearm. But when Rep. Michele Bachmann — who last year called on Minnesotans to be “armed and dangerous” against the Obama administration’s energy policies — was asked [...]

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., says he’ll vote against granting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke a second term when it comes up for a full Senate vote next week. Under Bernanke’s leadership, a statement from Feingold’s office says, the Fed “permitted grossly irresponsible financial activities that led to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.”
Sens. [...]

President Barack Obama has responded to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the ban on direct contributions by corporations to political campaigns, calling it a “green light to a new stampede of special interest money in our politics.” In a short statement, he said he’ll work with Congress to address the problem.