Posts by Paul Schmelzer

Gov. Tim Pawlenty hits the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference this morning at 9 a.m. Central. He’s followed at 11:20 a.m. by U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann. Watch the live speech after the jump.

Rep. Michele Bachmann continued her anti–Social Security media tour yesterday, calling the program a “tremendous fraud.” She told Fox Business that “we need entitlement reform with Medicare and Social Security… No company could get away with this. They’d be thrown in jail if they ever tried to do what the federal government did with people’s [...]

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is joining the chorus of Democratic senators who support the use of reconciliation — a procedural tool that would allow a bill to pass with a simple majority vote, thereby circumventing filibuster attempts — to pass health care reform measures. In a statement prepared for the Minnesota Independent, Klobuchar indicated she essentially agreed with Sen. Al Franken and nine other senators (eight Democrats, plus Vermont independent Bernie Sanders), who signed a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to use reconciliation to bring about a Senate vote.

Momemtum is growing for adding a public option to the health care reform bill during the reconciliation process: Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders has signed on to a letter urging Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to “bring for a vote before the full Senate a public health insurance option under budget reconciliation rules.” While Sen.Tom [...]

OK, maybe it’s not quite the vast rightwing conspiracy, but the expansive conservative multimedia entity Salem Communications — which runs local radio stations including AM 1280 The Patriot and the national TownHall.com, home to Michele Bachmann’s blog — is getting bigger. The Washington Independent reports that the company has purchased HotAir.com from pundit Michelle Malkin.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty still denies he’s running for president, yet his travels — including a just-announced return trip to New Hampshire — suggest otherwise. On Facebook this morning, Pawlenty announced he’ll be traveling to the Granite State for a Mar. 25 keynote speech at the Manchester Republican Committee’s Lincoln-Reagan Dinner.

As I write this, a delegation including Minnesota Rep. Jim Oberstar and Sen. Amy Klobuchar is en route to Haiti. According to an Oberstar staffer, the bipartisan group lands at around 11:00 and will pay respects to those who died in the aftermath of the earthquake that struck 30 days ago. Today is a national [...]

A new survey of Minnesotans shows that a majority of residents — 56 percent — are embarrassed by Rep. Michele Bachmann. The release of the survey follows recent high-profile statements by Bachmann that she believes President Barack Obama wants to “annihilate” conservatives, that the U.S. faces a “curse” — and extinction — if it fails to support Israel, and that government must “wean” Americans off of social safety net programs like Medicare and Social Security.

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, [...]