Kline gave the GOP response to President Obama’s weekly address, reaching a bit for Labor Day relevance by tying fears about health care reform to fears about job losses. (Gov. Pawlenty had his turn delivering the Republican message last April before another holiday — Tax Day.)

It’s a new role for Kline, a strong, silent type whose conservative credentials helped him leapfrog more senior Republicans in June to become the ranking member on the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee.

Now he’s the GOP’s official point man attacking Democrats’ efforts to reform health care — though he’s outdone almost daily by his colleague in Minnesota’s Congressional delegation: Michele Bachmann.

She held a townhall on the topic; he won’t. But the man who once carried the suitcase containing the presidential Denny’s-style menu for nuclear war told a telephone townhall meeting that Senate Democrats passing health care reform by simple majority would be “the nuclear option, because it would cause the Senate to explode.”

The video of Kline’s Republican address is below. Here are the main themes:

Be very afraid

American families are worried … If you think that’s frightening, I’m sorry to say it could get even worse … No wonder Americans are scared … They also fear, and rightly so …

Au revoir, doc

What will happen to my coverage, and my choice of doctors? … the comfort of a familiar physician … Democrats’ plans may cost patients the right to see their family doctor …

Did I mention the re-set button?

It’s time to press the ‘reset’ button … It’s not too late to start over … honor American workers by hitting the ‘reset’ button on health care reform …

Defunct paper sued:

Hoppin replaces Stassen-Berger: With Pioneer Press political reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger heading over to the Star Tribune, the St. Paul paper announces that her replacement will be reporter Jason Hoppin. A good move, but as editor Thom Fladung noted in his memo, Hoppin’s old beat — covering Minnesota’s capitol city – won’t be refilled.

Bridge shuttered: The Bridge, a community newspaper covering Mississippi River neighborhoods in the core of Minneapolis, stopped publishing its print edition a month ago, and now its website — rebranded as Bridgeland News — seems to be following suit. In a July 13 editors note, Dan Nordley wrote that, despite getting 1,000 email subscribers, the publication fell short in its fundraising efforts to switch to online-only newsgathering. The site — last updated on Aug. 6 — will get occasional new content, but, he writes, “the site will be like the Stone Arch Bridge—more of a nostalgic place than a structure that’s still used for commercial traffic.”

Health care debate goes online: Local social media types, fed up with mayhem wrought at public forums on health care by anti-Obama activists, are hoping for a calmer discussion of the issues online. Blogger and online media consultant Paul Saarinen has started a video conversation on “What bothers you about the health care debate?” Video commenters so far include Mediation blogger Taylor Carik and Matt Thompson, online journalist and former deputy web editor at the Star Tribune. All are welcome to participate.

Hubbard sues Ramsey County: In June, Hubbard Broadcasting — owner of KSTP, KAAL and others — filed a data practices request to see all uncounted ballots in the protracted Norm Coleman/Al Franken Senate contest. Now, after Coleman conceded defeat and with Al Franken serving his fifth week as Minnesota’s second senator, the company has filed suit against Ramsey County to get their hands on unopened absentee ballots. This week they did the same in St. Louis County.

(Wikipedia)

Twineball’s media moment? Brent Schacherer of the Litchfield Independent Review reports that home-decor diva Martha Stewart is interested in Minnesota’s legendary twine ball. Billed as the world’s largest ball of twine, Darwin’s 17,400-pounder — spun over 39 years, beginning in 1950, by the indefatigable Francis Johson — has sparked interest among Stewart’s producers, who have set up a Wednesday morning call with Roger Werner, curator of the Darwin Twine Ball Museum. No word yet on when or if the ball will be featured on Stewart’s show.

Power Line pilfers: You can’t find Tom Tomorrow’s comic strip at City Pages anymore, but local rightwing blog Power Line is picking up the slack — apparently without permission, credit or remuneration for the artist, according to a tweet by Tomorrow.

Untangling obfuscation: Graphic designers are telling Republicans to tell the truth when presenting infographics related to healthcare reform. A healthcare flowchart created by John Boehner’s office has been met with a graphic retort — in more ways than one. California designer Robert Palmer has created his own chart of healthcare, packaged on Flickr with an open letter to Boehner. In part, he tells Boehner, “By releasing your chart, instead of meaningfully educating the public, you willfully obfuscated an already complicated proposal. There is no simple proposal to solve this problem. You instead chose to shout ‘12! 16! 37! 9! 24!’ while we were trying to count something.” The title of his letter and chart: “Do not fuck with graphic designers.” (Via Infosthetics.)

On local online news videos: Taylor Carik, formerly of KARE-11’s Metromix and founder of the blog Mediation, digs into an analysis of video use by online news outfits by University of Minnesota student Vadim Lavrusik. He praises Lavrusik’s college thesis as a starting point, but suggests a deeper look at, among other topics, accepted standards for online video. He writes: “Taken side-by-side, Minnesota’s mainstream media video usage is comparable. KSTP is on-par with MPR. Great. But taken against general video developments online, the group is easily two years behind an acceptable standard of online video usage.”

Strib reorg OK’d: In a Jill Barshay story bylined “special to the Star Tribune,” the Minneapolis paper reported yesterday that a U.S. bankruptcy court gave the go-ahead for the paper’s reorganization plans. If the Strib’s creditors agree, as expected, the paper could come out of bankruptcy as early as Sept. 17 as a new entity and with a seriously lightened debt load ($100 million instead of the $500 million it reported at the start of bankruptcy late last year). Another change: a new publisher and board of directors are expected, as well.

Freudian typo? Today’s link-rich guest edition of MinnPost’s Daily Glean might suggest that the site’s copyeditor went on vacation along with regular Glean writer David Brauer. Typos happen — like the misspelling of names of Gov. Pawlenty, MnIndy’s Chris Steller and MNPublius’ Aaron Landry — but there’s one that seems more like a Freudian slip. In discussing Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s Thursday address to the Republican National Committee, Glean sub Max Sparber summarizes a Strib story, stating that Pawlenty “has a rather ingenious idea for how to attract new voters into the swindling ranks of the Republican Party” [emphasis mine]. That error has since been corrected.

Old news at Strib blog: The word “blog” appears nowhere on the Star Tribune’s home page, and its once-popular Big Question blog seems awfully hard to find (blogs appear in the front-page pulldown menu for “Opinion”). Maybe there’s a reason for the low profile: Yesterday’s post about Rep. Michele Bachmann getting roasted in an Auto-Tune the News episode follows up stories on the same topic by MnIndy, City Pages and MinnPost nearly three weeks ago. Those three sites might be the answer to the post’s headline: “Michele Bachmann, pop song diva …who knew?“

Post-Bulletin writer wins health fellowship: The Association of Health Care Journalists has announced its first six fellows, who’ll get training on how to access government health databases to improve their reporting on health issues. The fellowships are in conjunction with the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. In the mix is reporter Jeff Hansel, who writes the Rochester Post-Bulletin’s Pulse on Health blog. (Via journalist Maryn McKenna on Twitter.)

Free Food (Inc.): It may seem like an unlikely pair, given the restaurant chain’s former ties to McDonald’s, but Chipotle is teaming up with Magnolia Pictures to present 32 free screenings of the documentary Food, Inc., across the country. Minneapolis is on the tour, with a screening tonight at The Lagoon in Uptown. Here’s the film’s trailer. (Minneapolis’ River Road Entertainment and Participant Media collaborated with Magnolia on the film.) Read Chipotle’s “Food With Integrity” manifesto.

Hubbard named SPJ Fellow: The late Stanley E. Hubbard will be posthumously named one of three Fellows of the Society of Professional Journalists, Editor & Publisher reports. Hubbard, who died in 1992 at age 95, founded the company that now runs KSTP-TV and other broadcast outlets. E&P writes that Hubbard bought the first television camera RCA ever sold in 1938, and his “KSTP-TV eventually became the nation’s first NBC TV affiliate and the nation’s first all-color TV station.”

New news at KSTC: Hubbard-owned KSTC-TV — Channel 45 in the Twin Cities — is resuming the 9 p.m. local newscast that it halted six years ago.

Screengrab of the soon-to-launch MinneAdpolis.com.

Rebranding MinneAdpolis: Minneapolis got props in Sunday’s New York Times for a cooperative effort by 27 advertising agencies who are hoping to rebrand the state’s biggest city as “the City of Advertising.” The group, made up of local American Association of Advertising Agencies (or Four A’s) members, plans to launch a new site showcasing the city and the participating firms’ creative work at MinneAdpolis.com this week.

UnConvention ad wins: One of the participating MinneAdpolis firms, Campbell Mithun, recently won a Silver Pencil at the New York Art Directors Club’s One Show for a TV commercial created for The UnConvention, a festival of artistic alternatives to last summer’s Republican National Convention. The spot “Park” won best public service commercial, beating out an ad for Shelter done by Leo Burnett London. The commercial shows two pairs of kissing couples — two men and two women — who switch positions so as not to irk passing Republicans.

Locals featured in NYT Somali piece: This weekend’s New York Times story about local Somali youth who’ve returned home to fight in the country’s civil war against Ethiopia has more local angles. University of Minnesota graduate and former Minnesota Daily editorial board member Ramla Bile served as writer Andrea Elliott’s fixer for the piece, and Voice of America reporter Abdi Aynte, a former Minnesota Independent fellow who left to work for the BBC, is interviewed for the accompanying video, “Recruiting Americans for Jihad.” Aynte, who wrote a pair of MnIndy stories on missing Somali men, said in an email that the piece was “simply one of the best” he’s seen on the topic.

Quid pro D’oh! USA Today last week wrote an ominous-sounding story headlined, “Billions in aid go to areas that backed Obama in ‘08.” But it’s not until the very last paragraph of the 575-word piece that you find the critical context that probably should’ve killed that sensational headline: “The imbalance didn’t start with the stimulus. From 2005 through 2007, the counties that later voted for Obama collected about 50% more government aid than those that supported McCain, according to spending reports from the U.S. Census Bureau.”

What’s in the Q?

Kupchella to tackle healthcare reform: Rick Kupchella has two new projects in the works after leaving KARE 11 two weeks ago. One’s a new-media project, but details haven’t been revealed yet. This is the other: the i.e. network, a PR effort targeting healthcare reform. According to the network’s site, they’re partnering with Target and “some of America’s most progressive corporate entities” to create The ALLIANCE for a Healthy Twin Cities to promote lower cost, higher quality healthcare through a focus on wellness. But it might not be as “progressive” as you’d think: partnering with Kupchella is Tom Mason, formerly chief of staff for Norm Coleman, senior communications adviser to Tim Pawlenty and communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Once dubbed a “rising star” of the GOP, he also published Twin Cities Business Monthly for five years.

Saberi’s plea: As Fargo-born journalist Roxana Saberi calls for the release of her former cellmate in Iran, Iranian aid worker Silva Harotonian, protesters for democracy in that country are reportedly dealing with the government’s news blackout by making an underground newspaper. Here’s the translation of one.

LATimes gives props to local Twitterer: The Los Angeles Times included a local — Secrets of the City’s Max Sparber — in its list of funny tweets in response to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s news conference yesterday, in which he revealed he’d been unfaithful to his wife. “None of us are in a position to judge Sanford until we too have had sex with a woman in Argentina,” Sparber wrote. “Now who is up for a road trip?”

Hubbard honored: Hubbard Broadcasting, owner of KSTP radio and TV as well as other broadcast stations, is receiving the Historic Site in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists tomorrow. The family-owned company has been in business since 1942.

Bridge-blast double-take: Sunday morning’s implosion of Minneapolis’ Lowry Avenue bridge was big news, garnering coverage on TV and YouTube and, of course, in the local dailies. Front covers of Monday’s editions of the Star Tribune and Pioneer Press gave readers an inkling of what a one-newspaper metro might mean: both papers used the identical three photos of the bridge demolition, attributed to Hennepin County Public Affairs via the AP. The dailies followed up this morning with, you got it, front-page placement for the New York Times’ excellent piece on the death of 26-year-old Iranian democracy protester Neda Agha-Soltan, which also appeared on the Times’ front page. (Via Newseum.org, images of PiPress and Strib covers.)

Saberi inks book deal: Fargo-based journalist Roxana Saberi, having just penned a piece on threats to free speech in Iran for the Chicago Tribune, just landed a book deal with HarperCollins to tell the story of her arrest and 100 days of imprisonment in Iran. Financial details of the agreement weren’t made public, but a publication date was: the as-yet-untitled memoir will come out in March 2010.

Worth examining: As David Weigel at our sister site, the Washington Independent, writes about the conservative bent of the Washington Examiner and its founder, MinnPost’s David Brauer tweets about a headline at an apparently unrelated Examiner: “Plucky Minn. House GOP minority picks leader.” Of the piece, which references the “small but potent Minnesota House Republican caucus,” Brauer asks, “Did AP write this headline or is the Examiner being a bit patronizing about the House GO(mini)P?”

Minnesota’s Jewish paper goes biweekly: After nearly a century in business, Minneapolis-based weekly the American Jewish World is switching to a biweekly production schedule. Founded in 1912 as the Jewish Weekly to “tell  the Jewish story and to be a catalyst for Jewish unity and cultural vitality” (it got its current name in 1915), the paper has been hard hit, like many community papers, by the recession. Anticipating a long-term downturn in advertising, publisher and editor Mordecai Specktor — only the fifth person to hold that position in the paper’s history — writes that the new schedule begins May 1. “The plan is to publish on a biweekly basis and deliver a more substantial newspaper to our loyal subscribers,” he told me in an email. He says he’d like to improve the paper’s website, but first he’s getting ready to announce publication of the annual AJW Community Guide, a directory of Jewish business and services, which will be published on the site and, in November, in print.  (A bit of trivia: Someone well-versed in the struggle to make media sustainable is involved with the publication: MinnPost founder Joel Kramer is Specktor’s partner and a board member on the paper’s parent organization, Minnesota Jewish Media, LLC.)

N.D. journalist sentenced in Iran: Journalist Roxana Saberi, a North Dakota native, was sentenced to eight years in prison for espionage by Iranian authorities. The 31-year-old, who was born to an Iranian father and Japanese mother in Fargo, has lived in Iran for six years, where she’s done reporting for National Public Radio and the BBC, among other outlets. Saberi’s father says that Roxana testified that her “earlier confessions were not true and she told me she had been tricked into believing that she would be released if she cooperated.” With pressure from the Obama administration, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has urged the top prosecutor in Tehran to review the case.

Happy B-day, TCDP: The Twin Cities Daily Planet is turning three and celebrating at a community happy hour, May 1 at Bedlam Theatre.

• Ex-KSTP-er seeks GOP chair:

• Minnesota’s best political blogs: The Fix, Chris Cillizza’s Washington Post blog, published its annual best-state-based political blogs list, and Minnesota gets some heavy representation: Eight sites — more than any other state — made the cut, including The UpTake, Centrisity, Minnesota Democrats Exposed and True North. (While MnIndy and MinnPost got several nominations, I’m guessing we’ve both transcended the “blog” category?)

• Aaron Landry tweets a milestone: According to Compete.com, a site that tracks web traffic, MinnPost has surpassed City Pages in monthly unique traffic. (Caveat: In following MnIndy’s traffic on Compete, it seems the site accurately represents traffic trends, but underestimates traffic numbers.)

• Roger Ebert v. Squeaky O’Reilly: Bill O’Reilly’s “Hall of Shame” is out, and on the list of “Media Outlets that Traffic in Defamation” are the New Yorker, the St. Petersburg Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, among others. In a letter to O’Reilly yesterday, film critic Roger Ebert posits that the Fox News talker’s ire has to do with the Sun-Times cutting Billo’s column, an act that drew far fewer complaints than when the paper stopped running Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip about Nancy and Sluggo, according to Ebert’s editor. Ebert, who prefers conservative writer Charles Krauthammer to O’Reilly’s “knee-jerk frothings,” ends with a tale:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!