National/International

U.S. District Judge John R. Tunheim says the Central Intelligence Agency “probably misled” a panel he led in the 1990s seeking documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. That’s because the CIA didn’t tell Tunheim that its liaison to a panel that preceded his Assassination Records Review Board had been involved with [...]

WASHINGTON — Earlier this month, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine raised eyebrows when it sued the state for refusing to grant an 18.5 percent premium hike on 12,000 individual policy holders — an increase that would have generated a 3 percent profit margin for the company. Instead, Maine’s insurance superintendent granted a 10.9 [...]

As President Obama and his advisers debate strategy for the Afghanistan war and its related crisis in Pakistan, a factor that so far has not intruded on their discussions is emerging: the antiwar movement is showing signs of strength.

Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, perhaps the only Minnesota politician with the word “peace” in his job title, says the Nobel Peace Prize for President Obama is “deeply problematic. It rewards rhetoric over substance.”

Gov. Pawlenty has made a big enough name for himself — in part with relentless Obama-bashing in his own pursuit of the presidency — that his ever-so-qualified words of congratulations to President Obama for winning the Nobel Peace Prize drew notice in the national media blogosphere.

“I’m a dinner jacket.” That’s how someone instructed Tim Pawlenty “the other day” to say the name of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the governor told his weekly radio audience Friday morning. The presidential prospect also tried to show he’s no empty suit on international affairs, twice pronouncing an Iranian nuclear-weapons program a certainty. 

WASHINGTON — On a Thursday morning conference call, I got a chance to ask Gov. Tim Pawlenty about voter registration, voter fraud, and his new PAC’s political adviser Sara Taylor. In the Bush administration, as a White House political director, Taylor got tangled in the scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys who, the attorneys [...]

According to Phyllis Schlafly, founder of the Eagle Forum, the conference drew its largest crowd in 38 years, signaling a surge of grass-roots enthusiasm for 2010.

Updated: Melissa Hill, a “Civil Disobedience” candidate for Minneapolis City Council, tells about her arrest in Pittsburgh Friday while trying to cover the G20 protests for Indymedia.

WASHINGTON — Just in case he wasn’t familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee today to urge reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act.