RNC

Charges will not be filed against 323 people who were arrested on the Marion Street and Cedar Street bridges during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention, the St. Paul city attorney’s office announced today. Local civil rights activists say the failure to press charges is the latest evidence that many RNC arrests were frivolous.

At two Minneapolis events today, independent journalist Will Potter is discussing what he calls the “green scare”: “Corporations and politicians are labeling activists ‘eco-terrorists’ and national security threats,” a descriptor at his Web site reads. “Think red-baiting, with a green twist.” As he tells Tom Elko in an audio interview at Sky Blue Waters, post-9/11 [...]

New Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairman Michael Steele sees rosy prospects for a re-elected Norm Coleman in a statement the RNC released today. But Coleman’s past haunts him when it comes to money matters, says Politico in an extended rehash of the former U.S. senator’s finances that’s lightly spiced with sympathetic ruminations from former U.S. [...]

Rep. Keith Ellison and six other members of Congress are sending a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urging immediate action to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. It asks for openings on the Gaza border for humanitarian supplies, the transport of critically ill residents out of Gaza and United Nations funding to aid [...]

When an SUV rammed the Planned Parenthood office on Ford Parkway in St. Paul yesterday on the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, was the driver furthering terrorism in violation of Minnesota’s Patriot Act – a charge Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner leveled against eight Republican National Convention (RNC) protesters? Dave Mindeman at the Minnesota Network for [...]

President Barack Obama promised that his inauguration would be different from those of previous presidents, but change doesn’t come easily when it requires shaking influence in Washington.

Nearly 800 people were arrested. Pepper spray, flash-bang grenades and tear gas were repeatedly used to disperse crowds. Store-front windows were smashed and vehicle tires slashed. If nothing else, the four days of the Republican National Convention certainly succeeded in bringing some excitement to normally sleepy streets of downtown St. Paul. Today, before a sometimes rambunctious crowd, a seven-member panel led by former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger and former Assistant U.S. Attorney Andy Luger presented an 82-page report on policing during the Republican National Convention to the St. Paul City Council.

Activists from Texas who call themselves the Austin Informant Working Group have added their voices to the chorus denouncing Brandon Darby, who gave information to the FBI while posing as a protester to infiltrate groups planning demonstrations against last November’s Republican National Convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul. A statement from the activists accuses Darby of provoking violent plots and spying on nonviolent, lawful activists for the federal government.

Brandon Darby, a Texas activist who it turns out was working for the FBI as an informant from within groups that protested the 2008 Republican National Convention, pleads his case in the Pioneer Press today and in a statement he released earlier this week. He is “CHS1″ (Confidential Human Source 1) in an FBI affidavit [...]

Thanks for the memories. Now please go away. Yes, we’re talking about you, Rudy Giuliani. And you, Wolf Blitzer. We no longer wish to be a swing state. Henceforth the residents of the state of Minnesota promise to vote reliably Democratic. Or Republican. It doesn’t much matter which — just as long as you people promise to stop showing up in our little slice of the frozen tundra seeking to feel our pain. But to memorialize the horrors visited upon us during the (still ongoing) campaign season, we offer — in honor of our favorite member of the Statewide General Election Canvassing Board — the G. Barry Anderson Awards.