U.S. Senate

Politics in Minnesota has posted a lovely new infographic chart showing DFL candidates for governor and the endorsements they’ve earned.

U.S. Rep. Keith Ellison has introduced a bill that would extend Minnesota-style, same-day voting rights to all eligible Americans in federal elections.

St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman caps off the long version of his new TV ad by quoting hockey great Wayne Gretzky’s advice to skate to where the puck will be. It’s a quote Gov. Pawlenty has been using for years, as Brian Bakst of the Associated Press notes. Indeed, it’s a favorite among consultants, businessmen and [...]

A protracted partisan skirmish has left hundreds of thousands of Americans without unemployment benefits — an impasse Senate Democrats hope to break this week.

The U.S. Senate passed the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act on Thursday with the controversial Matthew Shepard Act attached. The act would add sexual orientation and gender identity to federal hate crimes laws. The bill now heads to the desk of President Obama, who at last week’s Human Rights Campaign dinner promised LGBT advocates he’d [...]

Huffington Post’s Sam Stein is reporting that an amendment to the defense appropriations bill authored by Sen. Al Franken and approved in the Senate two weeks ago may be stripped from the final bill. Thirty Senate Republicans — now commemorated in the satirical web site Republicans for Rape — opposed the measure, which would prohibit [...]

Pity the U.S. Senate committee witness who tries to slip a fishy statistic past Al Franken. The fearsome Harvard math major punished conservative economist Diana Furchtgott-Roth for claiming that Democrats’ reforms would jack up bankruptcies for medical reasons. 

Gov. Pawlenty did Moose Lake’s captive sex offenders a favor by taking away their big TVs Tuesday before his 12-minute appearance on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.” They were spared captions dubbing him “‘President’ Pawlenty” and claiming he holds a 56-percent approval rating in Minnesota. (Try 45 percent.) And a majority of Minnesotans’ blood might boil to [...]

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is one of several female Democratic senators demanding that health insurance disparities that impact women be eliminated as part of the health reform packages being debated in Congress. For the past two weeks, the senators have been ensuring the issues unique to women don’t get last in the vigorous debate.

A new YouTube video suggests that former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman still has what it takes to generate excitement in people — in particular among the younger generation that the Republican Party is so desperate to attract.