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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. 

A new web ad by a Georgia candidate for governor next year shows what the new-media future could hold for Minnesota’s own 2010 gubernatorial contest. “The Ox vs. King Roy The Rat,” an animated attack by Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine on former Gov. Roy Barnes, is going viral as possibly the worst political ad ever. [...]

Chris Coleman waited only three hours or so after he decided against running for governor to publicly announce his move. Apparently that wasn’t enough time for the St. Paul mayor to soften an implied critique of his Minneapolis counterpart’s own guv bid.

Updated: The University of Minnesota marching band forms the corporate logo of TCF Bank on the field at the university’s new TCF Bank Stadium in a promotional video released by the university today.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty announces the launch of his Freedom First political action committee today. He’ll surely repeat, as he’s been telling everyone, that the PAC is not about him and his pursuit of the presidency. But the website for his new PAC suggests otherwise, starting with the web address that gets you there: timpawlenty.com.

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.

State Human Services Commissioner Cal Ludeman and a dozen other Minnesota health care leaders travel to Germany Tuesday to learn about the government-regulated private health insurance system there that covers everyone. Here’s hoping they get a better reception than Hermann the German gave Tiberius Caesar’s Roman legions 2,000 years ago this month, as re-enacted over [...]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty told a national TV audience Sunday he meant his talk of states’ rights to stop federal health care reform “in a political sense … I wouldn’t go so far as to say it’s a legal issue.” It was only Thursday that Pawlenty was saying Republicans need to “get more aggressive about asserting [...]

U.S. Sen. Al Franken is the featured speaker at the Harkin Steak Fry in Iowa today. He is scheduled to take the podium at 3:10 p.m., right after event namesake Sen. Tom Harkin. The hourlong program should start at 2:30 p.m. Live streaming video after the jump.

Democrats in Congress are readying a formal rebuke, but U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann tells Newsmax TV that “Joe Wilson spoke truth on the floor of the U.S. House.”