Stories

Burberry, Britain’s once-staid fashion house, can’t help it if Sarah Palin wears their trademark plaid scarves. “[T]he conspicuousness of the pattern also means that the company has little control over how it is seen, or on whom,” the New Yorker magazine observed, in reference to Palin. Minneapolis has the same problem: today the Mill City [...]

The religious right’s annual “War on Christmas” is ramping up early this year, and at least one Minnesota-based company is on its hit list. Targeting retail stores that use the word “holiday” instead of “Christmas,” a trend it says the Nazis began, the American Family Association includes SUPERVALU, Eden Prairie–based owner of Cub Foods, among its targets for using the h-word in its ads.

State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill — giving life to what the union terms “the largest job-creating bill in decades.”

Republican Allen Quist has been angling to get back in elective office since 1994 — about the same length of time the Minnesota Vikings have spent angling to get a new taxpayer-funded stadium. Now both are making dramatic moves. Vikes owner Zygi Wilf says he’s washing his hands of “political games” and the Metropolitan Sports [...]

While Rep. Michele Bachmann was the highest-profile catch for the “Appeal to Heaven” gala for the controversial You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International ministry (even though she ultimately was a no-show and sent a video message instead), another rising star in the local Republican party reportedly managed to make it to help raise [...]

As if Michele Bachmann’s 2010 re-election battle wasn’t already going to be a doozy, it’s begun shaping up as a proxy war between the forces of U.S. Sen. Al Franken and the man he bested in Minnesota’s recount, former Sen. Norm Coleman. “The eyes of the nation — and Michele Bachmann’s right-wing allies — will [...]

The political-numbers-geek website FiveThirtyEight.com was on the money with predictions about the outcome of the 2008 presidential race and Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. So cut ‘em some slack for saying Tim Pawlenty is the man to beat in the 2010 Minnesota governor’s race. Everyone learns from mistakes — and in this case, we learn how [...]

It happens in every recession: Medicaid enrollment leaps at precisely the same time that states are least able to afford the additional costs. The structural flaw has left state lawmakers threatening program cuts, Congress scrambling to find emergency funds to prevent a coverage crisis, and children’s health advocates urging an overhaul in the way Medicaid is funded. Trouble is, the Democrats’ health reform proposals do nothing to address the problem.

epublican Allen Quist solicits funds saying he and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann “are two peas in a pod.” Now he’s set to announce Thursday whether he’ll make a bid to join Bachmann in Congress by running against Democrat Tim Walz in Minnesota’s First District.

The national chapter of the Sierra Club has launched an ad attacking Rep. Michele Bachmann for what the group says are close ties to the oil industry. The ads are in their second week of a two-week run on television stations in Bachmann’s district, according to Sierra Club Action, the political wing of the environmental [...]