Alice Hausman

Ominous news about job losses and financial woes at Minnesota hospitals over the last week coincide with Gov. Pawlenty’s line-item veto of $381 million in General Assistance Medical Care (GAMC) grants and his vow to make more cuts by unallotment. But as bad as the doomsday scenarios are, they shouldn’t include St. Paul’s Regions Hospital closing — a prospect that a DFL press release warned of over the weekend.

On Monday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty gave the state Legislature’s bonding bill a haircut almost as extreme as the one Javier Bardem wears in No Country for Old Men. In fact, much of the recent drama over the bonding bill seemed like a pale reprise of the Coen Brothers’ screenplay, with Pawlenty trading in his veep-quality [...]