During a debate on Twin Cities Public Television’s Almanac on Friday evening, GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer dodged a question on whether Minnesotans should have a vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The question was requested by…
Blowing off “Almanac” last Friday and going to the Guthrie Theater instead seemed like a good way to put an end to an exhausting political campaign season. We got rush tickets to the penultimate performance of Arthur Miller’s play “A View from the Bridge,” ready to be transported to working-class Brooklyn purely for the escapism, without a thought to exit poll demographics. At first, it seemed to be working. Then one line at the play’s climactic scene brought it all back, unwelcome and unbidden.
Heard beneath Friday’s hubbub over the vote count in Mountain Iron, Minn., was the advancement of a related Republican argument — that by offering reasons why a recount in the U.S. Senate election should go forward Democrats are insulting Minnesota’s election system and its election officials. What was implicit in U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s remarks Nov. 5, prominent Republican commentator Sarah Janecek made explicit Nov. 7, first by writing that when Democrats say they want to “ensure votes properly cast are properly counted,” they’re really out to “smear our elections process.” Later, she told a public television audience, “I’m pretty sickened by that.” In the meantime, Coleman’s campaign manager applied words like “dubious” and “tainted” to the current canvassing process.
Twin Cities Public Television (TPT) is making rumblings about “taking appropriate legal action” after its frustrated attempts to have state Rep. Erik Paulsen stop using video from TPT’s “Almanac” program in an ad attacking his 3rd Congressional District Democratic rival, Ashwin Madia. Paulsen’s FEC filings list ad production by Upgrade Films, the same D.C. outfit whose use of Pawlenty campaign video in a state GOP TV ad cost the governor’s 2002 campaign a $100,000 fine.
A flashpoint in the 3rd Congressional District mini-debate on TPT’s Almanac program Friday (video) was Republican candidate Erik Paulsen’s charge that DFL candidate Ashwin Madia has illegally coordinated his campaign with the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, an…
Scumbags are people, too: Glenn Beck, the conservative CNN host who told Muslim Rep. Keith Ellison to prove he’s “not working with our enemies” — Ellison’s infraction, of course, was choosing to be sworn into office with his hand…
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