Barack Obama

State Sen. Dick Cohen has been picked to serve on the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. The committee advises the federal government’s three primary cultural agencies: the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has brought 52 fellow Republicans together — including Rep. Michele Bachmann — on a letter demanding the resignation of Kevin Jennings, the White House’s “safe schools czar.” Greg Sargent looks at the text of the letter, and how it maintains (wrongly) that Jennings covered up child sexual abuse.

After three months in office, former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman, chomping an unlit cigar, pronounced himself “a 99 percent improvement over Paul Wellstone.”  Coleman’s successor, Al Franken, has now held Wellstone’s old Senate seat for three months: Is he a 99 percent improvement over Coleman?

President Obama’s health care rally in Minneapolis on Saturday brought out both foes of the Democrat and fans who often ribbed the other side through pithy signs (one man carried a placard that read “Angry white people against everything!”). But inside the Target Center is where the real action happened: Nearly 20,000 people turned out, including a cast of national and local officials and a 7-foot, 8-inch-tall Rochester man dubbed the “World’s Biggest Obama Supporter.” Photojournalist Kathy Easthagen was there to capture the scene for the Minnesota Independent.

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.

President Barack Obama made his case for an overhaul of the nation’s beleaguered health-care system before a crowd of roughly 20,000 at the Target Center on Saturday. His supporters left the arena fired up, but it remains to be seen whether the rally will have any impact on how the debate plays out in Washington.

A protester at Saturday’s healtlh care rally with President Obama says she wants the administration out, calling them “thugs.” She elaborated: “They bring in communists. They lie. They bring in terrorists, Bill Ayers. … And the media covers for him. The media are down on their knees in front of Obama sucking as hard as they can.”

Fifteen months after visiting St. Paul to announce he’d be his party’s nominee for president, Barack Obama returns to the Twin Cities today for a rally on health care reform. Minnesota Independent reporter Paul Demko and photographer Kathy Easthagen are at Minneapolis’ Target Center covering the event, which you can watch live here via The [...]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty appeared on Neil Cavuto’s program today on Fox News. He was, not surprisingly, dismissive of President Obama’s health-care address.
“His speech last night was essentially the public policy equivalent of leftover cold pizza,” Pawlenty said. “It was the same thing that the country’s already rejected with a few minor exceptions.”

While Rep. Michele Bachmann was acting a tad like a presidential candidate last night — she held a national conference-call rebuttal to Barack Obama’s address with bloggers — she tells Newsweek she’s not interested in running for the nation’s top job in 2012.