• Ex-KSTP-er seeks GOP chair:

• Minnesota’s best political blogs: The Fix, Chris Cillizza’s Washington Post blog, published its annual best-state-based political blogs list, and Minnesota gets some heavy representation: Eight sites — more than any other state — made the cut, including The UpTake, Centrisity, Minnesota Democrats Exposed and True North. (While MnIndy and MinnPost got several nominations, I’m guessing we’ve both transcended the “blog” category?)

• Aaron Landry tweets a milestone: According to Compete.com, a site that tracks web traffic, MinnPost has surpassed City Pages in monthly unique traffic. (Caveat: In following MnIndy’s traffic on Compete, it seems the site accurately represents traffic trends, but underestimates traffic numbers.)

• Roger Ebert v. Squeaky O’Reilly: Bill O’Reilly’s “Hall of Shame” is out, and on the list of “Media Outlets that Traffic in Defamation” are the New Yorker, the St. Petersburg Times and the Chicago Sun-Times, among others. In a letter to O’Reilly yesterday, film critic Roger Ebert posits that the Fox News talker’s ire has to do with the Sun-Times cutting Billo’s column, an act that drew far fewer complaints than when the paper stopped running Ernie Bushmiller’s comic strip about Nancy and Sluggo, according to Ebert’s editor. Ebert, who prefers conservative writer Charles Krauthammer to O’Reilly’s “knee-jerk frothings,” ends with a tale:

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!