Hennepin County

Starting in 1947, thousands of young families have lived on four Southeast Minneapolis city blocks, in housing provided by the University of Minnesota. But it wasn’t until last year that anyone raised the alarm that the land many of those families have called home appears to be a toxic waste dump.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (MPCA) won’t take a position — yet — on whether to require a new environmental study before Hennepin County’s downtown Minneapolis incinerator can burn more trash, because the agency doesn’t have a pending application for the project.

With just three weeks to go until the deadline for digital TV conversion, government officials, thrift store owners and landfill operators are bracing themselves for a wave of outdated sets.

The Minnesota Supreme Court was visited by ghosts of Last Week Past on Tuesday afternoon as the two sides in the statewide Senate recount paid their second visit in five days. Attorneys for Democrat Al Franken and Republican U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman who debated last Friday about wrongly rejected absentee ballots argued over different issue today: the Coleman camp’s request to stop the recount to determine whether votes on ballots that were damaged and then duplicated for counting purposes on Election Day were counted twice during the recount.

Minneapolis Precinct 1, Ward 3 is now the latest and greatest Ground Zero of messed-up election practices to be exposed during Minnesota’s statewide recount in the U.S. Senate contest between Democrat Al Franken and Republican incumbent Norm Coleman. It’s there, in the Dinkytown neighborhood on the edge of the University of Minnesota campus, that poll workers recorded 133 more votes than they have ballots to show for it. It’s also there that students trying to vote via Minnesota’s same-day registration process last month were turned away — in a re-run of a major snafu at another campus polling place during the last general election two years ago.

The Al Franken for Senate campaign announced today it is suing Ramsey County in hopes that a favorable court ruling will compel all Minnesota counties to release the names of voters whose absentee ballots were rejected in last week’s election. Attorney Marc Elias said the campaign may present cases of wrongly rejected absentee ballots to the newly-formed canvassing board that will oversee the recount in the U.S. Senate race between Franken and U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

Video and more after the jump.

MnIndy RNC reporter Jeff Severns Guntzel is at the Minneapolis Food Not Bombs house, which was raided by police this morning. Facts are still coming in, but Guntzel says that at 8 a.m. neighbors near the home, located at 2301 23rd Avenue South, reported hearing a loud bang followed by yelling. A single police squad car was parked out front. When Gunztel arrived he saw eight or nine officers enter the house in what he says is apparently a joint operation between officers of the Ramsey County Sheriff’s department and Minneapolis police. According to one witness, the action is related to last night’s raid on the RNC Welcoming Committee’s “convergence space.”

Look for updates after the jump.

DFLer Andy Luger’s ability to attract the support of some of the state’s most powerful Republicans in his campaign for Hennepin County Attorney speaks volumes for his political skills, but you have to wonder what effect it will have on his progressive base at a time when partisan snipership is a de rigeur feature of [...]

More than a year ago, during the early days of the Minneapolis City Council campaign, I chanced upon Andy Luger at the 13th Ward DFL convention. He handed me his card and announced he was running for Hennepin County Attorney. He’s been running hard ever since, and despite garnering a first-ballot DFL endorsement in June, [...]

Farheen Hakeem, who is challenging her old mayoral campaign nemesis, Peter McLaughlin for his seat on the Hennepin County Board, testified last night against the county’s proposed stadium tax and pointedly attacked McLaughlin in her remarks for not representing his constituents on this issue. I talked with Hakeem after her testimony and learned that she’s [...]