Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson told a radio program that he has already filed fundraising paperwork with the state, a first step in running for Democrat Herb Kohl’s former Senate seat.

Thompson told Milwaukee’s WTMJ that he was running for Senate “because the country is in terrible shape.”

Thompson has taken heat from conservative groups like the Club for Growth, who say Thompson isn’t conservative enough.

“The truth of the matter is I was the original conservative,” Thompson said on the radio show. “I was the one who carried the state of Wisconsin four times, when Republicans and Republicanism was the not de rigueur of the state, and we were able to change the state of Wisconsin, not to a red state, but a purple state.”

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel points out that Thompson himself admitted his moderation in an earlier interview.

“I’m not as conservative as I once was. . . . You grow on your job. . . . It’s much better to use pragmatic common sense than be so rigidly tied to one ideology you can’t see the forest for the trees.”

The only other candidate to enter the race has been Democratic U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin. Other Republicans are expected to throw their hats in the ring.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar will support a bill that would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) when it comes up for a vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on which Klobuchar serves, state Sen. Scott Dibble has indicated. DOMA currently prevents same-sex couples legally married in five states, Washington, D.C., and one tribal nation from receiving the federal benefits of marriage. President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder decided in February to halt defense of DOMA citing its probable unconstitutionality.

Last week, the Courage Campaign noted that Klobuchar was one of two Democratic senators who hadn’t signed on to the DOMA repeal bill (the other is Wisconsin’s Herb Kohl) and that her office stated that she had not taken a position on the bill. That prompted OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, to initiate a campaign urging constituents to call on her to support the repeal.

On Tuesday, state Sen. Dibble of Minneapolis noted that he spoke with Klobuchar’s staff, who indicated she would vote for the measure.

“I have spoken directly with Amy Klobuchar’s State Director,” Dibble wrote on Facebook. “Senator Klobuchar will be voting for the repeal of DOMA in the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

Klobuchar’s press office has not responded to the Minnesota Independent’s request for confirmation.

DOMA was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. It bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage which, at the time, no states had legalized. Today, Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, the District of Columbia and the Coquille Tribal Council in Oregon perform same-sex marriages, and thousands of Californians are also legally married following several months in 2008 prior to the passage of Prop 8 when same-sex marriage was legal.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar is one of only two Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee who have not signed on to a bill to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, and that committee is only two votes away from passing the bill out of committee. Klobuchar and Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl are seen as the two key votes on the committee and both have said they haven’t decided which way they will vote when the bill is taken up in the coming weeks.

The bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, a 1995 bill signed by President Clinton which bans the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. In February, President Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder evaluated the law, found it likely to be unconstitutional and decided not to defend the law in court challenges. And last Wednesday, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California introduced a bill to repeal the law.

Minnesota’s Sen. Al Franken, who also sits on the 18-member judiciary committee, is a sponsor of the bill. In order to pass the committee, the bill needs 10 votes, and eight senators on that committee are already sponsors. Eight other members of the committee are Republicans not likely to vote for the bill. That leaves two votes unaccounted for, those of Klobuchar and Kohl.

The Courage Campaign, a proponent of the bill, contacted Klobuchar and Kohl late last week.

“I just got off the phone with the offices of Democratic Sens. Kohl (D-WI) and Klobuchar (D-MN), who are not co-sponsors and told me they have not yet taken a position on the bill itself yet,” wrote Adam Bink, director of online programs for the Courage Campaign. “To my knowledge, no Republicans on the committee have taken a position on this bill, either. So we are two [votes] shy.”

OutFront Minnesota, the state’s largest LGBT advocacy group, responded to the news in a Facebook posting: “Who knew Amy Klobuchar hasn’t taken a position on the repeal of DOMA? It’ll probably come as a surprise to thousands of voters (and donors).”

In addition to the Senate bill, Minnesota Reps. Keith Ellison and Betty McCollum are sponsors of a House version.

“There are tens of thousands of legally marriage same-sex couples in the United States,” Sen. Feinstein said at a press conference on Wednesday. “Right now, because of DOMA, these couples cannot take advatage of federal protections available to every other married couples in this country.”

MnIndy file photo

Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Tuesday to ensure that the children of undocumented workers caught up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are not left abandoned. In a press release about the bill, Franken and fellow sponsor Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, offered several stories from Minnesota raids where children were left to fend for themselves — at times for a week or more — after their parents were arrested.

“One second-grader in Worthington came home that night to find his two-year old brother alone and his mother and father missing,” the senators wrote. “For the next week, the second-grader stayed home to care for his brother while his grandmother traveled to Worthington to meet them.”

Franken said that those children are often U.S. citizens and deserve to be looked after.

“Four million U.S. citizen children in our country have at least one undocumented immigrant parent,” said Franken. “Forty-thousand of those children live in Minnesota. They should not have to live in fear that one day their parents will simply not come home. They deserve much better than being abandoned without explanation.”

The HELP Separated Children Act would beef up a response system for state agencies in the event of a raid, to allow nonprofits to locate at-risk children, to give detainees confidential ways to communicate and make arrangements for their children and to ban the use of children’s testimony in ICE interrogations. It also directs ICE to look out for the best interests of children.

Photo: The UpTake

Minnesota’s two Democratic senators, Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken, joined the Judiciary committee this year (in Franken’s case, this month), and their votes on Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court — scheduled for tomorrow — will be historic: Never before in its 193-year history has the committee had even a single Democrat from Minnesota, let alone two.

Wisconsin is the only other state that now has both senators on the committee. Sens. Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, also both Democrats, have been serving together since 1995.

In its history, Wisconsin has had only one previous Democrat on the committee.