Wal-Mart and Salem Communications have severed ties with two entities run by pastor Bradlee Dean, who made headlines last week for a controversial prayer before the Minnesota House of Representatives. David Brauer reports that AM 1280 The Patriot, owned by Christian broadcaster Salem Communications, dropped Dean’s “Sons of Liberty” radio show, and Nick Pinto writes that Wal-Mart has told Dean’s ministry, You Can Run But You Cannot Hide, that it can no longer fundraise in the parking lots of its Minnesota locations.

MinnPost’s Brauer notes that Dean was fired from AM 1280 before he gave his controversial speech before the House.

The station pulled Dean after he engaged in a six-minute song mocking African Americans and then likened President Obama to Osama bin Laden.

“For a minister to do that made no sense,” station manager Ron Stone told MinnPost.

Dean is in talks to move to Clear Channel owned KTLK, but that station says that Dean would have to make changes to his show.

City Pages’ Pinto spoke with Wal-Mart about the group’s fundraising activities in front of that retailer’s Minnesota locations, and Wal-Mart said that the ministry falsified information in its application to raise funds at the stores.

“They registered their request to solicit outside the store using a false name,” Walmart spokeswoman Ashley Hardie said. “As soon as we learned the group’s true identity, they were asked to leave.”

Word of Dean’s fundraising at Wal-Mart stores came to a head on Tuesday after Sally Jo Sorenson of Bluestem Prairie noticed them outside the Hutchinson Wal-Mart and attempted to ask ministry employees questions about their fundraising. The ministry refused to answer.

Here’s what Bachmann said on Minnesota radio station KTLK-AM (podcast) this weekend (in reference to The Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, a proposed expansion of the AmeriCorps program that Obama may sign into law this week):

It’s under the guise of — quote — volunteerism. But it’s not volunteers at all. It’s paying people to do work on behalf of government. …

I believe that there is a very strong chance that we will see that young people will be put into mandatory service. And the real concerns is that there are provisions for what I would call re-education camps for young people, where young people have to go and get trained in a philosophy that the government puts forward and then they have to go to work in some of these politically correct forums.

Here’s a five-minute audio highlight reel, beginning with host Sue Jeffers encouraging Bachmann to run against U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar:

Here’s the full 18-minute program:

(h/t DumpBachmann)

FactCheck.org debunks this line of thinking on the national service bill (h/t Salon’s War Room).

Related: A Minnesota Independent investigation reveals today that Minnesotans in Bachmann’s district face the worst effects of the foreclosure crisis — but she’s doing the least about it. Bachmann calls homeowners “irresponsible” while advancing legislation to restrict abortion, make the U.S. government more Christian, and fend off mythical assaults on the dollar.

Her statements on the rich, ACORN, the stimulus package and health care led to rounds of debunking.

When the Republican congresswoman wrote, “We are running out of rich people in this country,” she really meant:

The Democrats claim they just want the “rich” to pay their fair share. But, we all know their definition of rich includes more and more middle class Americans each year…

The Democrats’ wealth redistribution scheme can’t continue on this runaway path. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming after you too.

And, because I dare to say so, they’re targeting all their resources to defeat me. They’ll stop at nothing to take your voice away in Congress.

Full text of her e-mail fund-raising pitch after the jump. …

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is after me again — mailing nationwide to raise $50,000 by Wednesday to use against me and other principled Members of Congress who are standing up to runaway spending in Washington.

DCCC Attacks Bachmann

The text of their email — sent to thousands of their liberal supporters — and signed by one of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s political masterminds — is reprinted for you below.

Contribute Now and Show Them You Won’t Be Silenced!

They just don’t get it, do they?

President Obama wasn’t in office a full month before he pushed through Congress a $792-billion spending bill cleverly packaged as a so-called “economic stimulus” package. But, the facts are startlingly clear: This was about spending on liberal policy agenda items, not about stimulating the economy.

From the Los Angeles Times to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), respected news sources and independent analysts said that the money they were spending would come long after the economic recovery has begun; that the bill’s priorities were skewed in favor of programs that have little to no stimulative value.

Commentators across the nation pointed to provisions of the bill that literally stripped away restrictions that Congress passed only months earlier to keep ACORN from getting billions in federal funding.

And, Republicans offered alternatives to redirect spending to shovel-ready transportation projects that are proven to create jobs and to small business and family tax relief with a history of getting an economy going. Our alternative would have created twice the jobs at half the cost.

The Democrats rejected these commonsense proposals and pushed through their profligate spending. And, as a result, government spending on this recession has reached $9.7 trillion in the last year, placing an incredible burden not only on today’s taxpayers, but on taxpayers for generations.

The Democrats claim they just want the “rich” to pay their fair share. But, we all know their definition of rich includes more and more middle class Americans each year. Just ask any struggling family farmer who worries about the cost of the death tax. Or ask any middle class family that suddenly realizes it has to pay the Alternative Minimum Tax (AMT).

The Democrats’ wealth redistribution scheme can’t continue on this runaway path. Sooner or later, they’ll be coming after you too.

And, because I dare to say so, they’re targeting all their resources to defeat me. They’ll stop at nothing to take your voice away in Congress.

Please send what you can today. I need you to show them that we will not be silenced. Click here to make a secure donation:

I want to help, Michele!

Thank you for your generous support and your prayers.

Sincerely,

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann

Doesn’t some of the blame lie with the American media who enables this fraud? Doesn’t some of the blame — I would say a majority of the blame does not lie with the nitwit that shot him, other than the fact that he’s a nitwit and a guy who should have been in prison in my opinion, who shot him. But to me, this is the — this is an example of how, by enabling people and trying to push this false reality, leads to horrible crimes like this…

He added, “I believe the media and the rest of the enablers out there, they have this guy’s blood on their hands because they create this false sense of reality and they enable people who need serious psychological counseling.”

Andy Birkey of Eleventh Avenue South (and our former colleague here at MnIndy) writes, “Baker’s ignorance of the realities of trans people is telling. Psychological counseling is most often the bedrock of a transition from the born gender to the target gender. A person’s transition is never something that is done lightly as it comes with great obstacles in virtually every facet of that person’s life.”

Birkey reports that Soulforce Q, a young-adults group “dedicated to confronting spiritual violence against the LGBT community through nonviolent civil disobedience,” has gotten tentative permission to have a representative appear on Baker’s show to discuss the issues.

Baker’s contributions to public discourse include calling Barack Obama a “little bitch,” musing about Sarah Palin’s “panty line,” suggesting police use machine guns on RNC protesters and asserting, most bizarrely, that former LA Laker Magic Johnson “faked AIDS.”

And, of course, what happens? Well, obviously, it’s racist. I love that — that it’s — this little bitch needs to stand up for himself. Sorry, I can’t stand this. You want to be the president of the United States, and you won’t even stand up to a smoking-hot chick from Alaska? How is he gonna stand up to the world’s terrorists?

I mean, this — this guy — this guy is — he’s a — he’s a wimp is what he is.

A CNN fact-check on Palin’s allegation concludes: “There is no indication that Ayers and Obama are now ‘palling around,’ or that they have had an ongoing relationship in the past three years. Also, there is nothing to suggest that Ayers is now involved in terrorist activity or that other Obama associates are.”

Remember Beavis and Butthead? With their voices in mind, read this exchange about Sarah Palin between KTLK’s Chris Baker and Langdon Perry, broadcast Oct. 3 on the public airwaves during Baker’s radio show:

PERRY: …She’s got a nice smile, and she seems likable.

BAKER: Hot.

PERRY: See, I think she’s hot for a vice-presidential candidate. She’s the hottest vice-presidential candidate ever, but I don’t think she’s — but I don’t think she’s standalone hot.

BAKER: Really?

PERRY: In other words, if you just saw her on the street, I don’t know if you’d go, “Man, she’s hot.”

BAKER: Oh, I do.

PERRY: So, did you notice her high heels last night?

BAKER: Love those.

PERRY: ‘Cause I think she was going all business upstairs and then she just went with the high heels for just a little “whoa, wow, hey” –

BAKER: She’s always wearing some, ahem, pumps, if you catch my drift. And that’s good.

BAKER: I mean, come on. Why do women — why do women have to turn it down? I think she shoulda had a —

PERRY: I’m not saying she should have to.

BAKER: — shoulda had a little cleavage going there.

PERRY: No, I just asked if you noticed –

BAKER: Distract Joe Biden a little bit.

PERRY: I didn’t say she had to do anything. I just asked if you noticed.

BAKER: A little action. Show your stuff. You know what I’m saying? Use all your assets. Anyway, 65 — by the way, I noticed a panty line on her.

PERRY: Did ya?

BAKER: Saw it, yeah, at the beginning of the debate when they turned –

PERRY: I truthfully did not look.

BAKER: — when they turned to walk to the podium, I saw a panty line.

PERRY: OK.

JORDAN (producer): I have to ask, for all guys, what kind of panties?

PERRY: He didn’t say he saw her panties.

JORDAN: No, but he saw the line, though. You can kind of tell from the line.

“I don’t think homeless people should vote. Frankly. In fact, I have to be very honest. I’m not that excited about women voting, to be honest. … But that’s just me. I’m a pig, and that’s fine. All right? And we’ll see that, I’m sure, on a lame-ass website very soon. But I don’t think hobos ought to vote at all. They’re nuts. And I think that there needs to be a little more care in who votes.”

To be honest, we’re not that excited about Baker voting. But apparently the U.S. Constitution, or somesuch document, says otherwise. Here’s the clip:

In April, he suggested police should use machine guns against people protesting the Republican National Convention:

“So we’ve been talking about police protection during the upcoming convention when all those stinky protesters are coming. There seems to be a big debate over whether or not police officers will be able to wear helmets, carry shields, use pepper spray and Tasers on this crowd. You know, I’ll tell you what works on a crowd like this — a machine gun, that always works very well.”

Baker’s co-host, “Jordan,” agreed: “Mow ‘em down, baby!” he added.

KSTP asked the Minnesota Lynx, Minnesota’s WNBA franchise, for a comment. A spokester for the team said “the WNBA is comprised of educated women who have achieved a level of success on the court,” and invited Baker to attend a game. KSTP also asked some guy named Cordell Nichols about Baker’s comment who made an astute observation: “It’s hard for women already and to say something like that just sets them back further.”

“My god! What is going on,” Lewis moaned. “To hell with Shakespeare, to hell with Tennyson, to hell with science and math; we’re going to teach our sixth graders how to be hip hop emcees!?” Hip hop is “garbage,” he added, and as evidence, he quoted that fount of high culture, the former Mr. Christie Brinkley: “Even Billy Joel says rap is crap.”

Lewis’ opinions have raised ire among local hip hop and spoken-word artists, many who have for years used spoken word as a teaching tool in educational and artistic settings. Writing at CultureBully, spoken-word artist Kyle “El Guante” Myhre says, “Mr. Lewis is fighting a straw man; no one is ever going to suggest that we replace math and science (or Ethan Frome, for that matter) with hip hop… To somehow suggest that Shakespeare is taking a backseat to 2pac in our public schools is, even for conservative talk radio, laughably ridiculous, unfounded fear-mongering.”

He talked about Lewis’ rant with Tou, who says his aim is to teach kids about self-expression, understanding where they come from and ways to tell the stories of their lives here. “I don’t teach students to become hip hop emcees; I just expose them to hip hop music as a medium to speak through,” he said. Further, he sees it as a way of turning kids on to the kind of literature Lewis is shouting about.

“I feel that hip hop emcees are modern day poets, and that studying them can open doors to having more interest in learning about the classics such as Shakespeare, Robert Frost and so on,” Tou said. “It did for me.”

Tou’s interest in hip hop is also about preserving his own culture. As a recent New York Times video on Tou explains, Hmong people in Laos, including Tou’s grandfather, fought against the Communist Pathet Lao, with CIA backing, in the Vietnam era, and are persecuted for that help. The US government helped resettle many Hmong refugees here, including around 60,000 in Minnesota. Tou says he fears that Hmong Americans are losing touch with these roots and the continuing violence against the Hmong in Laos. Some of his work directly relates to the troubles there, but another project tries to use hip hop to link a younger generation to older cultural traditions. He’s collaborated with his grandmother on a fusion of spoken word and the ancient form of poem-chanting (Kwv txhiaj) she’s mastered.

“How,” he asks, “can we find ways that reconnect back to our culture?”

For Lewis, there’s only one culture that matters — his own.

“You know, it might be a good idea to teach Western culture before we start going into all of the other cultures,” he said. “Might be a good idea for our friends in the Hmong community, and the Somali community, and any other community, to learn our culture. Let’s have an assembly and a weeklong fine arts program teaching them Shakespeare.”

More: Read the Twin Cities Daily Planet’s profile on Tou Saiko Lee, or listen to Lewis’ May 2 program.