Minneapolis

The rapid devolution of print journalism gets regularly lamented for all the right reasons — among them the losses of investigative voices, institutional memories and checks on the powerful. A less-noted side-effect is cities’ loss of revenue from recycling newsprint.

Several hundred people gathered in Loring Park Tuesday night to remember the life of Dr. George Tiller who was murdered in his church Sunday morning. Tiller, who had experienced threats and a previous attempted murder, was gunned down by Scott Roeder because Tiller performed medically necessary late-term abortions.

“Rybak won!” It’s a cry that didn’t emanate far beyond the walls of Minneapolis’ Washburn High School, where on Saturday city DFL delegates endorsed the re-election of Mayor R.T. Rybak. But versions of that cry rang across Europe on the same day as the annual Eurovision song contest was won by a young Norwegian fiddler named [...]

“When you win an election by 312 votes, there’s not a lot of effort that goes to waste,” Al Franken told Minneapolis Democrats Saturday. “We ran a very efficient campaign.” Franken nominated R.T. Rybak for endorsement for a third term as mayor at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party’s city convention.

Chanting “End the Fed” and “Audit the Fed,” at least 100 protesters marched around the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Minneapolis Saturday to kick off a three-hour rally. It was the third protest at the Minneapolis Fed since U.S. government bailouts of the financial industry began last September.

Graffiti taggers in South Minneapolis have apparently lost faith in the American dream. These dueling slogans were spotted today on a house on the 3100 block of Clinton Avenue.

Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak set a green example yesterday by recycling much of his annual State of the City address from last year’s speech. He used “depression” instead of “recession” — that’s how you knew it was 2009 and not 2008.

Bob Miller announced this afternoon that he’s dropping out of the race for Minneapolis mayor — for now. Word that Miller, who heads the city’s Neighborhood Revitalization Program, would “suspend” his challenge to Mayor R.T. Rybak for the DFL Party endorsement came just hours after Rybak delivered his State of the City address (more [...]

Vice President Joe Biden held a town-hall meeting on beefing up the middle class in St. Cloud today. Watch live streaming video via the UpTake after the jump.

The one Minneapolis City Council seat in the clutches of the Green Party is likely to stay that way, unless a credible DFL candidate comes forward to take the place of Charles Carlson, the newly departed — and truly incredible — challenger to incumbent Cam Gordon. The Green stalwart, who won by 141 votes in 2005 after losing by only 106 votes in 2001, tells the Minnesota Independent he plans to campaign for re-election as usual but won’t be surprised if the DFL decides to endorse no one to oppose him.