Mpr

It worked for Rep. Michele Bachmann. In 2006, the Stillwater Republican told worshipers at her church that “Twenty-two months ago, [God] called me to run for United States Congress.” She was elected — and then re-elected. On Friday, former Sen. Norm Coleman made similar statements about his own calling to be back in the Senate.

President Obama is no “savior of the great nation,” according to Pravda Online. Rather, he’s a “scapegoat,” the Russian news source says, an “intermediate figure” who Republicans allowed to come to power during a time of crisis. In analysis that has a distinctly Russian accent, Pravda predicts:
If Obama does not manage to extricate the nation [...]

Minnesotans whose political preferences can’t be expressed within the outlines of a tiny oval aren’t likely to get relief this year from ballot reforms proposed at the state Legislature. That’s the message state Sen. Ann Rest and state Rep. Laura Brod had for the breed of voters whose enigmatically marked ballots were on display during the recent Senate recount.

The Democrats’ response to Sen. Joe Lieberman’s vigorous campaigning for John McCain, which included the former Democrat taking to CNN to endorse the GOP’s talking point that “Hamas endorsed Obama”: He got to keep his chairmanship and was allowed to remain part of the Democratic Senatorial Caucus. Since his party won’t deal with Leiberman harshly, [...]

MPR’s “Challenged Ballots: You be the judge” post has got to be the site’s top traffic generator ever. I’ve seen it linked locally and nationally, on buttoned-up news sites and Comedy Central’s Indecision ‘08. That last one, which references the infamous contested write-in vote for “Lizard People” (destined to be our “Hanging Chad of Aught Eight”), ends with a few salient questions.

The man in charge of the recount in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate election predicts that come Inauguration Day, the dust will be settled enough for either Norm Coleman or Al Franken to take the oath of office.

“The odds are that something went wrong with respect to counting.”

That’s what Democrat Al Franken’s campaign counsel, David Lillehaug, said this morning about the prospect of a pending statewide recount in yesterday’s U.S. Senate election in Minnesota. “We want to make sure that each ballot that was cast is counted appropriately,” he said.

A commenter points out this morning that the print edition of the Star Tribune has relegated Paul McEnroe and Tony Kennedy’s story about the Texas lawsuit against Friend-of-Norm Nasser Kazeminy to a bottom corner of the metro section’s front page.

Placement means a lot in terms of readership — not only in print but on the web. So we decided to see how the Twin Cities’ mainstream news outlets are playing the story on their home pages.

Supporters of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann rallied on a dead-end street outside Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) studios in St. Paul today, where the embattled member of Congress debated Democrat El Tinklenberg for 30 minutes (archived MnIndy liveblog here, archived MPR audio here). At his News Cut blog, MPR’s Bob Collins shows and tells scenes of [...]

While the country turned its fickle eyes to Minnesota’s suddenly compelling 6th Congressional District contest, the race for the state’s 3rd District didn’t stop being hot. Over the last two days, both major parties’ congressional committees unveiled new TV ads. Big male guns vouched for the Republican candidate, state Rep. Erik Paulsen, and big female guns tried to widen a gender gap for DFLer Ashwin Madia — while heaping derision on another female office-holder, state Rep. Michele Bachmann. All this and more, with video and details about tonight’s candidate debate in Edina, after the jump.