WASHINGTON, D.C. — Controversial pastor and rock musician Bradlee Dean filed suit Wednesday in federal court alleging he was defamed by reporting from the Minnesota Independent as well as MSNBC star Rachel Maddow and her show.

Dean, of the ministry You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (YCR), claims that reporting on his May 15, 2010, radio show “maliciously set out to and did harm not only the Plaintiffs but by extension also the presidential campaign of Congresswoman Michele Bachmann.”

In the article, Minnesota Independent ran a video with the audio of Dean’s statements, as well as a transcription.

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 The Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.

“The bottom line is this … they [homosexuals] play the victim when they are, in fact, the predator,” Dean said, before going on to make a claim that has no basis in fact: “On average, they molest 117 people before they’re found out. How many kids have been destroyed, how many adults have been destroyed because of crimes against nature?”

On June 4, 2010, the Minnesota Independent published a follow-up article to the one referenced above, in which Dean said he does not support executing homosexuals. Dean specified that he may not have been clear, then continued:

For example, we have specifically rejected, as all Christians do, the Islamic doctrine, and actual practice, of executing homosexuals. But some have claimed, in effect, that by merely mentioning the execution of homosexuals (as a criminal practice of Islam), on our radio broadcast, we have suggested it for consideration. Obviously this is absurd. The whole point was to contrast the Islamic position with the Christian position. This may not have been as clear as we would have otherwise planned it to be. Live radio is not scripted. But everyone who knows us knows that this is our position because we have stated it consistently for years – long before we ever discussed the topic on the radio. There are board members, and other supporters who can vouch for this. We have never and will never call for the execution of homosexuals. This is a complete misinterpretation by design.

The lawsuit further contends that Rachel Maddow, MSNBC and NBC “disparaged” Dean in Maddow’s segment on the reporting from the Minnesota Independent, alleging that Maddow, too, had an agenda in covering Dean.

The American Independent News Network released the following statement in regards to the Dean press conference in New York City Wednesday morning:

The allegations by Bradlee Dean and You Can Run But You Cannot Hide International (YCR) are completely without merit. The American Independent News Network stands firmly behind our news site, The Minnesota Independent; our reporter, Andy Birkey; as well as their reporting on Dean and his ministry. The complaint describes Birkey as taking “a ‘special interest’ in Plaintiffs Dean and YCR because he is a secularist and/or atheist and gay activist with a politically left ideology who despises people of faith.” However, in giving Birkey and The Minnesota Independent first prize for Best Continuing Coverage of their reporting on YCR, the 2010 judges for the Minnesota Professional Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalist’s Page One Awards stated, “the reporter [Birkey] takes a deep-dive with an even-handed approach into a weighty subject sure to provoke controversy from various standpoints. Leads readers to think about serious public policy and constitutional issues.”

We are confident that the courts will agree that this lawsuit is completely frivolous and is a blatant attempt to chill freedom of the press.

MSNBC’s statement regarding the lawsuit:

This suit is baseless and we stand by our reporting.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow made note of Rep. Michele Bachmann’s upcoming September appearance at the Freedom Jamboree, a tea party presidential nominating conference that will also feature Bradlee Dean of the religious group You Can Run But You Cannot Hide. Dean repeatedly has called for the incarceration of gays and lesbians, while Bachmann has frequently helped the group with fundraising.

Maddow noted that many Republican contenders have aligned themselves with religious right groups that have called for Christians to give their lives for the anti-abortion rights cause and have appeared alongside anti-gay leaders, including Dean. Maddow notes that Dean once told radio audiences that Muslim countries are “more moral” than American Christians for executing homosexuals.

“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15, 2010, radio show on AM 1280. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”

It’s not Dean’s first mention on Maddow’s show. In Aug. 2008, his comments about Muslims and homosexuality made the show. Maddow noted the link between Dean’s group and Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, who following Dean’s comments about the execution of gays called the group “nice people.”

Maddow cites the Minnesota Independent’s reporting on the Freedom Jubilee at the 7:25 mark:

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Sen. Amy Klobuchar appeared on the Rachel Maddow show on MSNBC on Thursday evening to share her support for a repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Klobuchar said there are enough votes to pass a standalone bill in the U.S. Senate on Saturday. Maddow was cynical about the possibility for Democrats to pass the remaining parts of their agenda, but Klobuchar said the likely passage of the DADT repeal is something to celebrate.

“I hope you’ll be happier after a year of the Democrats standing up for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, we get that repeal done, standing up to repeal it. We get that done on a Saturday. That is the plan,” Klobuchar said. “We have picked up votes because of the pressure over the time that we have pushed and pushed for this to get done, this repeal.”

Klobuchar wasn’t always so vocal about repealing the military’s ban on openly gay and lesbian members. Earlier this year, members of the LGBT community openly criticized Klobuchar for not signing on to the repeal bill.

Here’s the video. Klobuchar’s remarks come in at the 9:15 mark:

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“Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America,” Dean said on YCR’s May 15 radio show on AM 1280 the Patriot. “This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.”

“If America won’t enforce the laws, God will raise up a foreign enemy to do just that,” Dean continued. “That is what you are seeing in America.”

After these words got wider exposure, Emmer praised the group: “These are nice people.”

The affiliation has driven some of the anger by LGBT advocates over Target Stores’ $150,000 donation to MN Forward, a PAC that has supported Emmer through advertising.

Maddow didn’t mention the Minnesota Independent’s reporting on the program, but last night she tweeted a link to our story, praising our coverage.

Watch Maddow’s segment on the Minnesota race:

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The Dayton-McCain moment provides a glimpse into Dayton’s own glory days — and a Gopher State coda to the Al Franken-Joe Lieberman exchange last week that inspired an outraged McCain to claim he’d never seen a senator cut off a colleague after the allotted time for a floor speech.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow makes the most of the shaggy dog story that brought the ancient clip to light. [Via MinnPost]

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Bachmann isn’t yet, for example, counted among the 10 Republican co-sponsors of U.S. Rep. Bill Posey’s H.R. 1503, a bill requiring presidential candidates to provide copies of their birth certificates. But a lot of her friends are, as Daniel Nichanian at Campaign Diaries points out:

Interestingly, [U.S. Reps. Dan] Burton and [Kenny] Marchand’s [sic] addition to the list means that a majority of the Posey bill’s sponsors are now also co-sponsors of Michele Bachmann’s paranoid foreign currency-banning constitutional amendment (the other 3 are Posey, [U.S. Reps. Marsha] Blackburn and [John Abney] Culberson). We are here talking about the congressmen who are closest to movement conservatives.

(Nichanian may mean to say that half the sponsors of the birther bill also back Bachmann’s, but that’s still a swell segment.)

Bachmann’s fans, such as one who left this comment at Bachmann’s YouTube channel, are begging her to probe the whereabouts of Obama’s birth certificate:

She’s ordinarily got an appetite, not a weak stomach, when it comes to her fans’ more fringey causes. In a video from a recent Minnesota Republican gathering, she finds common cause with a group pushing DVDs about “The Obama Deception” and 9/11 controlled-demolition conspiracies that make former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman shy away.

You’d think a foreign correspondent like Bachmann would be as interested in the problem of foreign U.S. presidents as she is in the problem of foreign cats and dogs. U.S. funds being spent on domesticated animals that, well, aren’t domestic is a pet peeve of Bachmann’s from her first term. She was still bitching about it last Friday on local radio, straying from the topic of health care reform:

We voted on a bill that would send millions of dollars to foreign countries to pay for foreign cats and foreign dogs. … Then the next day, as if that was to add insult to injury, we voted on another bill that spent millions on foreign birds in foreign countries.

David Weigel, a reporter at our sister site The Washington Independent, has been tracking birtherism closely. Asked if he has seen signs of any Bachmann involvement in the birther movement, Weigel says “Not yet.”

Here he is on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show” last night:

“We will never know who won,” Norm Coleman said Wednesday. That’s after seven Minnesota judges — three on Monday and four in January — concluded that Al Franken won Minnesota’s 2008 election for U.S. Senate. His was a “close victory,” the Democrat conceded on Monday. But Coleman — now down by 312 votes — isn’t buying it. “Our system isn’t geared for this kind of closeness.”

Still, some precision is possible in politics, as Gawker.com suggested Wednesday with its two-word description of Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “Amiable prick.”

The first word describes Pawlenty’s friendly demeanor — as displayed, for example, during his appearances on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” where he unveiled his controversial intention to mull over a future state Supreme Court ruling on Coleman’s lawsuit before he signs an election certificate.  

The second captures the other side of T-Paw’s essence, on exhibit most recently during his appearance Monday on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midday” program. He fairly spit out the word “welfare” before offering this grousing aside: ”By the way, Minnesota’s in danger, I believe, of becoming one big social service agency.”

More imminent is the danger that Minnesota will become one big election-contest courtroom, as Coleman takes his complaints about the election to the state’s high court.

Coleman made his “we will never know” statement to the St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial board, writes reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger (in an article that runs separately from the newspaper’s editorial, which also appears this morning).  

Coleman also told the PiPress board that the question for his legal team is not whether to file a petition for an appeal to the state Supreme Court. Rather, he said, it’s “the scope of the appeal. Do we file on every point or do we appeal on some points?”

On that point Coleman will almost certainly get sage advice from lawyer Ben Ginsberg (a veteran of the 2000 Bush v. Gore case), who asserts that a winner is impossible to determine unless the state accedes to Coleman’s Constitutional argument that its election system failed to treat voters in different counties equally.

“You cannot know who won this election without coming to grips with the equal protection issue,” Ginsberg warned.

RELATED:
Coleman: Media ‘could have waited’ until after Nov. 4 to ask about money-funneling
Times to Coleman: Drop Dead
Klobuchar was off by all of 42 minutes in forecasting a new Minnesota Senator
Dissing ‘judicial fast food,’ Coleman slights the hand that feeds him
Poll: 63 percent of Minnesota voters want Coleman to concede
Coleman recount committee took in nearly $1 million in first quarter of 2009
Coleman legal bills pile up
Recusals in Coleman case could whittle state high court below quorum
The morning after: Coleman’s legal prospects look grim
Franken: ‘I will be certified’
Coleman: ‘I’m a winner’

Fast forward to this week. On Monday, April 13, at exactly 6 p.m., the three-judge panel in the Norm Coleman-Al Franken election-contest trial released its decision that Franken had indeed won election to the U.S. Senate.

Now the spooky part: Precisely 42 minutes after the judges made their decision public, came the official declaration of ice-out on Lake Minnetonka.

Here’s what Klobuchar said two months ago:

My prediction, Rachel, is that we will have a new senator by the time the ice melts on Lake Minnetonka, which that is predicted to be April 11.

She was wrong about April 11 — or rather, whoever’s prediction she cited was wrong. But ice-out day on Lake Minnetonka is hard to predict. Records show it has come as early as March 11 (in 1878) and as late as May 8 (1856).

Now Klobuchar has taken some heat for some unforeseen consequences of a law she authored banning lead in toys. But allowing for a broad interpretation of the phrase “have a new senator,” Klobuchar proved herself spectacularly accurate – off by less than an hour – about the timing of what history likely will show was the moment when Minnesota knew who its next Senator would be.

Much more accurate anyway than any of the predictions by the person in perhpas the best position to make something happen: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose latest failed prognostication about filling Minnesota’s seat passed without incident on April Fool’s Day.

Here’s the video clip from Maddow’s Feb. 16 program. Klobuchar’s prediction comes at the 3:45 mark.

 And here’s Maddow again on April 17, with a segment based on this post (starts at about the 3:00 mark):

And here’s a video clip of Klobuchar on CNN’s “State of the Union with John King” on April 19, (prediction talk starts at the 12:00 mark, transcript excerpt below):

KING: So, Senator Klobuchar, when will this be over? And I assume you’ve told Al Franken that even if he wins in the end, you will still be Minnesota’s funniest senator?

(LAUGHTER)

KLOBUCHAR: Well, all right, first of all, I would say this, and that is that Norm Coleman has a right to pursue his appeal to the Minnesota Supreme Court. But Minnesota also has a right to two senators. This has been going on for months now. Since December, our staff, I’m so proud of them, they’ve had double the case work. Everything from veterans benefits cases to people who have lost their Social Security checks to people who are trying to adopt babies in Guatemala that are stalled out.

Minnesota has that right to two senators. I’m hopeful the Minnesota Supreme Court is going to move very quickly on this. The law actually says in Minnesota that they have to set aside their other work.

Now, I had predicted this would be resolved when the ice melted on Lake Minnetonka, John. And the three-judge ruling came out, 42 minutes, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources declared the ice had melted.

Now I predict this will be done when Minnesotans are allowed to swim in our lakes, which is Memorial weekend.

KING: I will have you back in five or six weeks, Memorial Day weekend. I think my math is about right on that. It might be a little more. Amy Klobuchar, John Ensign, senators both, thank you very much for being here today.

(hat tip: MPR’s Polinaut)

“I also would want to look at what the courts did with the case in terms of leaving issues for potential appeal, the strength of those issues, how directly and effectively they addressed them,” Pawlenty told a Minnesota Public Radio call-in audience today “I’m not saying that I’m going to, or not going to, issue the certificate at that point. I just want to make sure I have all the facts in front of me before I made a decision like that.”

It’s the second time in a week that Pawlenty, a Republican and a trained attorney, said he plans to cast himself in the role of judicial critic once the courts issue final rulings on Coleman’s legal challenge to Franken’s recount win.

On April 8, Pawlenty told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that before he signed an election certificate, he would want to “see what the case would look like at that point, in terms of how harshly or strongly the issues have been decided or dealt with by the Minnesota Supreme Court.”

When Maddow asked whether he’d sign the certificate — which the state Supreme Court has said is his duty once the state courts are through with the case — Pawlenty replied: “It’s premature to say that, based on a number of factors. … We just need more information as to evaluating this case.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has promised to provide the second required signature on an election certificate after the state Supreme Court takes action on an expected appeal from the election-contest court. “I assume we are both going to follow the order of the Minnesota Supreme Court” that a certificate should be issued “at the end of the state court process,” Ritchie said.

A decision is expected at any time from the three judges who presided over a seven-week trial of Coleman’s challenge to Franken 225-vote recount win. Last week, Franken’s margin increased to 312 after the judges allowed 351 previously uncounted absentee ballots. An appeal must be filed within 10 days of the election-contest court’s order.

Pawlenty said it could be “June or later” before the state courts complete the Coleman-Franken case.

Pawlenty, who reportedly ran a close second to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for Sen. John McCain’s vice-presidential pick last year, also replied to a question from MPR “Midday” host Gary Eichten today about whether he wants to be president. Pawlenty claimed not to have given it “any serious thought” and also wouldn’t say if he’ll run for a third term in 2010.

It was only two weeks ago that Obama reached out to Pawlenty in a weekly address that focused on the flooding along the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

Here’s the video of Pawlenty delivering the Republican response to Obama’s weekly address:

Here’s are two short audio clips of the Pawlentys on WCCO-AM radio. The second clip includes their guest, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Reports suggest the governor didn’t show as much interest in war crimes and other allegations against Kissinger as he did in former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal options on Wednesday’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”)

If Minnesota’s First Lady sounds particularly aghast at the violation of protocol a presidential bow would represent, it may be due to extenuating circumstances. “Governors’ spouses are the closest thing to royalty in state government,” said a Dec. 4, 2002 Stateline.org report that took note that then-First Lady-elect Mary Pawlenty was about to join the ranks of two other governors’ wives who also wore judges’ robes. During her 13 years on the bench, the First Lady presumably grew accustomed to all in her presence rising whenever she entered a courtroom.

She may abhor bows by heads-of-state, but Mary Pawlenty does allow herself a little bow now and then, such as the one she gave the governor as she said “I adore you” in front of the gathered luminaries at his 2007 inaugural ball. (See this TPT video clip.)