Franken spoke of several recent suicides of LGBT students around the country, including Justin Aaberg who attended the Anoka-Hennepin School District.
DeMint’s amendment, if successful, would bar discussion of abortion via telemedicine, the practice in which a doctor and patient communicate remotely, via, for example, satellite, video-conference or the Internet
St. Bonifacius city council member Joe Arwood announced on Monday that he will soon file paperwork to challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar for the U.S. Senate.
Former governor and presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty will not challenge Sen. Amy Klobuchar in 2012, the Associated Press reports. Republican Party of Minnesota chair Tony Sutton had suggested that Pawlenty take on Klobuchar following his exit from the presidential race on Sunday.
Long a holdout in signing on to back the Respect for Marriage Act, Sen. Amy Klobuchar indicated this week she’ll sponsor the bill, which would repeal the federal Defense of Marriage Act. Klobuchar is the last Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee to back the measure after Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin expressed his support in April.
At a hearing on the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act, Sen. Al Franken took issue with the testimony of Tom Minnery, the head of Focus on the Family’s political arm, CitizenLink. After Minnery cited a government study he said showed that the children of married gay and lesbian couples fared worse than married opposite-sex couples, Franken flatly stated that Minnery was wrong and called into question any further testimony from Minnery.
Senate Republicans are working to defund family planning programs in Minnesota and prevent the state from accepting federal family planning dollars. The health and human services budget bill slashes money for programs that provide services to families either seeking to become pregnant or to prevent becoming pregnant. Those funds cannot be used to perform abortions or provide referrals to abortion services. The move mirrors a push by Republicans at the federal level to defund Planned Parenthood. Along with county public health departments, Planned Parenthood clinics in Minnesota are a major beneficiary of family planning funds.
The Associated Press reports that a Christian prayer on the Minnesota Senate floor on Monday made non-Christian members of that body uncomfortable. Pastor Dennis Campbell’s prayer was highly Christian, as opposed to the nonsectarian prayers that were commonplace under DFL control. It’s not Campbell’s first controversy; last summer he took out ads in the St. Cloud Times that were viewed as anti-Muslim.
Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken are offering their own ideas to fix the filibuster, a Senate procedure that often results in gridlock in the upper chamber. Klobuchar is a cosponsor of a comprehensive filibuster reform bill introduced by Democratic Sens. Tom Udall of New Mexico, Tom Harkin of Iowa and Jeff Merkley of Oregon. The trio said that since 2006, “there have been more filibusters than the total between 1920 and 1980.” Franken is offering a change to the filibuster process as well: Instead of taking 60 votes to break a filibuster, he wants 41 votes to maintain a filibuster.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar is a part of a movement in the Senate to reform the use of the filibuster, and together with Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York she’s circulating a petition urging changes to the Senate rules.
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