Tim Pawlenty

The year 2011 will be the end of an era in broadcasting. That’s when Oprah will leave her long-running show — and, by coincidence, when Gov. Tim Pawlenty will leave his, Minnesota Public Radio confirms. Today, his “hot” wife Mary sits in for T-Paw on ‘CCO, but you won’t see Her Hotness unless the First [...]

State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher’s gubernatorial campaign landed another labor union endorsement today, from the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 49. The “49ers” credit Kelliher with engineering the 2008 override of Gov. Pawlenty’s veto of the transportation bill — giving life to what the union terms “the largest job-creating bill in decades.”

Republican Allen Quist has been angling to get back in elective office since 1994 — about the same length of time the Minnesota Vikings have spent angling to get a new taxpayer-funded stadium. Now both are making dramatic moves. Vikes owner Zygi Wilf says he’s washing his hands of “political games” and the Metropolitan Sports [...]

Tuesday was a day for Q and As with Norm Coleman, Michele Bachmann and Tom Petters. Coleman in the Harvard Crimson: “No regrets.” Bachmann in City Pages: “I’m proud.” Petters in federal court: “I apologize.” Al Franken got in on the game this morning on Minnesota Public Radio, where an interviewer said it sounds like he’d [...]

Asked what the biggest threat facing Minnesota now is, gubernatorial candidate and state Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, is quick with an answer: Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s unallotments. In a video by Craig Stellmacher, Rukavina says the legislature “should’ve come out swinging” immediately after Pawlenty decided unilaterally to cut $2.7 billion from the state budget. He believes [...]

“Why not a picture of Tim Pawlenty with an unbuttoned shirt relaxing on a couch in the Twin Cities?” That’s what the Christian Broadcasting Network’s White House correspondent asks in an outraged response to Newsweek putting a photo of Sarah Palin in jogging togs on its cover, with the headline, “How do you solve a problem like [...]

Minnesota Public Radio is holding a “Future of the News” forum today, but a couple ex-office-holders are the ones who’ve really got the print media’s back. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and former U.S. Sen. Dean Barkley ran large ads in the Star Tribune this weekend — for “Going Rogue” (really NewsMax) and a free [...]

As the holidays approach, prices are falling on flat-screen TVs like the ones that Gov. Pawlenty had removed from the civil-commitment facility for sex offenders at Moose Lake. Which suggests a dilemma: at what price point can the state ethically buy 50-inch TVs for sex offenders?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2012 presidential exploratory tour hits Florida today. There he could face a politically tricky question: Will he back Florida Gov. Charlie Crist or conservative darling Marco Rubio in next year’s U.S. Senate contest?

By any reasonable standard the Minnesota Sex Offender Program has been an unmitigated failure. In its nearly two decades, it has failed to rehabilitate a single patient. The only people who have graduated from the program have done so in body bags. Yet, since 2003, the program’s budget has ballooned by nearly 400 percent, from $18.5 million annually to $71.6 million.