Tim Walz

How long would you need to read a phone book … or its legislative equivalent? Two Minnesota Democrats have signed a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi asking that bills in Congress be posted online a minimum of 72 hours before a vote. The letter backs a pending resolution that already counts the state’s congressional [...]

The Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome is putting on a clinic for what “multi-purpose” means, with the Vikings game tonight sandwiched between what was supposed to be the Twins’ last game at the Dome Sunday and an added regular-season playoff with the Detroit Tigers Tuesday. That lent an air of error to Sunday’s postgame ceremony marking the [...]

The U.S. House voted to suspend all federal funding for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) on Thursday afternoon by a vote of 345 to 75. Now the measure heads to the Senate, which passed a bill banning federal housing monies from going to the embattled nonprofit.

Rep. Tim Walz is adding to the flurry of health care town halls surrounding President Obama’s Saturday visit to Minneapolis to talk about health care. Walz announced Wednesday that he has scheduled a town hall on Saturday at the John Marshall High School Auditorium in Rochester from 12 to 2 pm. Rep. Erik Paulsen also [...]

Gov. Pawlenty will be speaking to citizens all day long today as he travels around the state … of Virginia. He didn’t cancel his trip to campaign there for Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob McDonnell despite the howling of critics ever since excerpts surfaced from McDonnell’s 1989 academic thesis (pdf) revealing his preference for retrograde social policies [...]

Who needs high school football or rock festivals when congressional constituents can get rowdy together at a town hall meeting? People in the First District gave a clinic in civic (and by all accounts civil) boisterousness at U.S. Rep. Tim Walz’s health care forum Thursday night. Passion was in fashion, with one speaker telling Walz [...]

Several Minnesota members of Congress have recently held their noses and agreed to hold town hall meetings of one kind or another — despite misgivings about such public forums. The lone holdout: U.S. Rep. John Kline. “They are a circus,” Kline told a small group of constituents at his office yesterday. “They have been a [...]

“Panel tells DNR moose hunting should be allowed.” Other news media also cover a new report from Minnesota’s Moose Advisory Committee to the state Department of Natural Resources, but only the Star Tribune’s headline hinted at the potential gallows humor in a Palinesque death panel for Minnesota’s biggest mammals. The committee proposes a moose harvest (sorry, [...]

Rep. Tim Walz figured out a novel way to blunt outrage at town hall meetings on health care reform: the First Congressional District Democrat invited Republican Rep. John Kline of the adjacent Second District to join him. Since Kline has no town hall forums scheduled, it’s a perfect fit, right? Not for Kline: He declined.

Minnesota’s members of the House of Representatives are back in their home districts gauging how constituents feel about federal issues. That feedback will also include town hall meetings for a number of Congress members including Reps. Tim Walz, Collin Peterson and Michele Bachmann. Will Minnesota’s town halls get as rowdy as ones around the nation? Time will tell. Here’s what Minnesota Congressional delegation was up to this week.