Veterans

Sen. Al Franken says his first bill in the Senate will be one to provide service dogs to veterans. A longtime USO entertainer for troops stationed in Afghanistan and Iraq, Franken said training service dogs to work with physically and emotionally wounded veterans is a cost-saving measure.

For decades, Republicans have won the battle on wedge social issues at the polls in suburban districts, while Democrats quietly tried to shoo those wedge issues away. But Democratic candidates in tough districts are slowly coming to openly support equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, and they are being led by a new crop of unlikely pioneers — military veterans. DFLer Ashwin Madia is one such candidate.

The cash differential is really starting to show in Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District race, as evidenced by four new pieces of video today. Two are paid ads intended for TV: a positive ad from Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party candidate Ashwin Madia called “Discipline,” which highlights his service as a U.S. Marine and argues for fiscal discipline, and a negative ad from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that attacks Republican candidate Erik Paulsen for coddling offshore dummy corporations.

The other two are free media: a three-minute YouTube video posted by the Paulsen campaign that features testimonials from veterans who support the state representative’s congressional bid, and a four-minute interview that Fox 9 conducted with Paulsen as part of its morning news show… which was followed minutes later by the new Madia ad. See videos after the jump.

In a new ad campaign launched Monday, VoteVets.org implores John McCain to support the 21st Century GI Bill, which he has opposed. The group has more than 95,000 members from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. McCain has received a “D” from Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America for his voting record on vets’ issues. The [...]

Jim Weber considers it a reminder, not a political statement. The 57-year-old Vietnam veteran and retired postal service worker started tallying U.S. military casualties in Iraq on a three-by-four whiteboard above his garage door in 2003. “At first, I wondered if I should do it, if I’d end up with eggs on my house,” says [...]

Miles and months from the bright lights of election night parties, you’ll find congressional candidates meeting with small groups, eating French fries, and talking issues, politics, foreign policy and values.

That’s exactly what Iraq veteran Steve Sarvi was doing when I caught up with him Monday night at the American Legion in Farmington.

Sarvi started his listening [...]

At Vox Verax and Minnesota Monitor we have taken exception to negative attack ads, not because they were against a candidate, but because they were untruthful. Witness our complaints about Minnesota DFL ads here and Gil Gutknecht ads here.

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Politicians will universally say that they support veterans, but do they really? Minnesota Monitor/Vox Verax has written before cautioning voters to look at the facts rather than trusting what comes out of politicians’ mouths. While most voters don’t have the time or resources to wade through all the relevant congressional votes, some veterans organizations make [...]

Even in a Star Tribune editorial endorsing opponent Coleen Rowley, John Kline’s military service gets a mention: “He had a distinguished career in the Marines and retains a passion for military and veterans’ issues.” As one of only a few Republican members of Congress who served in the armed forces and has family in the [...]

All legislators like to claim they support veterans issues. But do they really? One measure of separating fact from fiction