(Wikipedia)

The Council of the District of Columbia voted unanimously Tuesday to allow Washington, D.C., to recognize same-sex marriages performed outside the district. The decision comes on the heels of a string of victories for advocates on the issue, as Iowa and Vermont — and even Sweden — have legalized same-sex marriage in recent days.

The vote awaits approval from Mayor Adrian Fenty and could find opposition from Congress, which administers the district.

“The D.C. Council’s votes today are another positive step toward equality, coming on the same day as the historic marriage vote in the Vermont Legislature,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese in a press release Tuesday. “We look forward to the final Council votes and urge Mayor Fenty to sign this commonsense legislation. We also hope that Congress will respect the Council’s votes and will respect the District of Columbia’s choice to provide equal recognition for couples who have legally entered into relationships in other jurisdictions.”

Klobuchar, DFL-Minn., also had strong words for food safety officials after salmonella-tainted peanut butter may have cost three Minnesotans their lives. MinnPost has the transcript.

Rep. Keith Ellison, DFL-Minn., helped lead a successful push to add more mass transit money, $3 billion, to the stimulus bill this week. He was also in Chicagoland to speak about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights and Obama’s election. “It would have been impossible to imagine from the standpoint of someone in 1959 that we would have a president of African descent in 50 years,” he told students at Lake Forest College. Ellison was also a featured speaker at the Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference in Washington, D.C.

Bluestem Prairie reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., has very little campaign money left (less than $2,000) and that all her big donors were from outside of Minnesota.

The contentious State Children’s Health Insurance Program passed the House this week, with Rep. Erik Paulsen breaking ranks with the Republicans and voting for the measure. The only Minnesota representatives to vote against the final version of SCHIP were Bachmann and Republican John Kline.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put DFL Rep. Collin Peterson in charge of fixing the default credit swap mess that, in part, brought about the current economic crisis.

It’s a red-tape-cutting position that seems better suited to R.T. than other possible Obama jobs floated recently for the mayor, who has striven to streamline city government through a 311 service, among other things, and whose support for Obama’s presidential run slightly predated the Big Bang.

Transcript excerpts and more after the jump.

Rybak appeared on MPR’s “Midmorning” program, along with Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, and was soon gushing over the idea of a White House office of urban policy, which he said was partly his:

I worked with them on helping to develop this. … Here’s what they’re doing, and I think it’s incredibly smart — is to recognize that when you try to move something out of Washington and get a result, for those of us who are paying taxes, you need to figure out a way to take all the arms of the government and bring them together. … I have to do multiple stops within the federal bureaucracy. I’ve been at this for a number of years and I’m only now just beginning to get it. Wouldn’t it be great, and won’t it be great, to be able to pick up the phone and have that one person in the White House who can say to people who are trying to solve these issues at the local level. I’m going to pull all these elements together. … Different departments, this person’s the point person.

At the end of the mayors’ segment, host Kerri Miller tried to connect the dots between her guests and the urban policy czar job. Franklin was fairly convincing in denying interest in it, at least until after her current term expires in 13 months. Then Franklin hung up the phone, and attention turned back to Rybak.

MPR: So you were one of the earliest backers of Barack Obama among the cities’ mayors. Are you interested in the job?

RT: Right now I have a great new job. It’s called being a mayor in Barack Obama’s America. And I can’t even believe how excited I am to be able to talk about this work right now. I’m going to be focused on that for a while.

MPR: I don’t think that’s answering the question. Are you interested? I mean, if they called –

RT: I’ve gotta tell you that anybody who asks anything yes-or-no about the Obama administration right now, they’ve put a massive gag order on anybody, whether you’re up or not, is to just stay out of that kind of conversation. I don’t want to get involved in that because I’ve got my hands full.

MPR: So if they called, you’d take the call …

RT: These are things that we’ll deal with way down the line if they ever happen, but I’m working in Minneapolis …

MPR: Maybe you’d rather be governor instead?

RT: I’ve told people that I have to make a decision in this next year about whether to run for mayor or governor and I’ll sometime have to make that. But right now I’ve got the job I wanted all my life, with the president I worked incredibly hard for for three years, and you know, I’m throwing confetti all around — in between pension meetings.

Paulose did not return phone calls seeking her comment.

The investigation has been under way since June. The Office of Special Counsel, which handles complaints about retaliation against whistleblowers and prohibited personnel practices by political appointees such as Paulose (that’s her at the podium in the photo at right), appears to be taking the allegations seriously. Investigators from two of its regional offices have been to Minnesota to interview witnesses and may be back for more. I could not find out when the OSC, an independent executive branch agency that is not part of the Justice Department, might complete the investigation.

The allegations also undermine the claim, which was put out for public consumption in April, that four top supervisory officials in the office had voluntarily stepped down to lower positions because of differences with Paulose over management style. The highest ranking of those four, former First Assistant U.S. Attorney John Marti, resigned after learning that Paulose was about to dump him. Marti, who remains in the office as an assistant U.S. attorney, also declined to discuss the matter.

While the allegations are unproven, the ongoing investigation reaffirms that a dysfunctional climate in the top federal law enforcement agency in Minnesota continues.

By most insider accounts, Paulose remains at odds with much of her staff, who are non-political career officials. Federal investigators interviews with the staff about their boss’s alleged misdeeds keep alive the hope among her critics that she will not last until the end of President Bush’s term.

If the Office of Special Counsel finds evidence of serious wrongdoing by Paulose, they could refer the matter to the president, the only person who could remove her. The lesser specific allegations of bad personnel practices, if substantiated, could be referred to Paulose for corrective action. If Paulose remains in office until the end of Pres. Bush’s term, it would be normal practice for the next president to replace her.

The investigation does not deal with questions of how Paulose’s predecessor, Tom Heffelfinger, came to be included on the list of U.S. attorneys targeted for dismissal, or how Paulose was chosen to replace him. Those questions put Paulose’s appointment into the larger controversy about improper politicization of the operation of U.S. attorney’s offices nationwide, which led to the recent resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.

The conflicts enumerated in this matter are not explicitly political or ideological, except for one instance in which Paulose allegedly made false statements about a job candidate who had liberal associations.

But the pattern of the matters under investigation by the special counsel may shed some light on the gray area between issue of “management style” and issues of politics.

When Paulose took over the office, she told several of the career officials there that she demanded total personal loyalty. At least one replied that loyalty was owed to the Constitution, not to her. Many of the allegations raise the possibility that Paulose crossed the line while seeking to punish personal disloyalty.

The allegations

My knowledge of the allegations comes from sources familiar with the investigation. The summary below reflects the areas into which the investigators have been inquiring:

*As U.S. attorney, Paulose received regular reports about the status of the war on terror, drawing on up-to-date information assembled by intelligence and law enforcement agencies. The reports, classified “secret,” were supposed to kept locked up. For about a year, Paulose regularly left the reports loose in her office, sometimes unattended, where they could have been seen by unauthorized people. Marti spoke to her about it and, as required by regulations, filed a report with the national office that oversees U.S. attorneys.

Paulose began threatening Marti with the loss of his position as the No. 2 attorney in the office. He heard from colleagues and even from a federal judge that Paulose was bad-mouthing him, making false allegations against him and telling them that she was going to replace him.

*Paulose committed large and small acts of retaliation against others in the office whom she accused of disloyalty to her. In one instance, after changing the job assignment of one employee, Paulose allegedly said that she would make the woman so miserable that she would want to quit. In some instances, Paulose allegedly ordered those in charge of performing job evaluations to downgrade the reviews of those she considered disloyal, or turned down requests that they be allowed to perform work outside the office. The allegation is that Paulose took these actions against employees for reasons other than the quality of their work, but rather for offenses like advising her that some actions she was contemplating would exceed her legal authority.

*Paulose allegedly denigrated one employee of the office, using the terms “fat,” “black,” “lazy” and “ass.”

And it suggests a larger question: in these days of shrinking newsrooms nationwide (including the Star Tribune, where 24 newsroom employees took voluntary buyouts this week) and Walter Reed-sized scandals making headlines, how will the Minneapolis paper maintain the “vitality,” as Harper puts it, that is “critical to ensure that citizens are informed” until its Washington office is fully staffed?Parry’s answer to that question: Averill will be “bolstered by reporters here and our continuing access to Washington coverage provided by the McClatchy newswire,” she wrote.

Plans beyond that aren’t very firm. Will they hire two positions or one? Will one be hired on as the bureau chief? When do they expect these new staffers to be in place? Strib nation/world editor Dave Peters, who oversees Averill’s Washington work, couldn’t answer any of these questions. Managing editor Scott Gillespie did not return Minnesota Monitor’s request for an interview, and Averill declined comment.

But Peters acknowledged his desire to have more reporters in D.C. “I wish we didn’t have this disruption,” he said. “I liked working with Kevin and Rob. They’re good. But for whatever reason, we’re having to change gears and naturally there’s a little bit of a hitch in there, but we’ll come out in a good place in the end, I’m confident.”

In fact, neither Diaz nor Hotakainen wanted to leave the Star Tribune either, but the pay package offered by Avista, the paper’s new owner, presented them few options.

Hotakainen, the Strib’s bureau chief who just started as Washington correspondent for the McClatchy-owned Kansas City Star, wrote in an email to Minnesota Monitor, “It was an easy decision: Stay with McClatchy at full salary or take a pay cut to work for the Star Tribune.”

Diaz said he “didn’t relish” leaving Minnesota politics behind, especially with the treasure trove of material, from Al Franken running for Senate to Michele Bachmann and Keith Ellison in the House, the Republican National Convention in 2008 to Minnesota members of Congress chairing influential committees.

“This was not a good time to leave,” he said. “But new management really gave me no choice. The alternative was to give back every performance pay raise I’ve received since I came to Washington in 2000.”

The same financial matters that lost the Star Tribune its veteran Washington writers may affect the hiring of their replacements as well. The paper’s classified ad for the job(s) named a $60,000 to $75,000 pay range. Is that competitive, considering the expertise and connections required of a D.C. correspondent, not to mention that city’s cost of living and the responsibilities that come with the title “bureau chief?”

Tom Hamburger, a Washington reporter for the Los Angeles Times, chose not to weigh in on those questions, but instead said he’d look to a broader issue, the “bleeding of quality” the situation in Washington suggests. When he began his 10-year stint at the Strib’s Washington bureau in 1989, he was one of five reporters, one intern and four full-time journalists.

“This appears to be a sign of reduced commitment to Washington coverage by the paper,” he said. “The most significant signs are the continued reduction in staff in the bureau and the failure to keep experienced people — who knew what they were doing, knew how to cover Washington, and were doing an excellent job — in their jobs.”

Hamburger added that the staff he worked with continued the bureau’s long tradition of reporting regional news while breaking national stories, like reporter Frank Wright’s Nixon-era stories on the scandal over milk price supports, Finley Lewis’ coverage of Walter Mondale’s presidential run, and, more recently, revelations about the role of Minnesotans like Vin Weber in the rise of the modern conservative movement in the 1990s. (Hamburger didn’t mention the story he co-wrote with Star Tribune reporter Sharon Schmickle about questionable gift receipts by members of the U.S. Supreme Court, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.) He’s disappointed that the bureau is, even temporarily, reduced to a single intern.

“It’s part of a general sadness that I find with what’s happened to regional newspapers,” he said. “But it’s particularly sad for those of us who worked at the Star Tribune for so many years and know the sophistication and high expectations of Minnesota readers. I worked there when the Cowles family owned the paper, and they were really trying to do a good job of maintaining the paper’s legacy when they sold it to McClatchy. And it just hasn’t worked out.”

While Hotakainen admitted he has mixed feelings about leaving the paper he has worked at for more than two decades, he doesn’t take anything personally. “It’s simply a desire by the new owners to cut costs.” He added that he suspects publisher Par Ridder and interim publisher Chris Harte won’t be around in three to five years, at which point “a new management team will come in and pick up the pieces.”

As for the more immediate future, Strib editor Peters hesitated to predict when the Washington bureau would be fully staffed (its ad posted at JournalismJobs.com has a closing date of April 6), but said he’s optimistic. “It’s going well. We’re getting good applications. I can say that much.”

McCollum’s press secretary, Bryan Collinsworth, hopes so. He said there’s so much going on in Washington over the next few weeks that Minnesotans need to know about; topping that list, he said, is a key Iraq vote now in committee that will likely get a floor vote next week.

“You could say this is one of the most important times to have good coverage in Washington in years,” he said.

Hamburger concurred. “This is an enormously busy, news-filled time in Washington: new Congress, an administration that’s on the ropes, a war that’s going poorly, the economy’s shaken,” he said. “Those will still be covered. How Minnesota’s congressional delegation responds is going to be covered less thoroughly. It has to be, not because the intern’s not competent — I’ve met her, and I think she’s very good — but because they’ve taken away the experienced professionals who were covering it previously. That’s a loss for Minnesota.”

Diaz’s conclusion was more succinct.

“Welcome to the modern American newsroom.”