Trans woman murdered in Minneapolis, vigil planned for Jan. 21

By |

Chrissie Bates, a transgender woman who lived in downtown Minneapolis, was found murdered in her apartment on Monday in what police are calling a homicide. Police say she appeared to have been stabbed. Details are still sketchy, but CityPages notes that Bates had feared for her safety in her building. Bates had recently been sexually assaulted, according to her neighbor, and someone had broken out one of her windows. “She told me that she was concerned for her safety,” the neighbor told CityPages. Continue Reading

House education committee chair apologizes over “Gestapo” remark

By |

Rep. Sondra Erickson, R-Princeton, chair the House Education Reform Committee, had strong words for an Education Minnesota plan to include 90 days of classroom supervision for teachers undergoing an alternative licensing program in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio on Tuesday evening. Erickson said the plan amounted to a “teacher Gestapo,” and unions have already seized on those comments as an example of the overheated rhetoric that has become hotly debated across the nation in the wake of the tragedy in Tuscon. Erickson tells the Minnesota Independent Wednesday she “overstepped her bounds” with the comment and apologized.Rep. Sondra Erickson “It sounds like the teacher Gestapo to me. I think that if a candidate comes out of one of these programs, he or she is going to be well-prepared to be in the classroom,” Erickson told Minnesota Public Radio. “If a district has decided that candidate should be in the classroom, I’m not sure why we would need that Gestapo at work, and I would like to visit with them about that.” Continue Reading

GOP votes down rule that would prioritize budget over social issues

By |

On the first day of the legislative session, the Republican majority in the Minnesota House voted down an amendment to the rules that would put fixing the state budget deficit before any constitutional amendments. The rule, offered by Rep. Paul Thissen (DFL-Minneapolis), was referred to the Rules Committee for further consideration by a vote of 74 to 60. DFL Rep. Ryan Winkler of Golden Valley criticized the vote as an indication that the Republican majority may prioritize delving into divisive social issues over fixing the budget deficit. “We are facing a budget crisis of serious and historic proportions,” Thissen said on the House floor. “You stated that other more divisive issues should wait until we get that constitutional duty of balancing our budget done. Continue Reading

EdWatch, group that helped launch Bachmann’s career, closes after 12 years

By |

Edwatch, a controversial conservative education watchdog group, announced that its operations will close at the end of the year. Founded as the Maple River Education Coalition in the late 1990s, the group was an incubator for the political career of Rep. Michele Bachmann and drew the ire of elected officials in at least three political parties. The group was pro-gun, anti-homosexuality and opposed to federal intervention in local education. “Twelve years ago the Maple River Education Coalition was born around the center island in my kitchen,” wrote Renee Doyle, Edwatch’s president in a statement. “Today I am announcing that EdWatch is closing its doors. Continue Reading

Rep. Gruenhagen brings controversial views to Health and Human Services Committee

By |

With the new Legislature sworn into session on Tuesday, one new official is coming under scrutiny for opinions he’s shared in the letters pages of local newspapers. Republican Glenn Gruenhagen, elected to the Minnesota House in November to represent Glencoe after Rep. Laura Brod retired, has been assigned to the Health and Human Services Committee. His controversial public statements about welfare, anal sex, abortion and alcoholism – areas the committee oversees – could make for interesting political theater in the months ahead. The HHS committee deals with the state’s safety net programs – programs Gruenhagen has compared to prostitution schemes, as Bluestem Prairie reported after his GOP endorsement in May. “Government run welfare programs are little more than a government subsidized prostitution program paying extra money to women who have children out of wedlock,” he wrote. Continue Reading

FCC passes new net neutrality rules; Franken says “inadequate” protection for consumers, internet

By |

The Federal Communications Commission passed a set of rules Tuesday “to preserve basic Internet values,” but advocates of net neutrality say the new rules do not go far enough. Sen. Al Franken called the measures “simply inadequate,” while Republicans have vowed to push to repeal the new framework. 
Under the new rules, telecommunications companies cannot discriminate in what internet content they allow to their customers to access. Net neutrality advocates have said that without a framework, large businesses could pay large telecommunications companies to direct internet traffic to their businesses without the consumer knowing that other websites had been skipped over, a practice known as paid prioritization. Under the rules, telecoms can only manage their data in that manner if there is network congestion or spam, and they must disclose their policies should they plan to manage the data. “The FCC’s action today is simply inadequate to protect consumers or preserve the free and open Internet,” Sen. Franken said in a statement following the FCC vote. Continue Reading

Pawlenty attack on public sector unions rated “Pants on Fire” wrong

By |

Gov. Tim Pawlenty got it wrong in his weekend Wall Street Journal piece that decried a perceived growth in public sector jobs and high pay for government employees, according to the St. Petersburg Times’ Politifact: “Not only did he apparently mangle the time frame, contradict his own definition of federal workers and fail to acknowledge the huge caveat of Census worker hiring, he also repeated a statistic that had been criticized as inaccurate as long as six months ago.” Pawlenty wrote, “The majority of union members today no longer work in construction, manufacturing or ‘strong back’ jobs. They work for government, which, thanks to President Obama, has become the only booming ‘industry’ left in our economy. Since January 2008 the private sector has lost nearly eight million jobs while local, state and federal governments added 590,000.” Continue Reading

Bachmann, Pawlenty throw support behind “hate groups”

By |

Rep. Michele Bachmann and Gov. Tim Pawlenty have thrown their support behind the Family Research Council and other groups that the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated as anti-gay hate groups. In an open letter, Bachmann, Pawlenty and several other Republican elected officials say the SPLC has “targeted FRC and other organizations that uphold Judeo-Christian moral views, including marriage as the union of a man and a woman.” But the SPLC’s report, released last month does not target groups that oppose gay marriage or uphold Christian values; rather it lists groups that make “claims about LGBT people that have been thoroughly discredited by scientific authorities” and “repeated, groundless name-calling.” FRC, for instance, has suggested that gays be “exported” from the United States and says that homosexuality should be criminalized. The American Family Association, another group that Pawlenty and Bachmann are supporting, recently said that Supreme Court Justice Elana Kagan should be disqualified from office because she’s a lesbian (she’s not). Continue Reading

Franken, Klobuchar back unemployment extension/tax-cut compromise

By |

Supporters of President Obama’s tax cut compromise with GOP Senate leadership defeated a threatened filibuster by mostly liberal Democrats through the use of cloture Monday evening. Minnesota Democratic Sens. Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar were among those voting for cloture. The bill could see an up or down vote as soon as today. Klobuchar said she voted to advance the bill because of the middle-class tax cuts contained in it. Continue Reading