Minnesota Monitor

John McCain has many reasons to relish the continuing street fight between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and one is the relative inattention to a growing Republican backlash against John McCain. I speak not of the religious righters who think ... [visit website]

In this season of round-the-clock boxing coverage of the Democratic nomination battle, the policy story has become more than ever an endangered species. Alison Fitzgerald and Matthew Benjamin of Bloomberg News have filed a good one today comparing the tax ... [visit website]

Groan: Could this 2006 campaign ad by Eliot Spitzer be any lamer? Maybe, but it probably couldn't be more ironic. Touring the childhood school of runningmate David Paterson (now New York's governor), Spitzer mentions "street signs" that mark the building's ... [visit website]

Edina Mayor Jim Hovland today suspended his campaign for the Democratic endorsement in the 3rd Congressional District. Hovland, a recent convert to the DFL, had been trailing behind attorney Ashwin Madia and State Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, in the race for ... [visit website]

Minnesota Republicans have introduced the Academic Freedom and Free Speech Bill of Rights (HF3922), a bill that aims to prevent students from being "discriminated against on the basis of political, ideological or religious beliefs." The bill has no teeth. It ... [visit website]

VoteVets.org, an independent political group focusing on electing military veterans to Congress, has endorsed Steve Sarvi in his bid to unseat John Kline in Minnesota's 2nd Congressional district. Continued: Click "Read more." In a release endorsing Sarvi and six ... [visit website]

Bottineau Boulevard, a lesser-known transit route that would run from downtown Minneapolis to the northwest suburbs, got a big boost Tuesday when the Hennepin County Regional Railroad Authority okayed spending million on an alternatives study -- the kind of ... [visit website]

Nine out of 10 African-American voters in Mississippi sided with Barack Obama in yesterday's primary, and nearly 61 percent of all voters there selected the Illinois senator. Funny, then, how the Associated Press chose to frame this story: ... [visit website]

March marks the five-year anniversary of the Iraq War, aka "Operation Iraqi Freedom." As winter recedes and roads open up again in Iraq, we learn that violence is again increasing, as it has every year around this time. In fact, ... [visit website]

Eliot Spitzer, the combative New York governor who has been under fire after revelations he engaged the services of prostitutes, announced today that he will resign effective next Monday, March 17. Spitzer, a Democrat who rose to prominence as the picture ... [visit website]

On this week's David Schultz audiocast, we discuss the impasse at which the Obama and Clinton campaigns have found themselves after Mississippi; the launch of the main event--Franken versus Coleman--in the US Senate race; and the status of Tim Pawlenty's ... [visit website]

The Big Ten Network and Comcast may be close to a deal that would return University of Minnesota sports broadcasts to Twin Cities cable subscribers, SportsBusiness Journal is reporting. The Big Ten Network launched last August as part of a ... [visit website]

Those who seek living, breathing evidence of Barack Obama's crossover appeal might want to go see Douglas Kmiec (pictured) tonight at the University of Minnesota. If the hall is crowded, it may not be due to the big names that ... [visit website]

Before voting last week to bolster safety inspections on imported toys and other children's products, a number of Republican senators, including Minnesota's Norm Coleman, first voted to water the proposal down. The moves follow a series of alarms last year in ... [visit website]

After sparking outrage with comments that Barack Obama is "lucky" he's black and that he "wouldn't be in this position" -- a tight race for the Democratic nomination for president -- were he a white man, former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro ... [visit website]

In a press release today, Rep. Betty McCollum, DFL-Minn., criticized Gov. Tim Pawlenty for criticizing pork while asking for pork for Minnesota. At the heart of the scuffle is a request by McCollum seeking a letter of support from Pawlenty's ... [visit website]

There are six weeks between now and the Pennsylvania primary, and just a handful of states still waiting to cast their ballots. So where does the Democratic race stand, and can it be said to still be a race? Here's ... [visit website]

Media A-listers will be ascending on the Twin Cities months before the GOP Convention for the National Conference for Media Reform. The conference, organized by the national media reform group Free Press, is slated to take place June 6-8 at ... [visit website]

In the first year the prestigious awards were open to all media types, Minnesota Monitor managing editor Paul Schmelzer won a 2007 Frank Premack Public Affairs Journalism Award, fittingly, for an essay on journalism and ethics in an online age. The ... [visit website]

As a blogger who follows energy issues, my RSS reader is stuffed with Google alerts for keywords like "wind," "solar," and "renewable energy." I've noticed a phrase popping up over and over again used to brag about a state or ... [visit website]