Minnesota
September 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, numbering at least 32,000. If it takes a village, we have a couple. Yet we know amazingly little about the Somali community, probably because we are afraid to ask the relevant questions. We know they are mostly Muslim — we can see the hijabs, we are familiar with the many local controversies to which their faith has given
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August 16, 2013 — Scott Johnson
There is a local Minnesota angle to the story of the rodeo clown who has been found guilty of the offense that the French call lèse-majesté. A faithful reader writes: Credentials: I briefly served as Chief Corporate Counsel for the world’s largest association of professional clowns, Clowns of America, Inc. or COAI for short. Turns out, it’s a Minnesota non-profit and I got the gig to rewrite their bylaws because
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August 14, 2013 — Scott Johnson
John Hinderaker is past chairman of the Center of the American Experiment, Minnesota’s voice of sanity. I am a past member of the board. The Center is a nonpartisan, tax-exempt, public policy and educational institution that brings conservative and free market ideas to bear on the hardest problems facing Minnesota and the nation. To borrow the immortal words of Daniel Webster in the Dartmouth College case, it is a small
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August 11, 2013 — Scott Johnson
My post “Obama clears it up” triggered a deeply personal response from a prominent long-time reader. There will be a lot of this in the days to come: It’s been quite a while since we’ve corresponded. I was reading your post on Obamacare and I simply couldn’t hold back. Obama is so duplicitous, dishonest and shameful I just couldn’t hold it in. I take his lies personally and blame his
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August 4, 2013 — Steven Hayward
Minnesota’s socialist Rep. Keith Ellison really let the mask slip big time the other day. From the CNS report: Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) told a gathering of Democrats, “The bottom line is we’re not broke, there’s plenty of money, it’s just the government doesn’t have it.” (Emphasis added.) I can’t top Walter Hudson’s observation: We can induce from Ellison’s comments that he believes the government cannot go broke so long
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July 25, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Star Tribune loves stories of what it deems to be achievements by state and local government, but so far it seems to have overlooked the news of Minnesota’s $1.2 million bonus award for achievement in enrolling beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program. Our friend Tom Steward explores the Minnesota angle of the food-stamps story that lies somewhere near the heart of the Age of Obama: Congratulations, Minnesota, on
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June 20, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Vince Flynn was the incredibly successful author of thrillers featuring the “indomitable Mitch Rapp, a CIA assassin with the talents to save the free world, and the skills to disappear into the crowd,” as Claudia Rosett puts it in her tribute to Flynn. He died early yesterday of prostate cancer at the age of 47, way too young. Flynn was also something of a hometown hero to us. He was
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June 18, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Democrats of the (Democratic) House Majority PAC are out with a seemingly ubiquitous Internet ad that blares: DON’T LET STUDENT LOAN RATES SKYROCKET! TELL REP. KLINE: STOP SCAMMING STUDENTS! Usage note: “Ubiquitous” is an adjective that does not admit of comparison. It means present everywhere at once. Something is not “very” ubiquitous, or “relatively” ubiquitous. In this context, when I use the adjective, I am describing a stupid left-wing
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May 29, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Sixth District Rep. Michele Bachmann has announced that she will not seek reelection in 2014. The Star Tribune, which has breathlessly promoted her opponents and provided whatever negative publicity it could about her, has posted the video of Michele’s announcement along with a brief post. The New York Times covers her announcement here and the Washington Post covers it here. Michele turned herself into a national figure, first as
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May 23, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota is home to the largest Somali community in the United States, numbering at least 25,000. If it takes a village, we have a couple. Yet we know amazingly little about the Somali community, probably because we are afraid to ask the relevant questions. We know they are mostly Muslim — we can see the hijabs, we are familiar with the many local controversies to which their faith has given
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May 21, 2013 — Scott Johnson
At the moment I am listening to the ostentatiously liberal Judge Mark Bennett of the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa summarize the Supreme Court’s employment law decisions of the past year. Judge Bennett wants us to know that he has got his mind right (i.e., left), and how. I understood that from his disparagement of the conservative Supreme Court justices as “the usual suspects.” That
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May 7, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison is the first Muslim elected to Congress and one of its leftwardmost members. I wrote a backgrounder on him for the Weekly Standard just before he was elected to Congress and posted “Keith Ellison for dummies” on Power Line as a companion to the Weekly Standard article. Ellison is a key to understanding the Age of Obama, a thesis I explored in “From Keith
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May 6, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Marc Thiessen recently recalled that after he was defeated for reelection in 1989, New York Mayor Ed Koch was asked if he would ever run for office again. “No,” Koch replied. “The people have spoken…and they must be punished.” In the 2012 elections, Minnesotans elected Democratic majorities in the state House and state Senate to go along with the Democratic governor (Mark Dayton) they (we) elected in 2010. It’s the
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March 29, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Over at NRO’s Corner, Veronique de Rugy draws attention to the Freedom in the Fifty States Index just released by Professor William Ruger and Jason Sorens. Professors Ruger and Sorens have a companion column on the index in USA Today. The index ranks states based on public policies affecting economic, social, and personal freedoms (e.g., bans on trans fats and the audio recording of police, licensing laws, taxes, mandated family
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March 10, 2013 — Scott Johnson
With a Democratic governor, a Democratic legislature and the political wind at their back, supporters of gay marriage have high hopes for their prospects in Minnesota. In the Star Tribune, Katherine Kersten casts a gimlet eye on developments: The marriage amendment may have fallen short at the polls in November, but a majority of Minnesotans continue to support marriage as the union of one man and one woman, according to
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March 4, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Growing up in Moorhead, Minnesota, before my family moved to St. Paul in 1958, may be the happiest I’ve been, to borrow the title of a memorable John Updike short story. My dad managed Moorhead’s Comstock Hotel (destroyed by fire in 1960) and established its all-you-can-eat for $0.50 buffet, still remembered fondly by some Fargo-Moorhead natives. There is a reason why Jeffrey Hart titled his revisionist history of the fifties
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February 28, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz and Lauren Ashburn devoted yesterday’s Daily Download (video below) to Minnesota Fifth District Rep. Keith Ellison’s shoutdown on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Tuesday evening. I wrote about it here. “This guy came on his show and then tried to filibuster it by yelling at him, saying ‘You’re a terrible journalist,’ ‘You’re the worst journalist,’ ‘You’re a Republican,’ ‘You’re awful,’” Ashburn said of Ellison’s appearance.
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