Minnesota
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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February 27, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Minnesota Fifth District Congressman Keith Ellison is a piece of work. He is a former member of the Nation of Islam who first ran for office as a Democrat in 1998 under the NOI name Keith Ellison-Muhammad. Sad but true. He’s a little bit hustler, a little bit thug, and a lot of Marxist claptrap wrapped with an Islamic overlay. Which branch of Islam is it that squares with equal
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February 15, 2013 — Scott Johnson
A cafeteria food fight turned into a riot at South High School in Minneapolis yesterday. The school’s security officers were insufficient to the task. Police officers dispatched to the scene sprayed mace and placed the school on lockdown to get a handle on the situation. Three or four students and a staff member ended up in the hospital. What’s going on? The Star Tribune discreetly reports that parents and students
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January 22, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Following up on John’s post on Michele Bachmann, I want to draw attention to Caroline Glick’s post “The left’s new campaign to destroy a friend of Israel’s.” Like most of Caroline’s columns and posts, it is long and worthy of your attention in its entirety. Having heard Michele testify in person many times to her deep personal attachment to and support of Israel — she has appeared to speak more
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January 13, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The 2012 elections placed Minnesota in the hands of a Democratic governor in conjunction with a Democratic legislature for the first time in a generation. Republican governors and legislators have prevented a lot of damage to the state that would otherwise have taken place. The state’s Democrats now mean to satisfy the pent-up demand to give it to us good and hard. They have big plans for us. In her
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January 12, 2013 — Scott Johnson
Earlier this week Stewart Mills of Mills Fleet Farm released an open video letter to Minnesota Eighth District Rep. Rick Nolan and Minnesota Senators Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar regarding gun control legislation being touted in Congress. Originally posted here by the Brainerd (Minnesota) Dispatch, the video sets out to establish that a duck hunting shotgun is more destructive and lethal than a Huldra AR-15 modern sporting rifle. It does
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January 3, 2013 — Scott Johnson
The Minnesota media usually luxuriate in national attention directed to local institutions or figures. Not so with the December 28 Wall Street Journal article (behind the Journal subscription paywall) highlighting the University of Minnesota as Exhibit A for the administrative bloat fostered by the higher education bubble. The silence is, as they say, deafening. The Washington Post’s Charles Lane picked up on the Journal article for a column of his
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