Minnesota

Statehood Was a Disaster?

Featured image Minnesota’s absurdly left-wing government has undertaken to design a new state flag and Great Seal. Why? Currently, the state flag is just the seal against a background. This is the seal. It shows a farmer and an Indian with a background suitable to Minnesota, including a pine forest and a waterfall which is St. Anthony Falls in Minneapolis: The current seal includes Minnesota’s motto–“L’Etoile du Nord,” Star of the North–and »

Naked, stoned and stabbed

Featured image Today comes word that Derek Chauvin has been attacked and seriously injured by another inmate in federal prison. John wrote about the stabbing and commented on the Chauvin case here earlier this morning. Something’s happening here. What it is is pretty clear. When Derek Chauvin filed an appeal of his conviction for the murder of George Floyd, a funny thing happened on the way to the Minnesota Court of Appeals. »

Derek Chauvin Stabbed In Prison

Featured image I have been in Paris for the last week; hence my fewer than usual posts. What is the biggest news in France today? Derek Chauvin was stabbed by another inmate in a medium-security federal prison in Tucson. Prison employees administered life-saving first aid, and Chauvin is now hospitalized in serious condition but expected to survive. After he was convicted, Chauvin’s lawyer requested that he be isolated from other inmates, foreseeing »

A New State Flag, and What It Means

Featured image Minnesota, the North Star State, has long had a state seal and flag that depict a pioneer and an Indian, along with other elements appropriate to the state and its history: The Minnesota flag is simply the seal on a plain background. The seal and flag have come under attack as “racist,” on the ground that the Indian is riding away, having been chased out by settlers. As Bill Walsh »

The Fall of Minneapolis: The film

Featured image Alpha News presents The Fall of Minneapolis. Alpha has just posted the crowdfunded film to Rumble (video below) so that it can be seen free of charge by the widest possible audience. The film is also accessible online at The Fall of Minneapolis. Viewers can contribute to support Alpha’s work and help promote the film here. I attended the film’s premiere at a showing for invited guests on Tuesday evening »

To fight another day

Featured image As it turns out, the Minnesota Supreme Court is the first in the nation (I think) to deal with (or avoid) the question raised about President Trump’s possible disqualification from the ballot under section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment. Yesterday the Court dismissed the petition brought by a gaggle including former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe. The Court held oral argument on the petition last week and posted video »

I don’t pity the poor illegal immigrant

Featured image The Star Tribune has just posted Maya Rao’s weepy and euphemistic take on Hennepin County’s close encounter of the Biden kind with the flood of illegal immigrants that is washing up in Minneapolis from New York (thanks, Mayor Adams!) and south of the border. After a month in New York’s overcrowded homeless shelters, two Ecuadorian migrants and their baby recently received a free plane ticket to Minneapolis. They took a »

The Amy Klobuchar experience

Featured image Seeking to do the job native Minnesota press won’t do, I have written more than a hundred posts to present a true portrait of Amy Klobuchar. She has the local press serving on her public relations team. Minnesota journalists are mostly happy to serve in this capacity, but when they fall short of her expectations, she uses methods undreamed of in How To Win Friends and Influence People to get »

My cousin Dean

Featured image This is a mostly personal note about Minnesota Third District Rep. Dean Phillips. Dean is my cousin. I anticipate that he will announce his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in New Hampshire no later than the filing deadline this Friday. His presidential campaign bus was spotted running down the road yesterday in Ohio. I’ve admired a few presidential candidates over the years. Dean is the first I’ve ever loved. »

Demonstrating For Genocide In the Heartland [Updated]

Featured image Yesterday there was a pro-genocide rally in Minneapolis that took over a major highway and illegally blocked traffic. The demonstrators stood up for baby-burning, gang rape, kidnapping and mass homicide. Just another day in a land where immigration policy has been off the rails for a long time. The invaluable Andy Ngo has the story: https://t.co/C2Dz7xdCTP — Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 23, 2023 The pro-Palestine rioters in Minneapolis chased »

Kevin Roche: A model proposal

Featured image Our friend Kevin Roche is the former general counsel of UnitedHealth, former chief executive officer of United Health’s Ingenix (now Optum Insight) data analysis division, and the proprietor of Healthy Skeptic. When authorities announced that Minnesota would be using a $17 million federal grant to learn from its mistakes in Covid-19 forecasting and improve its forecasts the next time around, we thought that Kevin had an important contribution to make. »

The lonesome death of Tyesha Edwards

Featured image In the early days of Power Line John and I wrote several columns for the local newspapers decrying the murder of 11-year-old Tyesha Edwards. Tyesha was doing her homework at the dining room table in November 2002 when she was caught in the crossfire of Minneapolis gangbangers. Myon Burrell was convicted twice of Tyesha’s murder and sentenced to life in prison. In our columns we made three basic points: 1) »

Minneapolis’s disappearing police

Featured image The Minneapolis police force has evanesced in size from around 900 officers at the time of George Floyd’s death in 2020 to 585 today. The Star Tribune arrives late to the story in “Minneapolis police staffing levels reach historic lows amid struggle for recruitment, retention.” Subhead: “With 585 sworn officers, the city holds one of the lowest ratios of officers to citizens among many major American cities.” The story includes »

Democrats Hate Democracy

Featured image Earlier today, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. released this indictment of the Democratic National Committee. Why, he asks, is the Democratic Party opposed to democracy? Why is it rigging the primary process? I am not certain whether what he says about the DNC’s machinations is correct, nor am I sure what he considers to be real democracy. (For example, it has never been true that the candidate who gets the most »

Kids Have Stopped Going to School

Featured image Pretty much everyone now agrees that shutting down our schools during the covid epidemic, at the demand of teachers’ unions, was one of the most catastrophic policy decisions of modern times. As I have said before, it is unfortunate that some old and very sick people had their demises hastened by covid, but what government did to our children, for no good reason, was a crime. Having skipped school for »

A Day at the Fair

Featured image Over the years, I have chronicled on this site my visits to the Minnesota State Fair, one of America’s great spectacles. I have photographed seed art, butter sculptures, and much more. In years gone by, I did radio broadcasts from the Fair. And for the last two years, my organization, American Experiment, has had a booth at the Fair for one Saturday. We have a prime location near the Grandstand. »

Democrats Take Care of Their Own

Featured image No former Democratic Party office-holder ever goes hungry. Democrats are great at finding jobs for politicians that don’t quite work out. A case in point is Minnesota’s Melisa López Franzen. Franzen was briefly the Democratic Leader of the Minnesota State Senate. Alpha News describes the end of her political career charitably: López Franzen spent a decade representing the Edina area in the Minnesota Senate, culminating in her election as the »