Coleman backers also steer inchoate peace group

Minnesota businessmen Nasser Kazeminy and John Goodman both back Norm Coleman and both serve on the board of Step into World Peace, a curious local nonprofit that Harper’s Ken Silverstein probes this week. Silverstein finds vague goals, a shuttered Web site and no direct ties to Coleman — whose campaigns the pair have funded heavily and whose finances have drawn increasing scrutiny since Silverstein alleged last year that Kazeminy bought Coleman’s suits.

But Silverstein finds plenty to ponder when it comes to SIWP’s finances. The group has little to show for $88,000 it has spent out of the $110,000 it has raised — some $40,000 of which went to unspecified “contract labor” from 2002 to 2004.
Minnesota Independent

How Cheney Turned A Right-Wing Meme Mainstream

It looks like we’ve figured out what Dick Cheney meant when he said President Obama has “reserved unto himself” the right to order enhanced interrogation techniques.
TPM

Pawlenty’s voter-registration vetoes cut new drivers and ex-cons no slack

The words “veto” and “vote” may share the same letters but they’re at odds on Gov. Pawlenty’s desk the last two days. He won’t let Minnesotans get registered automatically as voters when they get licensed as drivers, and he won’t let felons get a letter about it when they get their voting rights back, either.
Minnesota Independent

Facing Progressive Pressure, Obama Backs Off Panama Free Trade Agreement

If you regularly read OpenLeft, you know we’ve been tracking this story, including the AFL-CIO announcement and the announcement today by the Populist Caucus to put major pressure on the White House to stop this NAFTA-style agreement. Indeed, as someone who has been working on this issue for a decade, I never thought I’d actually see the day where we, the progressive movement, could actually make a president back off (even temporarily) the NAFTA trade model.
Open Left

Minnesota Legislature: It’s over — No deal

In an act of defiance in the final hour, DFLers passed a revised tax bill that faces a certain veto. Gov. Tim Pawlenty stayed firm in his decision to make $1.2 billion in budget cuts all by himself.

Star Tribune

Sheila Bair, Brooksley Born: JFK Award Recipients For Predicting Crisis

Two U.S. federal regulators who sounded early warnings on the financial crisis and a Liberian peace activist who helped end that nation’s civil war were honored for their efforts Monday at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. chairwoman Sheila Bair, former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Brooksley Born, and peace activist Leymah Gbowee (LAY’-mah BOH’-wee) were presented with Profile in Courage Awards, annual honors named for a 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book written by John F. Kennedy.

Huffington Post

FBI infiltrated Iowa anti-war group before GOP convention

An FBI informant and an undercover Minnesota sheriff’s deputy spied on political activists in Iowa City last year before the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn.

Confidential FBI documents obtained by The Des Moines Register show an FBI informant was planted among a group described as an “anarchist collective” that met regularly last year in Iowa City. One of the group’s goals was to organize street blockades to disrupt the Republican convention, held Sept. 1-4, 2008, where U.S. Sen. John McCain was nominated for president.

Des Moines Register

Supreme Court: Pregnancy discrimination A-OK!

Today our nation’s highest court ruled in AT&T v. Hulteen that women who took maternity leave and were discriminated against by AT&T are shit out of luck.

Before the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed, when women took leave from their AT&T jobs to have a baby, those days did not count toward their pensions — even though other types of leave, such as temporary disability, were not removed from the pension equation. So when the women went to retire, they had lower pensions than other employees who had worked there the same number of years, even those who had taken leave for other reasons.

Feministing

US to Limit Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Autos

The Obama administration is expected to announce guidelines Tuesday that will toughen existing federal mileage standards. Automakers have signed off on the plan, sources say.

Truthout

Primer on unallotment: How it works and why it’s done

Instead of a flurry of negotiations between Gov. Tim Pawlenty and lawmakers, Session 2009 might end without a deal, what with the governor’s announcement last Thursday that there would be no special session and that he would use his powers of unallotment to balance the state’s budget.

“The governor thinks he’s a dictator,” Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, said at the Capitol Saturday. “He’s like George W. Bush. He’s ‘the decider.’ For him to abuse unallotment is unconscionable, especially for a guy who never got a majority of the vote.”

MinnPost

Results of Survey USA News Poll regarding Minnesota Government are here.

Hospitals react sharply to Pawlenty health veto

Saint Paul, MN — Governor Tim Pawlenty followed through on his pledge to rein in state spending with or without the legislature. He used a line-item veto to surgically remove $381 million from a health plan for low income adults without children.

The cuts to General Assistance Medical Care, or G.A.M.C., will take effect in July of 2010, according to Human Services Commissioner Cal Ludeman, and strip eligibility from 30,000 persons. He told lawmakers Friday those persons must earn less than $7,800 per year to qualify for the program.
KARE 11

Coleman files final brief in State Supreme Court case

Norm Coleman wants all voters who “substantially complied” with state rules governing absentee ballots to have their votes counted. In a brief filed with the Minnesota Supreme Court today, the former senator argues that the case should be sent back to the trial court under orders to consider 4,400 rejected absentee ballots for possible inclusion in the vote tally.

Following a seven-week trial, a three-judge panel determined that Al Franken won the U.S. Senate contest by 312 votes — a decision that Coleman has appealed to the state’s top court.
Minnesota Independent

Officials issue ash borer quarantine in 2 counties

St. Paul, Minn. (AP) — A state quarantine has been issued on firewood, ash trees and ash tree products in two Minnesota counties after this week’s discovery of emerald ash borer.

The quarantine took effect Friday in Hennepin and Ramsey County. An infestation of the tree pest was discovered the day before in a line of trees outside a row of St. Paul town homes.
MPR

White Phosphorus? Concern Over Burns on Afghans Caught in Battle

Afghanistan’s leading human rights organization said Sunday it was investigating the possibility that white phosphorus was used in a U.S.-Taliban battle that killed scores of Afghans. The U.S. military rejected speculation it had used the weapon but left open the possibility Taliban militants did.

White phosphorus can be employed legitimately in battle, but rights groups say its use over populated areas can indiscriminately burn civilians and constitutes a war crime.
Common Dreams

‘The Most Humiliating Experience I Have Ever Had’

Why Is the Supreme Court So Callous About Privacy?
Savana Redding was a 13-year-old eighth-grader at Arizona’s Safford Middle School when she was pulled out of class one day by her school’s vice principal, Kerry Wilson, and told to bring her books with her.

Rumors had been swirling that a group of students were packing prescription ibuprofen pills — “contraband” — and were planning to pass them out at lunch. Redding had been falsely accused of carrying the illicit substance, and Wilson took her into his office for questioning.
Alter Net

What’s FISHY? PawLENTY!

Guess who got up at the crack of dawn yesterday morning to try and warn all the people heading out on White Bear Lake at Minnesota’s grand “Fishing Opener” to be on the look-out for this Pirate PawLENTY who’s known to have sworn in pirate blood not to raise taxes on the wealthy, even if it means holding Minnesotans hostage these last six years. We told all the poor Minnesota fishermen who’d listen to be on the lookout for a real hypocritical character in red driving a slick speedboat and who likes to be called “Governor” but who’s doing just the opposite of what pirates used to do when they sailed the high seas: PawLENTY’s been stealing from the poor to give to the wealthy! He must still think his “no new taxes” piracy is the surefire, cutthroat way to the GOP Presidency.
Mn Progressive Project

Hill Panel Reviewing CIA Tactics

When the Justice Department said seven years ago that CIA interrogators at a secret prison in Thailand could make a suspected al-Qaeda leader fear he was drowning, it prescribed precise limits: Water could be poured from a cup or small watering can onto a saturated cloth covering his mouth and nose, inhibiting breathing for up to 40 seconds. It could be repeated, after allowing three or four full breaths, for up to 20 minutes.

But when the technique was employed on Abu Zubaida and later on 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammed and al-Qaeda planner Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the interrogators in several cases applied what the CIA’s Office of Inspector General described in a secret 2004 report as “large volumes of water” to the cloths, explaining that their aim was to be more “poignant and convincing,” according to a recently declassified Justice Department account.
The Washington Post

Garbage to Green: 10 Landfills Turned into Nature Preserves

Landfills are among the most notorious pieces of real estate in the world. Even a hardcore recycler is still directly or indirectly responsible for creating trash that will find its way to a landfill. It is a side effect of modern human life. But landfills don’t have to remain steaming heaps of smelly rubbish. Take these ten former trash heaps that are now characterized by abundant green and diverse wildlife.
Web Ecoist