It’s become fairly clear over the past two weeks that the MN DFL isn’t playing hooky from the House because they care about Brad Tabke or the voters of 40B. 

They are hiding – my opinion, here, but I’ll stand by it – that they are doing it because GOP majorities on committees mean investigaions and public hearings:

GOP rule at sny level will mean looking at harsh truths about Minnesota government.

The idea that 15 years of DFL rule have left it a cold Chicago is hard to assimilate.  And our media and establishment (ptr) will work overtime to make sure that soothing notion doesn’t get disturbed. 

I think most Minnesotans deep down still think MN is still the state of Humphrey and Anderson, or even Tim Pawlenty and Mike Hatch – that it’s a “Good Government” state no matter which party wins.

And until that happens – until this state “bottoms out” – there will be no fixing Minnesota.

Hey, look!  Governor Walz is back to playing governor!

Well, hey, look who showed up! The guy who’s been governor for six years!

The guy who squandered an $18 billion surplus.

The governor under whom our water is dirtier and more expensive, our infrastructure is more aged, public is less safe and housing is less affordable (except for the occasional market valuation crash, which goes back to the “less safe” thing) than it was in 2017.

What did national voters know that Minnesota voters don’t?

But hey – at least the Governor is getting back to something akin to his actual job.  My “representative”, Samakab Hussein [1], tweeted yesterday:

Uh, that’d be former co-chair Pinto.

Unless we’re making up new titles for each other now.  If that’s the case, I’ll take “First Sea Lord” and maybe “Anna Kendrick’s boyfriend”. 

Deal?

And, uh, “work”?  He did a zoomer with another DFL that’s playing hooky.  Even if they talked the business of their fictional committee.

[1] Say what you will, Hussein is a better rep than his predecessor, Rena Moran. It’s a low bar indeed, but never let it be said I won’t tell the truth.

They’re not at work. Oh, no no. no.

But they are doing this (language not remotely safe for work):

And yes, it’s directly linked to the DFL’s walkout; the person with the megaphone was acting in conjunction with a “rally” being thrown by Leigh Finke

Which went about as well as you could expect on a day when it around four degrees with a stiff breeze:

But then, the action was always going to be indoors, wasn’t it?

By the way, we’ve run into the person with the megaphone before.

If the MNGOP doesn’t run this on an endless loop for the next two. years, they deserve to lose.

Anonymous source, seemingly implausible conclusion – but Gary Gross at “Liberty and Prosperity” says there’s a rumor afoot at the Capitol – emphasis added:

This past Friday, a loyal reader to this blog informed me that there were rumors were swirling around the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul that 2 DFL legislators were thinking about switching from the DFL to the GOP.

At first, I thought that this type of talk is typical when margins are this close. This friend assured me this wasn’t typical gossip mill fodder. This friend told me that these DFL representatives are tired of the DFL’s win-at-all-costs stunts. I’d assume that this includes the Curtis Johnson fiasco in HD-40B.

Its fun to think about. I find it implausible (if you’re on top of this rumor, drop me a line), but then everything about this past six months in national politics, and two weeks in Minnesota, has been implausible as well.

Rep. Leigh Finke wanted to show “MAGA” who was boss. 

Here’s how it started:

Here’s how it looked ten minutes into the…er, meeting?:

To be fair, it was a brisk-ish day by southern MInnesota standards; 5 degrees and Minnesota-windy. 

But the optics just are not good, are they?

Finke might do better off just going back to work.

SCENE:  The Minnesota Supreme Court.  The court, various court staff, and the plaintiff and respondent attorneys, are arguing the merits of the election-related business in front of them. Also present are the GOP’s attorney Ryan WILSON, and the DFL’s counsel,LEAKY THE BEAGLE. 

CHIEF JUSTICE HUDSON:  OK, counsel for the defense.  Your statement. 

WILSON:   Our case is clear and consistent, your honors. The Minnesota State Constitution is clear that:

• Quorum is a majority of current members.   Given the overturning of the District 40B election, that means there were 133 members on January 14, the statutory date for convening the legislature.  That means a quorum is 67.
• Furthermore, your honors, as the Constitution clearly gives the Legislature the duty to run its own affairs, the attempts by Secretary Simon, Governor Walz and, for that matter, any hypothetical attempt by the Supreme Court would be a violation of the separation of powers prescribed in both the US and Minnesota constitutions.

We therefore request the court dismiss this frivolous and anti-democratic claim with prejudice.

Thank you.

HUDSON : Thank you, Mr. Wilson.  Now, Mr…Beagel?

LEAKY THE BEAGLE :  (Slowly, ostentatiously waddles to the lectern).  (Pauses).   (Starts speaking in an atrocious German accent). Ladies und Chentelmenn of ze Zupreme Court…

JUSTICE THIESSEN:  I’m sorry to interrupt – whats with the accent?

LEAKY THE BEAGLE:  Nobody rrrrillly knowsss.  May it pleece ze court…

(Slowly, with all pretentious dramatic intent, lays out seven photographs)

LEAKY THE BEAGLE:  Nice houses zat you have.   It’d be a schame if there were to get…(pauses for sininster effect)…mostly peacefully protested. 

(There is silence). 

HUDSON:   We’ll – uh – take it under advisement.

LEAKY THE BEAGLE:  Zat’s rrrrright.  You vill.

And SCENE

Governor Piglet added his calm voice of non-partisan statesmanly leadership to Minnesota’s constitutional crisis yesterday:

Just kidding.   He’s doing exactly what the DFL in the House are doing.

What’s the term?

Oh, yeah – election denialism:

I’ve had people ask me “what in the flaming hootie-hoo is going on with the Minnesota Legislature (mostly the House today, but the Senate is also happening)”? There are plenty of actual House members with great explanations. Some (@WalterHudson,  @HarryNiska,  @PamAltendorf) are dead on. Others (any DFLer) are…not. But here’s my attempt to explain it in laypersons terms.

1. On election night, the MN House was tied, 67-67.

2. Two of the races, 14B in Saint Cloud and 54A in Shakopee, were close enough to qualify for a statutory recount. The DFLer won in 14B – being caught on video guzzling vodka and getting in your car is practically a rite of passage in Saint Cloud. But the one in 54A, held by incumbent DFLer Brad Tabke – well, we’ll come back to that. Either way – the House was tied.

3. The procedure for a tied chamber (it’s happened) is the two parties come up with a “power sharing agreement” – splitting committee assignments, alternating Speakers of the House, etc. Discussions on this “agreement” started.

4. Before anything was formalized, the election of Curtis Johnson in House District 40B – north Roseville, south Shoreview – was nullified in district court when his GOP opponent, Paul Wikstrom [1], found enough evidence that Johnson didn’t live in the district. At all. The election was nullified, and Governor Walz called a special election for 1/28 [2]. That left the house 67 GOP/66 DFL.

5. Notwithstanding the fact that the conditions have changed, the DFL spent about a week claiming the GOP had “reneged on a powersharing agreement”. That’s an absurd claim – tantamount to saying the DFL needed a mulligan for its incompetence in the Johnson election.

6. For the past week, the two sides have been arguing about what the quorum is to allow the house to meet. The DFL says it’s a majority of the full chamber – 68 out of 134 seats. The GOP – citing the MN Constitution, and the very text of the debate that led to the original quorum provision in 1858, said it was a majority of the seats actually filled – specifically because the framers of the MN Constitution foresaw a situation like this, with a party boycotting the Legislature to prevent any business.

7. The DFL has spent the past week or two saying the GOP is “grabbing power” because they (correctly) say they have enough votes to create a quorum right now.

8. Sunday, the DFL caucus snuck into the History Center, after hours, and got “sworn in” by a retired MN Supreme Court judge, even though the Constitution says that the swearing in is done after a roll call in the House itself on the day of convening (today at noon). This was presumably so they can claim they should be paid.

9. This morning, hours before the House convened, the court rendered an opinion on the 54A race, saying it was not an invalid result.

10. The GOP countered that the MN Constitution, not a district court judge, determines whose elections are valid, not the courts. The house’s ability to determine what elections are valid is not an arbitrary thing – there are rules, and a process. The DFL is trying to deflect away form that, too, since the actual rules don’t favor their interpretation.

That brings us to yesterday noon.

11. The House is newly sworn in every two years. None of the officer elections, like Speaker, apply until they convene and vote. The Secretary of State convenes the House to, as the Constitution says, gavel them into session, call the role, swear them in, and recognize the clerk.

12. Simon tried to adjourn the House saying there was no quorum – basically, he tried to gavel-and-run, as if he were a teenager leaving a bag of burning poop on a doorstep. Republican Majority Leader Harry Niska pointed out that this was a violation of the separation of powers, and the House re-took control of the proceedings. Also – “adjournment” requires a motion, discussion, and a vote.  Even if hs role weren’t purely ceremonial, he did it wrong. 

13. They proceeded to vote to accept that they’d met the quorum specified in the Constiution (a majority of the certified legislators – 67 of 133), and then elect Rep. Demuth as Speaker of the House.

14 – So why does it matter? Today’s results mean that Speaker Demuth will control who heads committees. That is vital – since committee chairs have a lot of power, especially in re scheduling public hearings. Say, over MASSIVE FLAGRANT SYSTEMATIC DFL FRAUD.

15. Also – while the special election will likely bring the legislature back to a tie, the Speaker and Committee chairs will have been chosen – and any legislative attempt to change that will fail; “tie” votes automatically lose.

16. With those facts in place: if the DFL comes back, they won’t be able to pass any legislation, even though they control the Governor and Senate (remember – tie votes all lose). And the committees will become a vehicle for exposing the DFL’s misdeeds.

17. The DFL’s strategy atm is to try to delegitimize the House.

18. IN THE MEANTIME, the Senate is also tied, after the death of former Majority Leader Keri Dziedzic. Since it’s a tie, the Senate entered into power sharing agreement yesterday, and we’ll see what happens after the special election, which is on January 28.

19. Now, conventional wisdom is the DFL should win easily – it’s the U of M and Marcy-Holmes. But there’ve been some interesting dynamics. The GOP’s candidate, Abby Wolters, got 30% of the vote at the U of M, outperforming Trump last November. If the unthinkable happens, the GOP will control the whole legislature. It’s unlikely, of course.

20. BUT!!! Senator Nicole “The Ninja” Mitchell is going to be going on trial on her burglary charges. If convicted (and she said some things in her statement to cops that make me wonder if she got her law degree from the Croatian Internet School Of Law), I’m not sure how she isn’t forced to resign. The district is pretty blue, but one can hope people are getting fed up with all the DFL’s BS.

21. Speaking of being fed up with BS – recall petitions are being collected against the “striking” DFL House members all over the state. Recalls are not easy – nor should they be – and they are called by the governor, and our governor’s respect for the law makes Huey Long look like Rand Paul; you can expect him to interfere with that process, just as he tried to jink the processes in the special elections, and he’s trying to use his bully pulpit on the House.

What it all means: So for the next two weeks, Governor Walz has no power, and after the Special Elections he’ll have…

…still no power, and a House full of pissed off Republicans, with subpoena power, representing people who are pissed off about squandered surpluses, gathering catastropic deficits, decaying schools, rampant fraud, Covid destitution, snitch lines, badthink databases, a DFL that governed like an episode of Sweet Sixteen or Bridezilla, and a Federal government controlled by a Republican if (and, let’s be honest, when) systematic irregularities get discovered. Hope that helps.

If I got something wrong – meaning “factually in error”, not “not the way I want it” – leave a comment.

[1] Not the media. Good lord, no. Side note: you don’t hate the media enough.

[2] Also illegal – the seat wasn’t vacant until, legally, today. That’s when the clock is supposed to start. But to the DFL, laws are for peasants.

MN House livestream:

What do you suppose the odd are – a bunch of people chanting in the hallway. 

UPDATE 12:30PM:   Simon adjourned the house – and the separation of powers between the Executive and Legislative branches. 

12: 31 PM.  The House just ruled the Secretary of State out of order, and is re-convening. 

WCCO-TV “political reporter” Caroline Cummings appears to be setting up to replace Esme Murphy one day. 

Her reporting on the constitutional crisis brewing tomorrow might be a little more curious than your typical Esme Murphy tongue-bath for Democrats.

But not by much.

Of course, Steve Simon’s opinion is about as useful as being able to tie a cherry stem with h is tongue – Minnesota statute is modestly clear about what the actual quorum is.

When your Democrat friends ask what the GOP thinks their legal leg to stand on is, send them this:

Or, in the words of Minnesota’s last good SOS:

And the constitutions of both Minnesota and the United States are pretty clear about the notion of separation of powers. The executive branch doesn’t control the legislative branch.

And I have a hunch the DFL knows it.

So – why is the DFL working so hard to trash the separation of powers?

I’ll drop a theory tomorrow morning. 

The GOP is showing up.

Le’ts see if the DFL can read the room.

UPDATE:  So, I started writing this piece on Saturday.

On Sunday, the DFL answered my final question:

No, they can not. 

The party that two months ago claimed “January 6” – a riot by a bunch of unelected civilians – was a threat to democracy.  Today, it’s an actual party, trying to act in its official capacity.

For my money, that’s a lot worse.

So with the session starting on Tuesday, let’s recap:

The DFL is threatening to boycott the session – but wants to get paid anyway. 

That might not work:

In response, the DFL is doing what it always does – gaslighting and deflecting:

I needed to respond:

My semi-fearless prediction – they’ll show up, get sworn in, and bolt. 

I may take the day off and bring popcorn to the Capitol.

Stipulated: the DFL is Minnesota’s abusive spouse. I

It’s in the phase of spousal abuse where the first round of resistance has led to an amping-up of the gaslighting and projection:

That, and their messaging can not be intended to influence anyone but the stupid, the ill-informed and the uncritical, can it?

“Losing the popular vote for the house?”  There is no “popular vote for the house”.  There 134 district elections – nothing more.  

And in one of those districts, neither the state DFL, nor the HD40B committee, nor the voters did their due diligence to find that their candidate was lying about living in the district.  

The DFL wants to use their “mistake” to deny representation to half the state.   

“Minnesotans voted for a tied house?”  No – but if you want to look at it that way, half of Minnesota voted for a GOP House.  And just under half of the state voted for a DFL House.  And one district voted for a liar, either with the connivance or via the incompetence of the state DFL.  

Why not “Share power”?

To paraphrase the great political sage Tim Walz, “when you have political capital, you use it”

The giggly fratboys of the DFL said that two years ago.  Today, the line has apparently changed to “we dont’ have any capital, and if you don’t lend us some ’til payday, we’re going to throw a tantrum”. 

And we may not be done:

Mohamed Jama, a potential top contender in a crowded special election to represent the safely Democratic district in northeast Minneapolis and Cedar-Riverside, likely does not meet the residency requirements according to state voter data.

Sonia Neculescu, a former DFL House candidate and resident of the district, filed a challenge to his candidacy with the state Supreme Court on Monday alleging Jama registered to vote on Election Day in neighboring Senate District 63 in November.

Under state law, candidates must live in the district they’re running to represent for at least six months prior to the election.

Jama did not immediately return a voicemail seeking comment.

 

Abby Wolters is running in 60B on the GOP side, after winning 30% of the vote at the U of M last November.  She could use your support. 

In the past week or two, we’ve seen:

• The HD54A recount in Shakopee, which showed DFLer Brad Tabke winning by 14 votes, with 30 ballots turning up missing, it seems they’ve found a significant number of duplicate votes. Any guesses who they voted for?
• In the HD40B, Curtis Johnson’s election was erased. The DFL is trying to jam down a special election, even though state statute says the seat needs to be vacant – which is won’t be until January 14, when the new legislature gets sworn in. It’s still Jamie Becker-Finn’s seat. (Note to Rep. Becker-Finn: drapes don’t have shoes).
• In SD 50, where former Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic died, Governor Klink jammed down a special election on January 14 – including a one day filing window, on New Years Eve. For a seat the DFL considers their property, they have to try to squeeze out any competition.

In the 1960s, when Democrat-run states in the deep south were found to have gamed the election rules to keep minorities from the polls, the Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations stepped in and put most southern states under consent decrees, requiring them to report to the Department of Justice to ensure their elections were fair and unbiased.

Maybe it’s time for Trump’s DOJ to do the same in Minnesota.

After six years in office, four of them plagued with massive scandals including the largest Covid-aid scandal in the US, in absolute numbers (forget about per-capita), Governor Walz is swinging into action!

For those unfamiliar with government – say, who never watched “Schoolhouse Rock” as children – the Governor is in charge of the executive branch of state government.

Which means it’s his job to enforce the laws of the state, along with the rest of the executive branch. It’s literally one of duties, defined in the state’s Constitution.   He’s supposed to be aided by the Attorney General, who is the state’s lawyer, and the State Auditor, ostensibly the state’s bookkeeper.  Walz, Keith Ellison and Julie Blaha already have not only the power, but the duty to be dealing with the fraud that happened on their watch.

And fraud is already illegal.   There is literally a law for that, as evidence by the fact that the Department of Justice is currently prosecuting Minnesota fraud cases. 

The only need for a “legislative package” is to try to deflect some responsibility for the feeding frenzy of this past four years to the newly (and temporarily) GOP-controlled House of Representatives, and evade his and the MNDFL’s culpablity for the four years the Governor spent taking selfies eating Pronto Pups and standing by liked a hog that’d been smacked on the head with a hammer as his voters looted and pillaged a billion dollars or more from the state treasury.

The media will try to help him with this evasion.

And if the “conservative media” in this state ever had a mission in life, making sure they can’t enable that evasion is it. 

As we careen toward a special election in a likely-illegal-but-what-are-ya-gonna-do-about-it-huh two weeks in Senate District 60, it’s worth taking a moment to remember this bit of actual reporting from almost exactly a year ago:

And to ask yet again – if the DFL runs roughshod over due electoral process in their own party, why do we believe they do any better in the city they proudly say they own?

The below is an update of a piece I first wrote almost five years ago. It was at that moment about the time when people – smart people, anyway – were starting to realize that Covid wasn’t the new Bubonic Plague, that the sky was not falling, and that whatever “model” Governor Klink was reading that was predicting 70,000 deaths in Minnesota alone by mid-July of 2020, and 20,000 dead as a best case if they shut the state down completely, was perhaps…wrong.

I was looking at the gutting of civil and religious freedom that Minnesotans had countenanced – perhaps more or less voluntarily in March,

Next week, Big Left will go through what’s become an annual orgy of celebrating what’s become their secular holiday, January 6.

Governor Klink took a break from his regimen of selfies of him being fed donuts by Co-Governor Flanagan to have his social media intern blurt this out:

The DFL, likewise:

So – a 2.5. years after Governor Klink reluctantly gave up his “emergency powers”, and two months after his risible run for Vice President, and after four years of Joe Biden serving as the doddering mouthpiece for Barack Obama’s third term as the greatest stealth authoritarian since Woodrow Wilson, let’s take stock of the state of “democracy”, in Minnesota and nationwide.

One of the obligations of a free people – and especially of a free people that wants to stay that way – is to push back when government overreaches. Not just in emergencies (although that was the initial subject of the original post), but always, on every facet of liberty. Conservatism holds that order and liberty exist in a constant state of tension; without order (or health) prosperity is impossible; without health, freedom is academic (subsistence farmers don’t have time to petition for redress of grievances); without freedom, order is onerous and, let’s be honest, prosperity is most likely concentrated among those keeping the order.

Three years ago, I said that Government power is like a handgun – sometimes, a necessary tool in extreme circumstances, under terms that are as strictly circumscribed as any rule on justifiable use of lethal force. And like any necessary tool, free people need to make sure that the newbie isn’t sweeping people at the firing range with her hand on the trigger, and that government isn’t getting drunk and profligate with its use, or abuse of power.

Of course, four years later, it’s clear that the Biden and Walz regimes great government power less like a handgun on the nightstand, and more like a Reaper drone, orbiting loudly above everything, ready to strike arbitrarily and without a whole lot of reason or respect for the niceties of constitutional law.

Just as Governor Piglet’s administration used Covid as a pretext for seizing unprecedented arbitrary power, Democrats nationwide are waving “January 6” around like a bloody shirt, to try to justify their ravaging of the spirit and letter of AMerican democracy.

So lets list the outrages. Let me know what I’ve missed; I intend for this list to live on as long as needed:

Life and Liberty

• The emergence of the crypto-Maoist “Democratic Socialists of America” as the most powerful bloc in the Democrat party nationwide, and even moreso of the DFL – as both parties arrogate more power, wealth (transferred from taxpayers)
• The multi-pronged bringing to heel of the education system, from pre-school through the post-doctoral level, is “the long game” in attacking not just liberty, but the entire underpinning of Western Civilization. Creating a generation of ignorant droogs who think “freedom” is just material satiety is both a key goal of those who’d gut the American experiment and, seemingly, a long way toward being accomplished.

The Pursuit of Prosperity

Here, the DFL’s disdain for business and private property rears its head, above and beyond any actual response to the epidemic.

• The DFL “Trifecta” burned through nearly $18 Billion worth of “surplus”, every dime of which came from a taxpayer of some kind or another. That’s nearly $3,000 for every man, woman and child in Minnesota – nearly $12,000 for a typical family of four. In one year. And they raised taxes enough to cover that and a whole lot more. And given that the state is inevitably falling into deficit while the Democrats control the Legislature, it’s going to get much worse. That money would, in fact, be better employed by the people.
• As Governor Klink established during Covid, the right to transact business is clearly subject to arbitrary, and in some cases seemingly capricious, interference. Small businesses are shut down (as big ones, and business with more, better lobbyists remain open), in many cases without regard to the business’ actual susceptibility to the virus (lawn services? nd smoke shops aren’t. It’s best that your vices not be politically unfashionable.
• Looking a back at the concept of “Essential” and “Non-Essential” workers – designations determined almost entirely via the political expediency of the designations, and their importance to the lifestyle of the “Laptop class” workers who make up the political class – feels like staring into the soul of Orwell’s universe, even three years later.
• The government started by barring all evictions and foreclosures, and halting student loan payments. The Twin Cities governments have moved on to rent control – furthering the road to gutting the affordable rental market, and completely foreclosing the existence of the small landlords that used to provide most of the metro’s “affordable housing” – while the Biden regime tried to unilaterally wipe out personal obligations to private student loan lenders.

Government Transparency

• The DFL created a “Hate Speech Registry”. What’s in it? What’s it for? How do we see what, and who, is in it? For what purposes will it be used? The registry’s supporters couldn’t and wouldn’t answer questions. They just jammed it down.
• The Governor’s “Covid Snitch Line” showed us not only the DFL’s ability for setting up a Stasi-like network of informants, but how much they genuinely enjoy it.
• School boards around the state are gradually, and sometimes not so gradually, being turned into rubber-stamps for district administrators and the state department of Education.
• For years, people complained, legitimately, that most of the legislature’s big decisions were made by the Governor, the Senate Majority Leader and the Speaker of the House, operating behind closed doors. That was intolerable and stupid when there were opposing parties involved in those negotiations. Now that they’re all with the same party? While elections have consequences, this is pure authoritarianism.
• Covid-era restrictions on meetings have morphed, post-pandemic, into a glib disregard for state open meeting laws, which serve more as suggestions these days.

First Amendment

• The collaboration of Big Government, Big Tech, Big Media and the Big Left’s non-profit/industrial complex completely gutted free speech in time for the 2020 election. The vituperation of their response to Elon Musk buying Twitter tips the hand; the Axis of Authority really, really wants “free speech” to be more about crappy art than actually holding government accountable.
• And as Big Left endlessly drones on about the “Threat” of “endemic white supremacist terrorism” that we’ve been told for 15 years is everywhere, honest, one of these days now – the threat of being swatted, of crowds of professional protesters and rioters making your free exercise of too much inconvenient speech potentially dangerous is always there. The March 4, 2017 “Anti”-Fa attack on a Republican gathering at the MN Capitol rotunda (and the fact that Ramsey County’s “criminal justice” system did everything but take the “protesters” out for dinner to apologize for the inconvenience of being arrested) was a warning; shut up, or you just might get cut up. Democrats and the DFL are very aware of this, because that malevolent mass of wannabe thugs are their children, nephews, classmates.

Second Amendment

• While the Second Amendment community remains strong, and with the departure of Wayne LaPierre may get some of its teeth re-sharpened at the national level, the attacks on the law-abiding gun owner in Blue jurisdictions are increasing, unconscionable, and not consistent with “protecting democracy”. More below.

Fourth Amendment

• The surveillance state has gotten steadily worse.
• The presence of anonymous “snitch lines” – and especially “hate crime” lines, may not have led to any Fourth Amendment perversions of probable cause yet – but don’t bet against it.
• “Red Flag” laws have largely trashed the Fourth Amendment (more below).

Fifth Amendment

• With the courts pretty much closed your right to a speedy trial by an impartial jury is pretty much toast for the duration.
• Let’s not forget how the state gutted the justice system – including the rights of defendants to speedy drials, to face their accusers, and of their attorneys to effectively prepare cases – under the pretext of “public emergency restrictions”.

Privacy

• Among the many other depredations of Minnesota’s “red flag” law – “Mental Health” professionals are in fact now deputized to participate in the abuse of those laws. I’d say “consider the unintended consequences”, but I don’t think there’s anything “unintended” about them.
• Government used your cell data to track the effectiveness of social distancing. Think that genie’s going back in the bottle?

When Democrats refer to Republicans as “fascists”, it’s a Berg’s Seventh Law case. .

Earlier today we talked about the change in leads, and maybe fortunes, in the Minnesota House, thrown into chaos by the DFL’s hubris in Distict 40A.

Today, let’s look at the Senate.

The Senate wasn’t up for election this year – so they held on to the same one-vote lead they’ve had for the past two years – by the solitary dint of Nicole “The Ninja” Mitchell not leaving office after her arrest for burglary at the end of the last session.

And it’s no surprise – the DFL would ignore Ted Bundy if he was their whole lead, especially given the DFL’s losses in the House.

But then Senator Dziedzic died, last week.

Which leaves the Senate tied at 33-33, as long as Mitchell remains in office.

Mitchell will get forced out once her vote no longer matters, of course – and the DFL will likely win both special elections, barring a very unlikely swerve in either district.  And Governor Klink will be able to veto anything a temporary majority in both chambers sends to his desk. 

But this opportunity, such as it is, must not go to waste. 

So, last week was a big week. A good one, by Minnesota Republican standards. For the DFL, less so.

Both chambers of of the Minnesota legislature flipped to “tied” last week – one by via human tragedy, and one by hubris and stupidity.

Let’s talk stupidity and hubris first.

The House

As we noted last week, the election in House District 40B got thrown out by a Ramco Judge – DFLer Julian Castro – because the DFL winner, Curtis Johnson, hadn’t lived in the district the required six months.

Naturally, it took his GOP opponent and his supporters to dig up the information that went to trial – God knows the media isn’t going to do it. But the locals did prevail. Johnson is out.

Which, including the still-disputed 54A race, leaves the GOP one vote ahead as the session looms. Which means a GOP speaker of the House – a much better speedbump on DFL control than the “shared power” arrangement people were talking about last week.

Or it will, if the DFL can’t figure out a way to juke the rules in their favor. Which is exactly what they’re going to try to do.

On Friday, Johnson A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

On Friday, Johnson announced he was opening the way to a special election to fill the 40B seat by “resigning“:

A DFL state representative-elect said Friday he will not appeal a judge’s ruling that he is ineligible to hold the office because he did not meet residency requirements for the district.

In a letter to Gov. Tim Walz, Curtis Johnson said he has “made the difficult decision not to accept my seat in the Minnesota House of Representatives and to resign from the Office of State Representative effective immediately and irrevocably.”

Which is great – except the couldn’t resign. He was never in the office – it’s still Becker-Finn’s seat, and Johnson’s election was voided by the court.

Pretty Vacant

And the word “vacancy” has a statutory definition:

Which didn’t stop Governor Walz from declaring a special election on January 24.

Now, I’m no lawyer, but Johnson’s not the incumbent – Becker-Finn is.

So trying to jam down a special election is against the law:

But there is no vacancy, so (as I, and I suspect Mr. Hansen, and presumptive-Speaker Demuth) see it), the governor doesn’t get to call the special election until 22 days after Johnson isn’t sworn in, on January 14, the first day of session.

So with the House tied at 67-67 after the election, and the 54A seat in Shakopee still in court, this gives the GOP a 67-66 lead in the House, and the potential of picking up the 54A (and refusing to seat Brad Tabke until the issue is resolved in court).

I say it’s time for some intransigence.

Let’s talk about the Senate later today. 

Former Minnesota Senate Majority Leader Kari Dziedzic passed away last Friday after a protracted battle with cancer.  She was 62.

“Senator Kari Dziedzic was a passionate legislator, a respected leader, and a trusted colleague and friend. She will be remembered for her integrity and her compassion for Minnesotans, something that we all saw as she continued to serve even as she battled cancer,” said Senate Minority Leader Mark Johnson, an East Grand Forks Republican. “I’m deeply saddened at her passing and am praying for her family and friends as we all mourn this loss.”

She was the daughter of former City Councilmember Walt Dziedzic, who may have been the last genuine union moderate in Minneapolis politics.

Prayers and condolences to the Senator’s family. 

Her passing, along with other recent events, put the DFL in a bit of a bind – but I won’t pollute an obit with that. 

SCENE:   Former Governor Mark DAYTON’s house, on Lake Minnetonka [1].  

He’s sitting in his bathrobe and slippers by a roaring fire, reading the Strib. His wife , Ana ORKE-DAYTON, enters the room.

ORKE-DAYTON:  I’m taking a stack of credit cards and taking the Porsche to the Galleria.

DAYTON:   Mpfmbfh. 

ORKE-DAYTON leaves, as DAYTON’s eye alights on a news item:

U.S. Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth, has missed votes in Congress and has been “having some dementia issues late in the year,” her son told The Dallas Morning News. Granger, 81, last cast a vote on the morning of July 24…The congresswoman now resides in a Fort Worth senior living facility called Tradition Senior Living. There are two locations on the same property, but Brandon Granger confirmed it is not the memory care facility, as some media outlets have reported. Granger said his mother is staying in the independent living facility to be around other seniors.

DAYTON: (Thinking to self) Huh. I wonder what the statute of limitations is on pretending to be in office?

And SCENE

[1] I have no idea where he lives. It’s gotta be Minnetonka, right?

A Ramsey County judge has tossed out the election of DFLer Curtis Johnson:

Ramsey County District Judge Leonardo Castro issued an order granting an election challenge against Curtis Johnson, determining he didn’t live in the Roseville area district he sought to represent for the time required in state law. 

Johnson’s Republican challenger, Paul Wikstrom, sought the ruling after he and supporters gathered surveillance video and photos that aimed to show Johnson did not reside in the apartment he claimed to inhabit during the campaign.

The Minnesota Constitution spells out that a candidate must live in the state for one year prior to the election and in the district they hope to represent for six months ahead of the election.

 

This gives the MNGOP a one-vote lead in the House. The “trifecta” was dead even with 67-67 tie – tie votes are defeated.

But this means the Speaker will be a Republican, not some jury-rigged power-sharing arrangement.

I strongly urge the GOP to do to the DFL what John Bonham did to hotel rooms. 

You’re Tim Walz.

You just called half of your state “Nazis” and “Fascists”. 

How do you try to make up for that?

The same way you always did:

The same way he’s done everything; an endless ooze of food selfies, social media strawmen and intellectual Cream of Wheat.

So, here’s a picture of Governor Walz with Lt. Governor Flanagan, taken back during the “trifecta”.

She was inescapable. She was in every photo with Walz. Her name may have been more prominent on their campaign signs.

The media actively dolled her up:

The camera and their photo selection didn’t do half bad by her.

At times it seemed as if the local media were just as much her PR firm as Walz’s. 

And now – this:

And this:

That – combined with the Rochelle Olson/Ryan Faircloth piece we talked about earlier – makes it look like Walz is trying to distance himself from Flanagan.

Why?

Because polling isn’t showing “DSA whackjobbery” is doing well?

Or because they’re both going to be running for Governor?

Tim Walz is back

And he’s pissed. 

It seems a bit of a squabble has broken out between his camp and Lt Governor Flanagan‘s:

Walz was asked in a recent interview if there was tension when he returned given Flanagan would have succeeded him as governor if the Harris ticket had won.

“No,” Walz responded. “There would be time to figure out all that afterwards. I was solely focused on making sure the state of Minnesota was going, we were getting things done. The lieutenant governor was here doing the work that she needed to do, reaching out to community.”

Others who spoke on condition of anonymity said the Walz team was not pleased at steps Flanagan had taken to assume the governorship, conferring with potential key hires and preparing for a possible run herself in 2026. “If the people of Minnesota want me to continue to serve, I am absolutely open to that,” Flanagan said at the State Fair in August.

The Walz camp was especially irked because Flanagan had tapped Walz’s gubernatorial campaign fund without authorization for some work, multiple sources said.

Walz is claiming to know nothing, NOTHing, about the matter. But I’m not the only one thinking something’s amiss:

Steven Schier, Carleton College political science professor emeritus, said it’s not uncommon in Minnesota for the governor and lieutenant governor to maintain a distance from each other. “What is notable are the timing of this and the apparent reasons for it,” Schier said. “Peggy Flanagan and Walz were joined at the hip for six years and now they seem separated by their individual ambitions.”

Joined at the hip is an understatement. I rarely recall seeing Lieutenant Governors consistently appearing with the Governor before Walz. One rarely saw Tina Smith or Mae Schunk or Joan Growe outside the odd campaign event or the State of the State.

But Flanagan was in every photo this past six years.  They had hundreds of shots of the two of them cavorting about the Fair, her feeding him corn dogs and playing fetch with him.  Her name was arguably more prominent than his on their campaign signs:

And the optics – literally – are absolutely strange on this.

More later today. 

Governor Klink – who two years before had arrogated emergency powers that Francisco Franco would have envied, who sicced the Attorney General on anyone who defied him – as the trifecta started marauding: “You got political capital, you gotta use it”.

Two years later and facing two years of tie votes in the House: “I hear NOTH-ing! I see NOTH-ing”:

But wait – it gets worse.  

You may think this is just a matter of the Governor and his media noise machine working to transfer the DFL’s little massive fraud problem to the House, abetted by the DFL’s noise machine and the subservient media. 

And you’d be partly right. 

But it’s worse than that:

That’s right – the governor who arroraged to himself the power to cancel Thanksgiving, to pack nursing homes with sick people, and to sort Minnesotans into “essential” and “nonessential”, apparently gave away the power to actually control his own executive branch. 

Looking to get someone to explain this madness on the show after Christmas.