On January 6 a bunch of idiot rioters tried to hijack the Constitutional process for transferring power. And they failed; the process in the Constitution prevailed and, hysterics and partisan hyperbole side, succeeded fairly easily.

On January 24, at the behest of 66 petulant ninnies, seven partisans in goofy robes ruled that the legislature reports to the court on matters of its own organization; that despite the plain text of the Minnesota Constitution, a quorum is a majority of *chairs*, not the people sitting in them.

It’s almost makes comical sense for the party that thinks guns magically shoot people, and that sex is ephemeral,, and that “you can keep your doctor” means you lose your doctor,  to rule that inanimate chairs, not the peole in them, are the part of a legislature that really matters.

But the laughing stops – if you care about the Constitutional order, which apparently not a single DFLer does – when you realize this decision means the Legislature reports to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

Orwell and Solzhenitzyn showed us what happens when the only objective reality is getting and holding power. Y’see, that’s the problem with democracy – everyone has to agree to the basic terms. The DFL in all three branches showed they don’t, in as many words.

(There are no doubt some in the audience who’ll say “I bet you wouldn’t be saying this if the roles were reversed!”. I most certainly would. But it’s academic, because no Republican-run institutions have ever gutted the Constitutional separation of powers quite this brazenly. ).

Berg’s Seventh Law has been getting a workout this week.

For starters – as I pointed out all through the run-up to the election – the Democrats and DFL jabbered relentlessly about voting to “save democracy”, while promising to gut free speech, freedom of conscience, the right to self-defense, privacy and separation of powers.

And perhaps it’s good news for 2026 that they seem to have learned nothing:

In the meantime, notwithstanding the 16 years of babbling about “impending waves of right-wing violence”, it is inevitably the left that leans into it:

I’ve been a Trump skeptic all along.  But if I’d known that Trump’s win eight years ago were going to bring out Big Left’s true inner nature this hard, I might have opened my mind up a little earlier. 

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:

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. 

Today, for the first time in history, I can say “I’m looking forward to watching the first day of the new Legislative session”.   As in, watching the livestream to see the fireworks or even better lack of them as the DFL takes their toys and flees. 

Since Melissa Hortmans stunts…

…appear to be landing like the concept of “Vice President Walz”, and she doesn’t dare back down now, I have to figure she’s gotta find some way to double down and to avoid losing face.

And I have a hunch “losing face” is the most charitable interpretation; I have a hunch the DFL’s panic has more to do with “GOP control of committees and the power to hold public hearings when they start investigating DFL fraud” than quora. 

Anyway – I’ll be tuning in.

A bit of trivia, here. 

In 2003, when the Legislature passed “Shall Issue” reform, the law required the state to honor carry permits in all state and municipal government buildings. 

But there was one big exception.

The Minnesota Judicial Branch chimed in and said, in effect, that the Legislature couldn’t tell the Judicial Branch how to run its facilities.  It was part of the separation of powers in state, as well as federal, government. 

And so being caught with a permitted firearm in a building with a courtroom or Judicial Branch facility, no matter how deviously concealed, can still get you rung up for a felony in Minnesota. 

Because Judicial Branch.

One of the predicates for the state’s current constitutional crisis is the contested election in House District 54A between Republican Aaron Paul and DFL incumbent Brad Tabke.  Tabke won the initial round of voting by a 14 vote margin – but 20 ballots were “inadvertently” destroyed, and 30 more were duplicates, and you know f****ng well who those “mistakes” benefitted.

Now, Tabke was one of the DFL legislators “sworn in” at the covert “ceremony” at the History Center over the weekend. Which is getting a bit ahead of Judge Perzel.

And Aaron Paul knows it:

This is certainly a challenge to the authority of the Judicial Branch.

Here’s hoping Judge Perzell knows it as well as the rest of us do. 

Retired judge. 

Illegal “swearing in” (according to statute)

At the MN History Center – after hours.   So somehow they got into a closed building to have an extralegal ceremony with an inactive judge, former SCOM DFL steno Kevin Burke. 

And not a single DFLer has had the integrity to publicly go “uhhhh, let’s think about this, here…”

Half this state is governed by spoiled junior high kids with delusions of tyranny.

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.

Ken Martin is running for DNC Chair.

And on the surface, it’d appear that this tweet is peak irony:

But wait. 

As you read the thread, it becomes clear that it’s really more a matter of the Democrat leadership class being oblivious to the results of their own policies. 

The images coming from California are apocalyptic.  I’m not being hyperbolic.

Judge for yourself.

So in times like this, it’s good to know our “elites” have the right perpective.

Also: Karma’s a Mitch:

Wait’ll they learn what FEMA did with all that money…

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. 

Merry January 6!

It’s one of modern progressivism’s high holy days – along with Roemas, May Day and Feast of the Entitlements. 

Have a blessed January 6!

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. .

You know who I’m talking about – the young humanities major at your job; the know-it-all lady witih ELCA hair in the PTA; the angry young relative who deigns to grace you with her presence at holiday dinners anyway.

This one goes out to you.  Use it wisely. 

Reasons American healthcare is expensive:

6. American pharmaceutical and device research and development can’t recoup costs overseas, due to rigid price controls in “single payer” healthcare systems (ironically making all “single payer” systems in effect dual payer systems).

5. Healthcare costs track gross incomes, worldwide. The inflation curve for healthcare is largely the same as the growth in a nation’s standard of living, whether it’s the US, Taiwan or Norway.

4. Americans are terrible drivers.

3. Americans are disproportionally very overweight.

2. As most Americans work during their prime earning years, older folks that used to stay with family in their 80s and 90s are now in assisted living, skilled nursing and memory care.

1. The “Affordable Care Act”, and the serial waves of government intervention that came before, stuffed a gob of unfunded mandates onto insurers.

Reasons American healthcare is expensive:

5. Healthcare costs track gross incomes, worldwide. The inflation curve for healthcare is largely the same as the growth in a nation’s standard of living, whether it’s the US, Taiwan or Norway.

4. Americans are terrible drivers.

3. Americans are disproportionally very overweight.

2. As most Americans work during their prime earning years, older folks that used to stay with family in their 80s and 90s are now in assisted living, skilled nursing and memory care.

1. The “Affordable Care Act”, and the serial waves of government intervention that came before, stuffed a gob of unfunded mandates onto insurers.

Not reasons that American healthcare is so expensive:

2. Greed.

1. Upper middle dilettantes haven’t shot enough CEOs.

Hope that settles that.

2. Greed.

1. Upper middle dilettantes haven’t shot enough CEOs.

Hope that settles that.

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. 

“Life is full of ironies – if you’re stupid”
 — PJ O’Rourke

Remember 2010-2012?   When Democrats snarled that there was no way, no how that there were “death panels” buried in Obamacare?

And those of us with some experience in the healthcare industry responded “of course, there are, and have been ever since government poked its nose into controlling the healthcare system”?

The “people” jumping for joy over the murder of Brian Thompson for running a company that administers the metaphorical institutional “death panel”, exacty as foretold, are the same class of gerbils who said that was no way, no how anything Obamacare was about. Ever!

Am I the only one that heard about Taylor Lorenz’s “Joy” at the murder of Brian Thompson…

…and thought “that certainly puts a new spin on the Harris campaign’s theme?”

• Freedom is slavery?
• 2+2=5?
• Murder is joy?

One “joy” I try to deny myself is excessive schadenfreud. Pinky swear.

But I’ll confess, I feel quite a bit of it seeing Lorenz’s sociopathic level of self-unawareness splashed about the place:

Less schadenfreud, Mitch.  Less schadenfreud. 

They warned us that if we voted Republican, extremists would roam the streets murdering their enemies, as their fellow extremist droogs rejoiced.

And they were right.

The meme has traveled about that UHG denies claims at double the national average. That may be true, and that may be utterly without context, and neither I nor the gerbils posting the memes know one way or the other.

Of course, most of the people rejoicing (not exaggerating) Thompson’s murder do it by way of saying it’s high time we adopt “single payer” government healthcare.

Of course, if they think a UHG denial causes problems, wait’ll they get a load of the “cost cutting” measures single-payer systems are moving into.

I consider Dennis Prager, if not a friend in the classic sense, at least a good acquaintance.

Most decent people wish him all the best in his apparently extended recovery.  If your worldview calls for prayers, they’re being welcomed.

I specified “decent” people because…

…well…

Lakeville schools’ response was predictable enough:

Alpha News contacted District 196 for a response, and Communications Director Janet Swiecichowski provided the following statement:

“District 196 is aware of the post. The employee’s post does not reflect the values or opinions of the district. The district is reviewing the matter, but we cannot comment on personnel matters.”

Now, I’m not one of those people who tries to destroy the lives of disagreeable, venal people.  I don’t want her getting fired – partly because that’s kinda bitchy, and partly because there’s some moral symmetry to the social consequences that should follow this sort of tantrum. 

I love dishing up those consequences, personally. 

While this is good – and expected – news, I feel a little cheated.

Companies are ditching DEI because it’s bad for the bottom line; they can practice equality without flogging “equity”. 

But notice how it’s framed: “under pressure from conservative activists”. 

I mean, if you’re going to “blame” companies’ rediscovering economic and social sanity on people like me, and least call it “pouncing”, for fox’s sake.

…is that not only can you “appropriate” an indigenous culture to your rhetorical ends,  you can agglomerate indigenous cultures together into whatever custom mix you want to make whatever “point” you please.

For example, the term “Latinx”, which purports to consolidate widely disparate cultures (Puerto Rico has little in common with Central America, and less with Argentina and Chile).

Another example:  Er…

…this:

Perhaps the Maori of New Zealand might want to do something to nip this in the bud before white progressive women drag their culture over the shark with them?

Governor Walz on Twitter, over the weekend:

Lt. Governor Flanagan, who uses her Native heritage like Walz uses plaid shirts:

That might explain them missing this bit of news:

The shift is striking because a Brookings Institution analysis published after the 2022 midterm elections found Native Americans still “solidly Democratic in their voting preferences.” Looking at data from an African American Research Collaborative poll with a nationally representative sample of Native American voters, the Brookings authors noted that in “House races across the country, Native Americans supported Democratic candidates at 56% relative to 40% of Native Americans who reported voting for Republicans.”

Seventeen counties with majority-Native American populations swung toward President-elect Donald Trump by ten or more percentage points. Just as with black and Hispanic voters, Native Americans had concerns that extended beyond the identity politics and left-wing virtue signaling of Democrats and the Kamala Harris campaign. Nationally, a whopping 65 percent of Native American voters went for Trump.

Apparently “stolen land declarations” aren’t as important as a decent economy and, perhaps, taming of the federal bureaucracy that’s sandbagged so much of Native American society.

Either way, I suspect if any more elections go like this, Prog politicians will stop “celebrating” Native American month, and you’ll start to see Sunny Hostin calling them “Native White Supremacists”.

To:  “Prez”, Dim Little Progressive Social Media Bulb
From:  Mitch Berg, obstreporous peasant who passed Econ 201
Re:  Not The “Own” You Think It Is

“Prez”,

Re your sentiment expressed over the weekend:

I mean, saving more money is good for you – might make you a conservative, eventually, actually.  

And unless you save that money in a coffee can in your closet, it’ll go to a bank, which’ll circulate the money around, further helping those who are participating in the economy to grow things. 

Not sure that’s quite the “own” you think it is. 

Even less so than dumping Twitter to join “BlueSky”, really.

That is all.

OK, so moving to Canada after threatening it over and over again may be a bit much. 

But changing social media platforms (after two years of threatening)?  That’s a little more doable. 

Last week a friend of the blog emailed:

Blue sky app. Looks and works pretty much like X. Their world views are safe there. They speak very freely again which is good humor. Just search your favorite MN media person they are there. No invite needed.

The FotB was referring to BlueSky – which is basically “X” but an echo chamber for the left.

Y’know – Jack Dorsey’s original vision for Twitter, before being foiled by Elon Musk.

And today:

One week on Blue sky and they really have posted nothing revelant. 

Lots of angry libs

I’m missing a party with both the formerly cool but recently genocidal Bob Collins and Kate Knuth?

I may need to take the weekend to grieve. 

Last night, someone on social media had a slightly different angle on the weekend rally featuring Governor Walz. 

Earlier in his failed VP bid, he said “to some people, “socialism” is just neighborliness“.

And over the weekend, the guy who called over half the nation “Nazis” hopes we can look at each other as neighbors.

So apparently his goal is to come back to Minnesota, take your stuff, and put you in a camp?