Seems like barely two weeks ago that a couple of “transgender women” claimed they’d been attacked at a rail station in downtown Minneapolis (aka “MAGA Country”) as a bunch of people cheered.

I pointed out at the time the story seemed…implausible? A heavily-surveiled place in a leftist city – is this ringing any bells?

CrimeWatch is among the groups that are proving Elon Musk right in declaring the MSM dead.  And as usual, they’ve got the actual story; the video. It’s a short thread:

The bigger the hype of the reveal, the bigger the flop it turns out to be. Never fails.

“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!

1. Create a problem:

2. Keep on letting it stew. Let the “steam” build:

3. Go “I’m shocked, shocked that there’s a crime problem!

4. “Ride to the rescue” with a meaningless band-aid that doesn’t come close to addressing the cultural crisis you, yourselves, fomented:

Of course I’m not the first or only one to notice this:

Apparently “chaos” and “crime” aren’t polling well enough to overcome the loss of the ‘Trifecta’.

Fun Fact #2:   The people angry about that insurance companies – UHG today, but surely all the other ones before long – want to force you onto national health insurance, which doesn’t “deny claims” so much as stall, ration and – well, deny treatment, and are actively exploring (and in some cases have arrived at) “euthanasia”, sometimes without asking any kind of consent at all, and above whom there is nobody to appeal.

Did I say “fun”? I meant “illustrative”.

Luigi Mangione has been “questioned” in the murder of Brian Thompson.

“They also recovered clothing, including a mask consistent with those worn by our wanted individual,” Tisch said. “Also recovered was a fraudulent New Jersey ID matching the ID our suspect used to check into his New York City hostel before the shooting incident.”

Citing a law enforcement official, The Associated Press reported that along with the gun, authorities also found a silencer, fake IDs and writings that appeared to be critical of the health insurance industry, according to the law enforcement official.

The NYPD is sending detectives to Pennsylvania to question the person taken into custody.

His name only sounds like a character in Goodfellas:

Mangione was valedictorian of the Class of 2016 at the Gilman School, and he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. His family owns Turf Valley and Hayfields Country Club, NBC News confirmed.

This one goes out to all the social media detectives who solemnly swore he had to be a professional assassin, who was using a “Welrod” (a purpose-built silenced assassins firearm built for the CIA or MI5 or some such), and that he was just too L3Et to ever get caught.

If he’s the suspect, natch.

While we don’t know a lot more than that at the moment, I’m going to make a few fearless preditions:

• Like most radicals, he’s a little upper middle class prick who got radicalized at school.
• He’ll be lionized as a folk hero on the left.

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.

The DFL, 20-odd months ago:

Unless they’re Hunter Biden (starting just before “The Big Guy” started getting his cut from Burisma, and ending midnight Sunday).

Or Nicole Mitchell.

Or Judd Hoff.

Or Julie Blaha.

Or a whole lot of “Feeding our Future”, Childcare or Medicare fraudsters. 

Other than them, nobody’s above the law.

And Keith Ellison.  And probably Ilhan Omar. 

OK.  Now nobody’s above the law. 

Oh, Hillary Clinton!

OK. Now nobody is…

Two “transgender women” were assaulted in downtown Minneapolis.

No, really.  At 5th and Hennepin.  

No, they weren’t (apparently) going out looking for Subway. But the story is…

..well, I’ll let the Cheerleaders on Four pick up the story:

The incident happened Nov. 10 at Hennepin Avenue and Fifth Street in downtown Minneapolis. It’s where community members gathered for a rally Sunday afternoon, one week since the attack. 

Amber Muhm, a community leader with Trans Movement for Liberation, said the two trans women were attacked by a group of men at the light rail station after one of the men used transphobic slurs.

“No one came to help them. In fact, they said people were cheering the attackers on while they were getting beaten,” Muhm said.

She said the attack left one of them with a broken nose. Minneapolis police confirmed they are investigating the incident, but as of Sunday night, no one has been arrested. 

 

So – 5th and Hennepin, you say?

One of the busiest rail stops in the city? 

With a crowd of cheering onlookers – presumably on the surveillance cameras that are all over the place down there?

Not saying Berg’s 20th Law is the governing statute here, but…

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

Biden administration undercounting murders, revising history, setting the stage for a “murder surge” when Trump takes office and murders are honestly reported.

Joe Doakes

 

Let’s not think for a moment that Big Left is giving up after the November 5 landslide.

Remember Angie Craig?

Every two years she dusts off the ads with her four-wheeling around the back roads of her district, hanging out with the good ol’ boys in LeSeuer County, trying to appear “moderate”. 

Remember Yusuf Haji? 

Probably not.  He’s running for Dakota County Commission. 

Seems pretty innocent, right?

Turns out Haji’s got friends in low – and left-wing – places:

Turns out, not so much.

Haji is affiliated with “Our Revolution Twin Cities” – a group that wants to defund the police, among a dog’s breakfast of other bad ideas. Here’s an X thread with more on ORTC.

MInd you, this is in the same community that just had two cops and a firefighter killed by someone who would have been in jail but for the DFL’s other dilution of the criminal justice system.

Thing is, this area – the DakCo Commission, the various House districts (Gabriela Kroetsch is a strong GOP challenger in HD55A), and of course Angie Craig is vulnerable enough that this district is considered a plausibly contested race. 

So if you live in the south burbs, don’t be fooled.  Haji is a Moriarty – and Angie Craig is sucking up to the radical fringe that is no longer a fringe in this metro.

Every day is an opportunity for some new kind of social services fraud.

Medicare?  Food? Childcare? 

Old hat!

Now it’s “Autism treatment centers“:

“I and other former employees witnessed some neglect regarding clients’ education needs and self-care. The clients’ goals aren’t being run by the behavioral therapist there,” she told DHS, which administers Minnesota’s version of Medicaid, known here as Medical Assistance, a federal-state health plan for poor and disabled people.

Smart Therapy did not respond to a request for comment. 

The state is investigating 15 autism providers, has already withheld payments to providers and forwarded five to Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison. Although the identities of the centers are unknown, an immigrant autism provider complained that DHS discriminates against minority providers.

The autism investigation comes close on the heels of the Feeding Our Future scandal, which is believed to be the biggest pandemic relief fraud in the nation and has underscored state government’s failure to stop program fraud in recent years. 

 

Autism centers are – this beggars the imagination – not licensed in Minnesota, a state that requires a license to braid hair.  But unlike hair braiding (as far as I know), there’s a ton of government money going into “Autism Treatment” and, well, we know how that ends up in Tim Walz’s Minnesota, don’t we?

Another assassination attempt on Trump yesterday. 

Donald Trump was the target of what the FBI said “appears to be an attempted assassination” at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, just nine weeks after the Republican presidential nominee survived another attempt on his life. The former president said he was safe and well, and authorities held a man in custody.

U.S. Secret Service agents stationed a few holes up from where Trump was playing noticed the muzzle of an AK-style rifle sticking through the shrubbery that lines the course, roughly 400 yards away.

 

Looks like eight years of “denormalizing Trump” is bearing fruit.

Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since Guy Harvey Baker – a Gulf War Marine veteran with, clearly, mental illness issues – killed officers Ron Ryan, Tim Jones, and a police dog named Laser (story from 2014).

The PiPress had a fairly good retrospective of the events – with one crucial omission:   

Ryan, 26, was checking on a man — Guy Harvey Baker — who was sleeping in a car in a parking lot at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood about 7 a.

He picked up a .38-caliber revolver from his lap and shot Ryan.

Scores of officers joined the search for Ryan’s killer. Jones had the day off, but he came in to help.

Laser picked up Baker’s trail about 10 a.m. on Conway Street, not far from Johnson Parkway.

Mara Gottfried’s story, ten years ago, was a good retelling.  But she leaves out how the police actually found Baker’s “trail” on Conway later that morning – and, in a way, the story of a man who is both the story’s unsung hero and third (human) victim.

Lyle Granlund – 48 years old, at the time – was having breakfast with his kids on the upper level of a three-plex he owned across from the parking lot.  One of his sons yelled that there’d been a shooting.  Granlund grabbed a handgun and loaded three rounds – all he could grab at the moment – and went to his window.  He saw officer Ryan on the ground, and saw Baker driving toward another woman, standing in the doorway of a nearby apartment building, apparently getting ready to rub out the only known witness to the shooting. 

Granlund – an expert marksman – pondered taking out Baker.  But he held up, worried that the Ramsey County attorney, the infamously anti-gun Tom Foley, would prosecute him.  So he opted to fire two shots through Baker’s back window, shattering it and leaving the rounds (intentionally) in Baker’s dashboard, to hopefully scare Baker off and mark the car for the police.  He saved his third round, in case Baker decided to come for him.  But no – Baker accelerated away from the scene of the Ryan shooting…

…and it was by the shattered window that the SPPD found Baker’s trail, a couple hours later, nearby on Conway Street.

I interviewed Granlund later that year, for the old Gun Owners Action League (a predecessor of GOCRA and MN Gun Owners Caucus) newsletter.  Granlund told me that while the SPPD remained officially mum about his contribution to that day’s search, more than one senior Saint Paul cop had come to his door in the following days, paying their respects to his effort to save their fellow officer.  A lieutenant left him his SPPD tie pin – a gesture that Granlund, in our interview, still found deeply touching.

I wrote about Granlund again, almost ten years ago, in a piece that includes a lot of useful background and  a link to a now-disappeared column by Ruben Rosario. 

 Granlund was right, of course; Foley did try to prosecute him.  Their attempt to get him for “reckless discharge” foundered when the police lab found Granlund’s two rounds exactly where he said they’d be in Baker’s car.  The Ramsey County Attorney’s office dropped its  attempt to prosecute Granlund only when the SPPD told Foley he’d get no cooperation from the police.  Someone listing himself as a retired SPPD cop tells the story in this thread. 

Oh yeah – and Granlund was denied a Minnesota carry permit; the SPPD that (quietly) regarded him as a hero also didn’t think he had any reason to need one. 

Gottfried picks up the story from 30 years ago today.

Baker heard the dog whining outside a fish house where he was hiding, saw Jones through the window and, through the side of the shack, shot the 36-year-old officer with the gun had stolen from Ryan. When Laser bit his leg, he shot the dog, too.

No prosecutor will ever issue an indictment, and no jury will ever hear the case – but in a very real if indirect way, Officer Jones was killed by official gun-control hysteria. 

The tragedy didn’t end that day.  When I spoke with Granlund, probably in September or October, he was clearly upset that he’d not been able to save Jones by killing Baker.  It went much deeper than that; Granlund spent the next ten years depressed about the episode.  He died in 2004 of a heart attack, at age 58, and is buried in the same cemetery as Officer Ryan. 

The lesson?  Let nobody tell you that an armed citizen can’t do immense good; one, and God only knows how many more, people are alive today because of Granlund’s action. 

And let no weasel government official get away with terrorizing the law-abiding citizen without a fight – preferably ending with a prosecutor sent to the unemployment line at the polls.

The families of the slain officers are the main focus of Gottfried’s story, of course.  I’ll urge prayers – or whatever your worldview does – for the families on what has to be a miserable anniversary.

This is an update of a piece that first appeared in SITD ten years ago today.

Judd Hoff is the DFL endorsed candidate running against Mary Franson in HD12B, the Alexandria area. 

He’s also a convicted felon, having threatened someone with a machete and served prison time. 

He’s also made a public display of stalking Rep. Franson, even moving in across the street from her to carry out his mania…

…against his opponent. 

And now:

Alexandria cops reportedly found hundreds of lawn signs – one supposes Franson signs – in his garage. 

Remember – they are the party calling Republicans “weird”.

Wonder if Mike McFeely will be contributing to Hoff’s defense fund?

Rochester DFLer Kim Hicks reports her home has been vandalized:

Representatives for Hicks confirmed with FOX 9 that on Aug. 3, political signs in her yard, plus the siding on her home and a shed on her property were all vandalized by the masked intruders.

“My family was a victim of racist vandalism at our home this weekend. It has been a difficult two days, but then our community showed up,” Rep. Hicks said as part of a statement. “My family felt so much love and support from our friends, neighbors, and even strangers who came to lend a hand.”

If true, then lets hope the masked (?) men are caught and prosecuted.

Now, just so we remember – Berg’s 20th Law reads:

All incidents of “hate speech” not captured on video (involving being delivered by someone proven not to be a ringer) shall be assumed to be hoaxes until proven otherwise.

 There’ve been so many blown-up hoaxes in Minnesota – especially, curiously, southern Minnesota – in recent years that you’d think even DFLers would realize it’s a bad idea. 

You’d also think they’d have known that breaking and entering and confessing to the crime on camera, or stalking your political opponents while having been convicted of attacking someone with a machete, or driving drunk with piles of edibles with loose ammunition for your service revolver strewn about your vehicle were all bad ideas, too.

Again – here’s hoping the vandals are caught.  The victim is a DFLer, so it could actually happen. 

British climate protesters who blocked the London beltway get seriously slammed in court:

Obstructing a highway is not simple political expression, and it is far from “peaceful protest.” It involves the physical obstruction of others’ freedom of movement. It is also disruptive and potentially tortious conduct that can have severe consequences. In this case, those seeking to “just stop oil” have done little to advance their cause (traffic congestion results in worse fuel economy and increases emissions), but and managed to cause significant harm to others. From the BBC report:

The action resulted in chaos on the M25 over four successive days, causing nearly 51,000 hours of driver delays, the court heard. The protests closed parts of the motorway in Kent, Surrey, Essex and Hertfordshire.

People missed flights, medical appointments and exams. Two lorries collided, and a police motorcyclist came off his bike during one of the protests on 9 November 2022 while trying to bring traffic to a halt in a “rolling road block”.

Prosecutors alleged the protests led to an economic cost of at least £765,000, while the cost to the Metropolitan Police was put at more than £1.1m.

The activsits and their allies also sought to disrupt the trial, but to no avail.

Wonder if Mary Moriarty is paying attention?

Henco attorney Mary Moriarty has established a “wrongful convictions” unit:

Moriarty – a former public defender – alleges that 5% of convictions in Henco are erroneous.

So – Hennepin County isn’t charging, or is grossly undercharging, all but the most egregiously, unavoidably and politically explosive cases, and is admitting that one out of every twenty convictions they did get were wrong?

Is there anything the Henco attorneys office does right?

It was just another day in the suburbs of Toronto, where gun control has solved all street crime:

I’d say “the prosecutor most likely charged the cameraman for photographing a license plate”, but I don’t want to give Mary Moriarty any ideas.

In the immediate aftermath of declaring that realizing the non-charges against Trooper Londregan were “anti-queer” (???), Henco Attorney Mary Moriarty tells us that all that talk about crime in her jurisdiction is fearmongery:

During a May 28 event, Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty explained she believes there’s an effort to cause the public to fear crime.

“Moderate Democrats have done a lot of work in making people afraid of downtown Minneapolis,” she said. “There is a concerted effort to make people afraid of crime.”

The conversation took place between Moriarty and Dr. T. Anansi Wilson, a Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor. The discussion centered around being “good trouble” and activism.

Quick – which “protected class” suffers least from society”s alleged intesectionalities – a lesbian county attorney or a black tenured law professor?

“Crime is down”

VIolent crime? In Minneapolis? Not as of yesterday, it isn’t:

This is the sort of thing they talk about inside the echo chamber:

She also discussed her advice for current law students, which was to ask more questions. “You talk about the rule of law, it’s like, what is that? I mean, I kind of wonder how anybody talks about the rule of law now. Wasn’t Roe v. Wade rule of law? I mean, what happened to that?” Moriarty said.

To the modern ultra left,

• “innocent until proven guilty” is “anti-queer”
• “democracy” is “getting what we want”
• “rule of law” is “making sure we get what we want”.

The only upside? If today’s generation of Henco voters actually do replace Moriarty, it’ll be with someone worse.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is waiting at a local bar for a small debate society. He’s reading the menu, and doesn’t notice Avery LIBRELLE has entered the bar, carrying a protest sign reading “Debate Is White Supremacy”. BERG doesn’t notice LIBRELLE – but LIBRELLE notices him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Ah, sssshhhhiiut the front door, it’s Ave…

LIBRELLE: Shut up. The verdict against Hunter Biden shows that we do not have a two-tiered justice system! Nobody is above the law!

BERG: Sure.

LIBRELLE: Hah. I thought you’d say…(stops) Er, what?

BERG: If you ignore the fact that the Department of Justice made a concerted effort to slow-walk the tax evasion and corruption allegations so that the statutes of limitations expired, especially on the allegations that could have led investigators to “the Big Guy”? Yeah. Perfectly just.

LIBRELLE: (Uneasily) Er…right. Right?

BERG: As far as you know, yes.

LIBRELLE: Whew. I thought so. (Walks away, waving sign and trying to disrupt the debate)

And SCENE

The city of Minneapolis just released the dispatch report re the Officer Jamal Mitchell shooting.

A good guy with a car [1] apparently rammed shooter Mustafa Mohammed, who was apparently attacking a bystander on a scooter, possibly breaking his leg and immobilizing him:

According to the Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD) report, before police arrived on the scene, the driver of a Subaru came across the Suspect, Mustafa Mohamed, outside the apartment where he’s reportedly just shot two people. 
ossibly breaking his leg.

The witness says after he hit him, Mohamed reached into his waistband and pulled out what was possibly a gun, and started firing. Police arrived shortly thereafter.

I’d bet a shiny new quarter Moriarty charges the good samaritan driver, but I don’t think anyone’ll take the bet.

[1] whose name is clearly visible in Fox9’s video on the story.

Berg’s 18th Law is still well in effect, and will be for another day or two.

But while no details have been released yet about the killer of Minneapolis officer Jamal Mitchell, I’ll wager a shiny new quarter that he/she:

• has a long rap sheet
• has multiple unprosecuted arrests in Hennepin County.
• Will have been prohibited from possessing firearms.
• when the above is made public, this case will disappear from the media.
• BLM will be utterly silent on the murder of a black cop.

Any action on that bet?

PS: It’s days like this I miss the “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence. By this time, she’d have already posted some bit of hilariously inappropriate and unjustifiable social media bilge that (further) humiliated her and her organization.

I miss the comic relief.

You get no prize for having figured out how this was going to develop.

Ken Martin demands the resignation of accused ninja burglar, constitutional law genius and state Senator Nicole Mitchell…:

…after she served her purpose in hanging onto the “trifecta” and helping jam down the DFL’s demented spending and social engineering spree.

Why yes, I’ll be bringing this up again between now and November.

Minneapolis is increasingly run by showy, shrill, demogogic “Democrats Socialists of America” radicals intent on rebuilding the city in their image.

Saint Paul, as long as I can recall but even moreso in the past 15 years has been run by an informal assembly of white NIMBYs from the various Parks (Highland, Merriam, Irvine, Saint Anthony) and Crocus Hill. They mostly bring ideals from the sixties and money from the fifties to the 2020s.

I’ve long joked about them – but darned if they aren’t generally just a tad less oppressive

I said “a tad”.

I did mention they are NIMBYs, right? These are the people who shut down the “Back to the Fifties” hot rod cruise on Snelling and University, because while they want all the amenities of living in a major city, they also want it to as quiet and placid as an Iowa pasture. They jammed down the city’s “Tony Soprano”-style trash collection system because they – who don’t apparently need to leave home much – got tired of hearing different trucks going through their alleys and down their streets every week. Given a choice between every other possible option willing to redevelop the old Snelling Bus Barn, they wanted a soccer stadium, and got…a soccer stadium (surrounded by a vast vacant field).

Crime – while significantly lower than Minneapolis, then and now – is a serious problem.

There’s a perception among some who don’t live here that people, especially business owners, are either OK with that, or helpless to fight it. Neither is true. For example, one property owner along University Avenue has taken to playing classical music, outdoors, on loudspeakers. It’s a measure that actually has an effect on crime where it’s been tried.

Which, for the NIMBYs, isn’t good enough, as a friend of the blog points out:

The Hamline Midway Facebook page was lit up with hyperbolic comments about the classical music coming from some parking lot, “it startled my cats!’ “it’s not good for the birds” “we have young kids” “those businesses are so rude”-

Turns out the decibel level was only 70. About as loud as a vacuum cleaner.

Did sound travel a bit with the wind, the air of the particular night? Possibly. Were the NIMBY neighbors likely piling on the hate and hyperbole because of who was playing the music and why? Most definitely.

No word yet on how many sleepless nights these very same neighbors have when some crazed homeless person is screaming through the night, or some gang banger is ghetto blasting the stereo, or any of the many other normally heard sounds way above 70 dbs in Hamline Midway. No, if anyone would be as hysteric over those noises, there’d be a slew of anger bestowed on that person. The rage would find its way to the poor soul’s boss and the person would be fired because who wants and angry mob screaming “fire the bigot” showing up at any business?

The path between dotty but well-connected Merriam Park biddies (aged 30-90) and policy in Saint Paul is short, paved better than any Saint Paul street, and has no bike lanes or speed bumps.

Just a quick point before we get started.

The “I’m just asking questions’ school of opinion journalism – whether Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson or anyone in between – is a particularly toxic practice. “Asking questions” that aren’t intended to elicit the truth is pointless at best; doing it as a substitute for seeking the truth or, worse, to deny or obfuscate it, is much worse.

We’ll come back to that.

The Premise: I try not to attach too much news significance to “features” columns. It’s entirely possible that columns like this Strib article from MPR alum Laura Yuen has no ulterior motives.

But go ahead and read it, and tell lme – if the piece were part of a DFL attempt to curry sympathy for Mitchell, to soften public attitudes as the DFL heads into an election with their House majority on the line behind a raft of legislation that may or may not have enduring popularity in the third and fourth tier suburbs, how woulld it be any different?

What Nicole Mitchell did is bizarre, tragic and unlawful, if the police narrative of her breaking into her stepmother’s home prevails. The state senator’s apparent failed heist of her father’s ashes and other belongings likely spells the end of her political career.

But the emotions behind it? I understand them.

In case that opening graf left you in doubt about Yuen’s sympathies, she follows with this list of center-left dog-whistles and signaled virtues:

Trauma after losing a loved one can make a person act out of character, if not out of their mind. An Air National Guard officer, former meteorologist, lawyer, single mom and staunch defender of children’s rights, this promising first-term DFL legislator had everything to lose.

The piece goes on to discuss the crazy things that follow from grief and, it needs to be said, family issues. It isn’t not worth a read, as far as that goes.

Stil – while nobody expects features columnists to be clinically detached – “journalistic” – about their subjects, I think it’s significant that Yuen buries the facts that Mitchell changed her story, not just under questioning but on social media, using her very large publid figure megaphone.

And then (emphasis added):

Until this point, Mitchell has always struck me as a superhuman, measured in both achievements and decency. (We both worked at MPR News, and I wrote a column about her and fellow meteorologist Rob Kupec after they were sworn into the Senate.) Mitchell might deserve a second chance in politics, but it would be easier to make that case if she apologized for the actions that led up to her arrest.

Hold onto that word, “Superhuman”.

Anyway – we’ve established grief can do crazy things to the psyche.

The Possible: And it’s not necessarily a features columnist’s job to examine all the other possibilities.

But since Yuen ends with a hypothetical…:

She could start by saying she’s in grief. That she’s embarrassed by what she’s done. That she’s going to step aside while she receives professional help to heal.

And as a culture, we need to allow for people to talk openly about debilitating grief, the kind that makes a hard-working, respected legislator risk it all when she acted on the worst decision of her life.

….so will I.

It’s possible that grief pushed Senator Mitchell past the bounds of normal behavior.

Also entirely possible: Yuen isn’t hte only one to think of Mitchell as “superhuman”.

Does Mitchell believe it herself?

I’m not “Just asking questions”, here.

Mitchell is a lawyer – who publicly contradicted her statements to the police, on Facebook:

Did she do this – violate a tenet of criminal defense that every first-year law student knows – because she was crazy with grief? Or because she figured she was superhuman and could do it?

It’s probably a little trite to say “I’ve suffered plenty of grief in my life, and I never burgled any relatives” – but that’s at least in part true because neither I nor most anyone else figures that’s the right thing to do, and nothing we’re grieving about is worth that kind of trouble.

Did grief make Senator Mitchell irrational? Or is Senator Mitchell’s version of “rational” different than yours, mine or Yuen’s?

I”m going to suggest the data supporting each conclusion are about equal.

Upshot: I’m not saying that Yuen’s piece is a part of the DFL’s PR effort, to try to pitch Mitchell’s alleged behavior as sympathetic as the DFL sneaks her into the Senate to finish jamming down their agenda.

But if it were, would it be any different?

Fearless prediction: Mitchell will appear on Esme Murphy for mimosas, toenail-painting and affirmation.