Joel Rosenberg got arrested yesterday while at Minneapolis City Hall.

The Strib has the story – relating the same story we did earlier (parts I, II and III) – and then yesterday’s “incidence”,  sort of:

On Wednesday, Rosenberg was booked into the county jail on charges of possession of a dangerous weapon in a courthouse, a felony, and contempt of court, a misdemeanor.

City Hall is part of the courthouse complex because it houses conciliation court on the third floor, the charges say. A sign posted in the hallway that connects City Hall with the county Government Center states that weapons are prohibited by district court order.

Rosenberg was being held in jail Wednesday night in lieu of $100,000 bail.

Rosenberg, of course, contents that the county’s “court order” barring guns in the hands of legally-permitted carriers from county courts conflicts with state law.

His court appearance is scheduled 1:30 this afternoon.

A Dayton Governorship is a distant second to an Emmer Governorship as a Minnesotan but for a conservative blogger, a hell of a lot more fun. Four years of job security!

(right Mitch? …Mitch?)

Dayton is (along with his buck-toothed sister the Star Tribune) going to be awesome blogfodder!

Consider this for example:

said his first priority now will be to improve the economy and add jobs.

Improve the economy? That’s like improving the weather? How does a governor improve the economy? The “economy” is a symptom, a result. Okay, so it’s a nit, but nonetheless an apropos observation of a nit wit. Let the befuddlement begin.

…and here comes his buck-toothed sister:

Those actions complete a stunning resurrection for Dayton, a one-term U.S. senator, who now will become the first Democratic governor in Minnesota in two decades.

A stunning…less than half percent…resurrection? …certainly not the high praise it was intended to be considering the status one must occupy from which to be resurrected, yes?

Methinks had the election been held one or two days later we’d be celebrating Governor Emmer, which is to say Mark Dayton is a beneficiary of chance.

…back to the Strib:

He said he would work with the business sector, which largely opposed his candidacy, to improve the state’s economy and job opportunities.

Nice gesture but that’s okay, Mark. We didn’t need you then and we don’t need you now. I’m sure we can wait four years – in the mean time, if you could just sort of stay out of the way, that’d be best.

Make sure you have a comfy couch and a big screen TV in the mansion (sorry if it’s smaller than the one you grew up in) so you can be comfortable in your sweats while the legislature conducts the business of the state.

But be prepared!

They might need you to sign something, cut a ribbon, or make an appearance from time to time (no talking please – just smile) – so keep one shirt and one suit coat pressed at all times!

Night-night now little Marky. Take your meds and go to sleep. We’ll wake you when we need you.

It’s hard for us, today, to picture what the world was like seventy years ago.

The Nazis march into Paris.

For the better part of a decade, much of the world’s intelligentsia actively wondered if democracy’s day had come and gone.  Various flavors of totalitarianism – whose ghastly crimes against humanity had been hidden from the world by a compliant media – had their adherents and even admirers in the West; Hitler and Stalin had both won Time’s “Man of the Year” award – making trains run on time impressed journalists then no less than now.

Here in Minnesota, as in much of the US heartland, the demoralization of the thirties led to a splintered worldview; the Minnesota Democratic Farmer/Labor party was cozied up to Stalin (and would stay that way until Hubert H. Humphrey, in one of his great contributions to the integrity of American politics, tossed the reds from the party six years later), to the point where it opposed war with Germany, with whom Stalin was then allied via the Molotov/Ribbentrop Pact.  In the meantime, the upper Midwest was a haven for the Deutsche-Amerikanische Bund, which favored rapprochement with the Nazis.

Stalin, from a Gus Hall fan site. Gus Hall was from Minnesota. The poster says “Happy To Pay For A Better Smolensk”.

Worse?  The totalitarians had just spent four years showing that their supporters in the West might have a point.  They conquered Spain.  Naziism dragged Germany out of the Great Depression (which had started ten years earlier in Germany than the rest of the west) well ahead of the rest of Europe or the US.  By all appearances, the Soviets were doing quite well too.

Poster for Nazi “Kraft Durch Freude” (Strength Through Joy) movement. Remind you of any recent City Pages ads? Me too

And World War II seemed to be the final nail.  Germany had swallowed up Austria and Czechoslovakia without a struggle; Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and, finally, France – theretofore Europe’s greatest military power – all fell in dazzlingly short order, sending the Brits reeling across the Channel.  Britain had beaten back the Luftwaffe the previous summer, but everyone expected Hitler to get ready for another invasion attempt in the spring; his U-boat campaign to starve Britain into submission looked, to insiders, to have a great chance of doing just that.

London burns after Scottish soccer fans, angered by three straight 0-0 tie games, run riot.

The Japanese also were going great guns, as well as rolling up vast swathes of China before their military juggernaut.  State Shinto – a pseudoreligion not a whole lot different than Naziism in its own way – seemed a viable option to many as well.

And everyone expected war between the US and Japan, and probably Germany and Italy as well.  It was a year away – but the buildup to war had already begun; Roosevelt had instituted the draft and called up great swathes of the National Guard already.

And so even though the world hadn’t fallen off the cliff into complete cataclysm – Germany wouldn’t invade the USSR for another eight months – everyone knew that the world was a horribly bleak place on December 8, 1940.  And nowhere was it bleaker than for the world’s democracies.  There were those that thought the classical American notion of liberty was on its last legs.

To say nothing of America itself.  As the fascist wave crested, the Nazi and Fascist and State Shinto leaders arrogantly looked at America, demoralized by a decade of depression and softened by the decadence of its “refrigerators” and “telephones” and “movies” and “vaudville”, and thought that America would love its prosperity too much to fight for others’ liberty – or even defend its own.

The “experts” around the world counted America out.

It was the day of the eighth playing of the 1940 NFL Championship.    And the Washington Redskins were the prohibitive, odds-on favorite of the same media and punditry that had applauded Mussolini, who lauded and feted Hitler and Lenin, who’d uncritically published and eaten up Walter Duranty’s mash notes to Joseph Stalin.

Against them stood the Chicago Bears.  The Bears had been a dynasty in the thirties, but it was a new, harrowing decade, and, like Darth Vader swallowing up the Republic, things in the NFL had changed as badly for the worse as they had in every other part of the world.  The Redskins, led by Sammy Baugh, seemed to tower invincibly over the plucky Bears, like Dolph Lundgren over Sylvester Stallone.

Sammy Baugh

The Skins had beaten the Bears 7-3 three weeks earlier, toward the end of the regular season.  As the teams headed toward the championship, at Griffith Stadium in DC, the Skins’ owner, George Preston Marshall, told the media (who else?) that the Bears were quitters and crybabies – exactly as Hitler was telling his minions about America, halfway around the world.

The Bears, like the Brits, like the Chinese, like capitalism, like democracy itself, had no chance.  Everyone knew it.

The “experts” said so.

———-

The Bears brought some of the same things to the table that America itself did, though.  Indeed, the juxtaposition should escape nobody; the Skins, led by the German-descended Baugh [*], faced the Bears, as polyglot a bunch of Yanks as the squad in any World War II war movie – with names like Musso, Osmanski, Clark, Stydahar, Macafee, Maniaci, Kavanaugh –  led by Brooklyn-born Sid Luckman, the son of pogrom refugees, and perhaps the greatest Jewish quarterback in the history of pro football.

Sid Luckman

And the Bears were at the forefront of a change in tactics; they ran from the “T Formation”, allowing greater flexibility compared with the ‘Skins’ single-wing formation – especially for Luckman, who’d become known by the end of his 12 year career as the NFL’s first great long-ball passer, even as under the bleachers at the nearly University of Chicago, other Jewish refugees were revolutionizing warfare forever as they carried off the first nuclear fission reaction.

The Bears, like America itself, brought a love of the underdog, and not a little bit of good ol’-fashioned America ingenuity and improvization skill.

———-

And so that morning, inflamed by Marshall’s arrogance just as their forebears had been enraged by Santa Anna’s brutality at the Alamo, the Bears took the field, and took the game directly to the Redskins, like the RAF’s Spitfires and Hurricanes tearing into the Luftwaffe’s bombers.

And like the RAF – and like the US Navy would do a Midway a year and a half later, and the US Army would do at Omaha Beach in three and a half years, and in the Bulge in a little over four years – the Bears, against all odds, not only prevailed…

…but kicked the favorites’ asses.

73-0.

The “weak”, “crybaby” underdogs prevailed against the favorites.

Just as America itself did, five years later.

Would it have happened without The Bears’ epic victory, 70 years ago today?

Thankfully, we’ll never need to know.

But it’s worth observing that, as America’s fortunes waxed during the war years, so did those of The Bears, who won championships in 1941, the pivotal year 1943 and then again in 1946, setting up the successful reconstruction of Europe.

The point being that the fortunes of America the nation, the shining city and the great experiment are inextricably intertwined with those other palimpsests of all that is great about America, the Bears and conservative exceptionalism.

It was in 1963 when our nation – a month past the murder of its beloved, patriotic president – needed strength.  And the Bears, led by Bill Wade and the first of many great Bears linebacking threesomes (Joe Fortunato, Bill George, and Larry Morris), gave it to them with another come-from-underdog win against the New York Giants, featuring airtight defense and an appearance by a young Polish-American tight end, Mike Ditka, upsetting the Giants and putting a comforting coda on the end of a horrible chapter in American history.  Americans could to go bed that night knowing that all was well.

Of course, the Bears’ fortunes ebbed for the next twenty-two years – as did those of conservatism, and of America itself.  And the nation’s fortunes, as always, reflected that waning.  The drought years of the sixties and seventies coincided with the epic droughts in the rest of American society; the Bears, America and the GOP reached their nadirs, with  the fall of Saigon, Abe Gibron’s years as head coach, the WIN button, Stagflation, Watergate, Desert 1 – simultaneously.

And yet three great Americans rose from the ashes during this time, laying the groundwork for a resurgence; Walter Payton, and Republicans Ronald Reagan and Mike Ditka.  Payton led the Bears out of the Wilderness just as surely as Reagan led America.

Walter Payton…

Reagan and…

…Ditka. When America needed all three, they were there.

And in 1986, at the depths of the Cold War, when once again “the experts” united to claim that America had seen its best days and the “nuclear clock” was supposedly ticking down as remorselessly as the timer in “24”, and that the USSR and the Patriots might well be viable and unstoppable in the modern world, Ditka (mirroring the rise of that other great Pole, Walesa) and Reagan and Payton rose up, leading other great Americans, Singletery and Weinberger, Dent and Schultz, Kirkpatrick and McMahon, and against all odds scored epic victories for freedom at the 1986 Super Bowl and the Rejkjavik talks, both leading in their way to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism and, finally, the re-ascendancy of Western Civilization.

But history didn’t end in 1990.  The Bears, like freedom itself, choked in 2006, against the Democrats and the Clots, leading directly to the defeats of 2008.

And after those dismal seasons, there were those that said the Bears and Real America would need years of rebuilding to be contenders again – if, indeed, either could do it at all.  That The Bears, like conservatism itself, were relics of a past unlamented by the likes of pundits Keith Olberman and Ed Schultz, or sportscasters Ed Schultz and Keith Olberman.

But when America, and Western Civilization, need to be saved, then the true heroes who walk among us will step up;   The Bears unpredictably have been rising out of nowhere to shock the league; the Mama Grizzlies, likewise, rose from nowhere to shock the political world.

Will it stick?  On the one hand, it’s too early to tell if justice, the Bears or conservatism will win out in 2011 or 2012.

On the other hand – we owe it to posterity to see that all of them do win.

But on the field as in and about the land, there is hope.  For conservatism is rising, and the Bears are contending, and for now there is hope.

Today, as seventy years ago today, you can thank God, Guns, Guts, and the Bears.

[*] Yeah, I stretched that metaphor too far.  Baugh was a great American, and was named “The most versatile player in NFL History” by the NFL network.  Luckman, for his part, served in the wartime Merchant Marine, playing in odd spare Sundays with the Bears.

It was about 3PM on a brutally cold Monday afternoon – deep in the middle of the sort of weeks-long, marrow-cracking, brutal deep freeze that I haven’t seen since I moved to the Twin Cities, but can still feel in my memory.  I was at the Wilson Ice Arena in Jamestown for my seventh-hour “Living Sports” class.   We were going to go skating.

I was in the middle of one of those bouts of frenzied overactivity that I was just starting to realize I was addicted to.  I was doing my usual load of classes.  My band had had a gig the previous weekend, at the “Teen Canteen”.  I was doing daily practices to play in a production of “Händel’s Messiah” at Dickinson State College that coming weekend (along with five of my classmates; we’d drive four or five hours through a snowstorm, do a solid day of dress rehearsals, and do the entire performance before driving back to Jamestown on Sunday).

On top of that?  My young, undeveloped but still pretty left-of-center mind was awhirl over the threat of our new President-Elect, Ronald Reagan.  While I didn’t like Jimmy Carter much – more later this week – Reagan scared the piddle out of me back then.

My eighteenth birthday was also coming up on Thursday.

And I was learning how to ice skate.

Well, no.  I knew how to skate, more or less.  But the lovely Lesa MacEwan didn’t need to know that; an accomplished skater, she volunteered to help me out.   She held my hands and towed me across the ice, showing me how to move forward, as I feigned appreciative ignorance.

Gimme a break.  It was as close as I ever got to having a social life back then.

It was chilly in the cavernous arena; not as cold as it was outdoors, of course, where I doubt it broke zero until April, but probably around 20 degrees.  The ice was pitted and worn from a day’s worth of  hockey practices, gym classes and open skating, , and badly in need of a Zamboni-ing.

The overhead PA was tuned to KFYR in Bismarck, the closest Central North Dakota came to a rock and roll station (Q98 in Fargo was just out of range, mostly, and WLS only came in on clear nights).  Springsteen’s single, “Hungry Heart”, from The River, was playing, and Lesa and I were talking music as I marveled at the feel of her hands through both of our mittens in that way seventeen-year-old guys do.

And at the end of the song, the afternoon drive guy – either “R. David Adams” or “Black Jack Dave Novak”, I think – announced that  John Lennon had just been shot and killed in New York, and they didn’t have a lot more details.

That day – and the past thirty years – the event has shown  me a bunch of things.

For starters, I am no baby boomer.  I had little connection to the Beatles; many other musicians, then and now, spoke to me more.  I liked the Beatles (although I cordially disliked most of Lennon’s solo career output, including the then-current Double Fantasy album).  The British Invasion was significant to me, of course – having worked in radio for most of the previous year,  and knowing my way around the history of pop music, you couldn’t ‘miss it.  But it was always The Who and The Kinks  – the bands that the Punks  modeled – that resonated with me.

And as a non-boomer who knew the Beatles’ heyday only as a historical exercise – my first knowledge of the Beatles’ existence was hearing on the radio that they were broken up – I had no idea what it was for a musical group to command that kind of loyalty from everyone.  Buddy Holly was amazing, but the music really died somewhere between the day Meredith Hunter died and the Beatles calling it quits.  Somewhere in that period, the hippie era ended, music split into “Black” R and B and “White” rock, the twain not to meet again until, ironically, about this time 30 years ago, but then only temporarily, like an aberration, for better or worse.

But I didn’t have to be a baby boomer to notice that the sometimes-joking, sometimes-serious calls and rumors and chatter about “Beatles Reunions” – a staple of the first couple of years on Saturday Night Live – took on a new urgency, which carried on another 20-odd years, until the death of George Harrison.

So where were you when you heard John Lennon had died?

Here’s Part III of Joel Rosenberg’s side of his encounter with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer last month.

The incident was the subject of a fairly egregious bit of lousy reporting by the City Pages, among others.

———-

Part Two: The Contempt of Court that Joel Didn’t Commit

By Joel Rosenberg

And so, we finally arrive at the point of this particular part of the exercise, where we get to the crimes that Bill Palmer committed when he lunged at me, took my gun without authority, acting under color of law and authority, and only gave it back — and only let me continue to examine the public data that he, as MPD Data Practices Officer, had invited me to Tim Dolan’s office to examine — when I submitted to his unlawful order to remove it from City Hall.

And, let’s once again, look at the law, as it’s written, with some emphasis added.

609.27 COERCION.

Subdivision 1. Acts constituting. Whoever orally or in writing makes any of the following threats and thereby causes another against the other’s will to do any act or forbear doing a lawful act is guilty of coercion and may be sentenced as provided in subdivision 2:

(1) a threat to unlawfully inflict bodily harm upon, or hold in confinement, the person threatened or another, when robbery or attempt to rob is not committed thereby; or

(2) a threat to unlawfully inflict damage to the property of the person threatened or another; or

(3) a threat to unlawfully injure a trade, business, profession, or calling; or

(4) a threat to expose a secret or deformity, publish a defamatory statement, or otherwise to expose any person to disgrace or ridicule; or

(5) a threat to make or cause to be made a criminal charge, whether true or false; provided, that a warning of the consequences of a future violation of law given in good faith by a peace officer or prosecuting attorney to any person shall not be deemed a threat for the purposes of this section.

Subd. 2.Sentence.

Whoever violates subdivision 1 may be sentenced as follows:

(1) to imprisonment for not more than 90 days or to payment of a fine of not more than $1,000, or both if neither the pecuniary gain received by the violator nor the loss suffered by the person threatened or another as a result of the threat exceeds $300, or the benefits received or harm sustained are not susceptible of pecuniary measurement; or

(2) to imprisonment for not more than five years or to payment of a fine of not more than $10,000, or both, if such pecuniary gain or loss is more than $300 but less than $2,500; or

(3) to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both, if such pecuniary gain or loss is $2,500, or more.

History: 1963 c 753 art 1 s 609.27; 1971 c 23 s 40; 1977 c 355 s 7; 1983 c 359 s 87; 1984 c 628 art 3 s 11; 1986 c 444; 2004 c 228 art 1 s 72

609.43 MISCONDUCT OF PUBLIC OFFICER OR EMPLOYEE.

A public officer or employee who does any of the following, for which no other sentence is specifically provided by law, may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than one year or to payment of a fine of not more than $3,000, or both:

(1) intentionally fails or refuses to perform a known mandatory, nondiscretionary, ministerial duty of the office or employment within the time or in the manner required by law; or

(2) in the capacity of such officer or employee, does an act knowing it is in excess of lawful authority or knowing it is forbidden by law to be done in that capacity; or

(3) under pretense or color of official authority intentionally and unlawfully injures another in the other’s person, property, or rights; or

(4) in the capacity of such officer or employee, makes a return, certificate, official report, or other like document having knowledge it is false in any material respect.

History: 1963 c 753 art 1 s 609.43; 1984 c 628 art 3 s 11; 1986 c 444

Lets review the bidding, shall we?

Palmer threatened to arrest me if I didn’t leave. He had no right to arrest me; none at all, regardless of his interpretation of the court order. (I’ll get to that in a minute.) Doesn’t matter what the judge’s interpretation of the court order is, either, for the same reason. It’s null and void, and WOULD BE constitutionally overbroad with regard to the Minneapolis City Hall, if it applied to City Hall at all.

It doesn’t. I’ll get back to that again.

Whoever orally … makes any of the following threats and thereby causes another against the other’s will to do any act or forbear doing a lawful act is guilty of coercion….

a threat to unlawfully…hold in confinement…. (that’s the threat of arrest that Palmer made, repeatedly. Let’s keep going) a threat to make or cause to be made a criminal charge

609.43 Misconduct of a public officer …

A public officer or employee …. does an act knowing it is in excess of lawful authority… or intentionally and unlawfully injures another in the other’s rights…

Which is why Palmer’s lawyered up.

One last, minor thing. “But wait, you say; there was a court order for Minneapolis City Hall at 300 South Fifth Street. It might be questionable, but until the courts determine that it’s invalid, you have to abide by it, Joel. That court order, just as it was written, was effective on that date — Craig Steiner, the head of Minneapolis Data Practices, told you so.”

And I’ve shared with you a copy of that court order, which was, arguably (not very, but a weak argument could be made) effective on that date for 300 South Fifth Street, Minneapolis City Hall.

Let’s take Bill Palmer’s word for it that he was familiar with this court order. He’d read it, he studied it, and by God he was going to enforce it. He was going to grab me, to threaten me to compel me not to carry at 300 South Fifth Street.

The address of Minneapolis City Hall, though, is at 350 South 5th Street. It says so, right on their official web page.

Hell, you can ask Bill Palmer that. He should know. He works there. At 350th South 5th Street.

Ask him, but remember, he does have the right to remain silent. He had that right in Tim Dolan’s office, too. He had the right to remain silent; he had the right to keep his hands to himself; he had the right to not engage in coercion or misconduct. He had every right to not grab my property — and no right whatsoever to take it, without my permission — at all. He had no right to hold it as a hostage to my compliance to his unlawful demands.

He had the right to not commit any crime at all.

He did not, however, have the ability.

Too bad that you can’t find a City Attorney around when you need one to draw up a summons and warrant, isn’t it?

Susan Seigel, Minneapolis City Attorney: please have one of your prosecutors draw up papers and charge the son of a bitch?

Thanks in advance.

More on this story coming up, I have a hunch, this week.

So with Emmer’s apparently-upcoming concession, you’re the Governor-elect, now, Mark Dayton.

Congratulations.

After pouring millions of dollars of your family’ s money into the most toxic, slimy, sleazy campaign in Minnesota gubernaturial history, a campaign noted for its serial, cynical inaccuracy by anyone with the brains to spell the words – a “campaign” based on the two sole concepts of “taxing the rich” and tearing down Tom Emmer – and outspending the Emmer campaign 2:1, you eked out a half-point “victory”.

It’s a proud day.

You’ve gone to show that with millions of dollars of inherited money and the slavering servitude of a lot of union donors, any little boy can grow up to back into office with 42% of the vote.

Now, when you’re crowned, you will face two chambers of red-hot, motivated, unified conservative Republican majorities.  They will not be the inside-the-beltway post-Gingrich-era RINO hamsters that you got used to “reaching across the aisle” with in DC.  They are not the RINOs you remember from your time in the State House.  These are Tea Party Republicans; conservatives who’ve been sent to Saint Paul by a majority that said “come back with your shields, or on them”.  On a mission to cut the spending, cut the taxes, cut the regulations…to oppose everything you stand for.

And beyind them, there are a whole lot of people like me.  Who are going to damn well hold them to those promises.

Mark Dayton:  Your agenda is dead on arrival.  Your “budget plan”, as big a fraud as it was, is now legislative toilet paper.

There’s a feeling out there that you’ll be a one term governor – maybe.  Maybe less.  We’ll see.

I’m “the loyal opposition” – but after the campaign you ran paid others to run, the emphasis is on opposition.  I’m going to spend the next four years working to retire you for good.

So welcome to office, Governor Dayton.

Congratulations.

The Strib notes what we’d sensed for most of the past month; the margin, fair or foul, is just too much.

Tom Emmer seems likely to concede today.

The better man “lost”.

A slimy, toxic campaign with only two focuses – “taxing the rich” and tearing down Tom Emmer – “won”, by half a point, after outspending Emmer 2 to 1.  And by “won”, we mean…well, more on that later today.

Thanks, Tom Emmer.  I had the time of my life writing about your campaign, and doing my little bit to expose the slime that lined up against you, and what an empty, vapid suit you faced.  You are the best stump speaker in Minnesota politics today, and you do something few do better – you explain conservatism to people who aren’t conservatives, brilliantly.

Which is something the Minnesota Media did their damnedest to avoid allowing to get out there.

So I hope we haven’t seen the last of you.

The only loser is Minnesota.

More later today.

A few weeks ago, I ran the first part of a three-part series by Joel Rosenberg regarding his confrontation with Minneapolis Police sergeant Bill Palmer.

The confrontation was captured on video.

The City Pages tittered about the story, but really didn’t understand it.

Here’s Part II.  Part III follows later today.

Part Two: The Contempt of Court that Joel Didn’t Commit

By Joel Rosenberg

When last we left our heroes, we were about to take a look at the court order that poor Bill Palmer couldn’t find, and which he pretended to be trying to enforce. He knew better, which is why he didn’t arrest me.

Here it is:

———-WHEREAS it is the court’s responsibility to ensure the proper, safe, and orderly administratio nof justice throughout Hennepin County coutr facilities, and

WHEREAS the Court has a weapons policy in place since July 12, 1995 that prohibits any firearm or other weapons from being taken into a courtroom or the environs of any other juvenile justice or other court facility witin Hennepin County except under certain conditions described below,

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that all persons, exept as provided in this Order, are prohibited form having weapons on their person or in their possession in Hennepin County court facilities, regardless of whether or not they have a firearms permit, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that persons entering Hennepin County court facilities may be subject to screening for weapons upon entry; anyone refusing to submit to such searches shall be refused admission, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that all weapons, including but not limited to firearms and any related ammunition, stun guns, taser weapons, and replica or toy guns shall be removed form said persons before they are allowed to proceed further into the court facility and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that this order shall not apply to licensed peace officers or federally authorized law enforcement agents in the performance of their official duties. Only law enforcement personnel empowered by law to carry weapons may enter a court facility with a weapon. The peace officer exception to the Order shall not apply to officers present in court as private parties, support persons, or to provide testimony not required by their job duties, and

IT IS FURTHE RORDERED that weapons be used as an exhibit in an official proceeding may be taking into a courtroom or any other court facility only fter they have been checked for safety by the Hennepin County Sheriff or HSeriff’s designee, e sealed in a transparent vinyl tape envelope or otherwise be secured to ensure security during the proceedings by a peace offier in the performance of official duties, and

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that Hennepin County Court facilities include:

1. Hennepin Government Center

300 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis

2. Minneapolis City Hall,

300 Wouth Fifth Street, Minneapolis

3. District Court Division II – Brookdale

6125 Shingle Creek Parkway, Brooklyn Center

4. Disrict Court Division III – Ridgedale,

12601 Ridgedale Drive, Minnetonka

5. District Court Division IV – Southdale

7009 York Drive, Edina

6. Hennepin County Public Safety Facility

401 South Fourth Avenue, Minneapolis

7. Hennepin County Family Justice Center

110 South Fourth Street, Minneapolis

8. Hennepin County Juvenile Justice Center

626 South Sixth Street, Minneapolis

IT IS FURTHER ORDERED that any person violating this Order shall be suejct to being held in contempt of court and may be subject to a jail sentence.

This Order is effective immediately.

Date: 9/28/08

———-

Interesting, isn’t it? The judge appears to have decided that Minneapolis City Hall is part of the Hennepin County Court complex.

How’s that work? Can the judge decide that a radius of a thousand miles from his bench is part of the court complex? How about fifty? How about the McDonald’s across the street? How about Minneapolis City Hall?

Well, there’s actually just a touch of logic to that — there are courtrooms in City Hall. They’re not used all that often, I understand, but when they are being used by a judge for official county business, the order would clearly apply.

But the rest of it? Nah. It’s what’s called “unconstitutionally broad.” Ask your favorite law professor; I’ve asked more than one of mine.

Here’s what one said:

“This covers entire buildings where courtrooms and court office space are only a portion, often small and temporary, of the entire facility. A good example is the Minneapolis city hall. This order is OVERBROAD [his emphasis. JR].”

In practice, the order is enforced, almost all the time, perfectly legitimately, by the HCSO: outside the security zone of the courthouse, no problem; permit holders come and go, carrying if they please as they do whatever business they have with the courts. Before going into the zone, the permit holder disarms, and stores his weapons somewhere — typically, out in the car.

Easy, peasy.

Also in practice: Tim Dolan and the badged bullies of the MPD have been using their willfully false “interpretation” of the order to bully permit holders into not carrying anywhere in city hall. But they don’t *dare* actually arrest somebody who has, like me, given notice (covering the felony issue, even if you believe that, say, the janitor’s closet in City Hall is a courtroom).

Why? Because they know that the order, being overboard, is utterly unenforceable.

And if they try to enforce it?

That’s for the last chapter: The Crimes Bill Palmer Committed.

Later today – where Palmer allegedly messed up.

Today is the 69th anniversary of Pearl Harbor.

Sixty-nine years after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor, survivors of the attack are due to gather at the base to remember those killed.

Some 100 survivors, the youngest of whom are in their late 80s, have traveled from around the country to attend Tuesday’s ceremony.

Minnesota is also holding a ceremony, at the Veterans building at the foot of the Capitol Mall.   It’s a little-known fact even in Minnesota that the very first shots fired at Pearl Harbor – hours before the air raid – were fired by a Navy Reserve gun crew from Saint Paul, serving aboard the rehabbed World War I-era destroyer USS Ward, on anti-sub patrol outside the Harbor.

The Saint Paul gun crew that fired the first shots at a Japanese midget sub. The gun in the photo is on permanent display north of the Veterans Building in Saint Paul.

George Thill – one of the survivors of that gun crew – will speak at the ceremony today. 

Wish I could be there.

I thought this was amusing and I hope we’re on the same page. I wanted to take a moment to step out of the box and socialize this theme and seek synergies even though this post probably isn’t mission-critical so we’re not going to expend a lot of our bandwidth on it.

You say, “I love my job.”
You really mean, “I need my job.”

Top 21 Workplace BS Lines

Paul Schmelzer at the Mindy doesn’t address rumors that the Soros-supported “news” front is about to change its name to “Dump Bradlee Dean” – but he does give lots of Xs and Os to the new “loose mores blow up stores” campaigns at Walmart and the Mall:

Today Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano announced Walmart’s participation, according to a DHS press release. The nation’s largest retailer will have 230 stores participating immediately, with as many as 588 eventually taking part. The Mall of America’s participation was announced last week; it’ll be joined by “the American Hotel & Lodging Association, Amtrak, the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, sports and general aviation industries, and state and local fusion centers across the country.”

The expanded campaign, unveiled at a mall ceremony last week, will include print and video advertisements throughout the complex.

So – posting terror warnings in public places is good?

Well, now that it’s a Democrat!  Let’s go back a few years:

During the 2004 elections, Kiffmeyer made national headlines when she decided to post terrorist warning signs at polling places throughout Minnesota urging voters to be wary of people appearing at precincts with “shaved head[s] or short hair” who “smell of unusual herbal/flower water or perfume,” wear baggy clothing or appear to be whispering to themselves.

So when Janet Napolitano tells you to watch out for those crazy neighbors (especially if they’re tax protesters, second amendment people, pro-lifers or Tea Partiers, naturally), it’s a good thing, but when a Republican does it…

…well, we all know how it works, don’t we?

2008: “Look at the GOP’s “Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why they’re in the minority, and always will be!”

2010: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why we’ll, er, get the majority back next time!”

2012: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  They’re not a big tent!  That’s why this will be the DFL’s last losing cycle, because the recovery brought on by all that spending restraint just can’t last forever!”

2014: “Look at the GOP’s Circular Firing Squad!  You’ve gone and gotten an extremist conservative  elected governor!  Now you’re screwed!”

Question For Supplemental Discussion:  The party that lost both chambers of the legislature, and only leads the governor’s race by a cat’s whisker with the aid of a 2:1 spending disparity and an in-the-bag media that refused to discuss Mark Dayton’s record or pathologies, is yakking about the GOP’s internal politics after an election season where their endorsed gubernatorial candidate lost the primary, and where their party operations are reported to be in financial disararay.

A little bit of projection and displacement, maybe?

Merry Christmas, DFL.  Enjoy the holiday season.  Your 2011 is going to really suck.

The old “take a theatrical look in the dictionary to set up today’s column”  trick is an old favorite for writers who’ve hit bottom in the idea bag but still need to crank something out. 

I am, of course, nowhere near the bottom of the barrel – and I’ve always found the whole “Hey, lookit what I pulled out of the dictionary!” thing to be a tiresome cliché. 

Still, I found myself drawn, mirabile dictu, to the dictionary this morning.  For some reason, I felt the need to look up “flack“.  ‘Strooth!  And here’s what it said:

flack    /flæk/  [flak]  

–noun Sometimes Disparaging .

1. press agent.

2. publicity.

–verb (used without object)

3. to serve as a press agent or publicist: to flack for a new rock group.

–verb (used with object)

4. to promote; publicize: to flack a new record.

Use flack in a Sentence

Origin:

1935–40; said to be after Gene Flack, a movie publicity agent

Utterly unrelated to my trip to the dictionary (pinky swear!), I read yesterday’s Lori Sturdevant column in the Strib.  No, I know – I constantly accuse Sturdevant of being, well, a flack for the DFL.  But there is, I swear to Jah Rastafari,  no connection.  Really!

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s self-congratulatory performance Thursday in response to that day’s whale-of-a-deficit state budget forecast sent me to the dictionary [Oh, snap! – Ed.] to check the meaning of the word “chutzpah.”

“Supreme self-confidence: nerve, gall,” Merriam-Webster Online said.

If chutzpah isn’t a fitting label for the show in the governor’s reception room, it surely comes close. It also may be apt for the temperament required for a governor who has presided over eight years of persistent fiscal trouble to mount a bid for the presidency.

Poor Lori.  Tim Pawlenty, governor and in the front ranks of Sturdevant’s phalanx of betes noir of eight years, is moving on to bigger and better things – certainly a run at the Presidency, and most likely a really, really great career in some capacity or another no matter what happens, while the DFL is set to endure at least four years in the Legislative cold and with, frankly, the worst governor in Minnesota history (even before inauguration), as she wraps up her career in a dying industry.   Tha’ts gotta stink.

No other governor in Minnesota’s 152-year history has handed his successor a $6.2 billion deficit forecast along with the keys to the Capitol’s executive suite.

But to be fair to Governor Pawlenty (an idea that no doubt causes Ms. Sturdevant abdominal pain), no other governor in Minnesota history has had to face such a grossly, profligately irresponsible legislative majority.   The DFL majority this past four years has set the “standard” for rodentine cowardice and expedient buck-passing.

Best of all – Sturdevant admits it herself, later in the piece. 

But we’ll get to that.

But if Pawlenty has any remorse or regrets about passing that much trouble along to the next occupant, he didn’t display them. Instead, he boasted that he was ending his watch with the state “on the right track” and with “money in the bank.”

And so he should!  Minnesota has – despite the DFL majority’s best efforts – an unemployment rate two points below the national average.  He kept (to a gratifyingly great extent) his 2002 “no new taxes” promise, and held the line against a crushing DFL majority for the past four years. 

Though Thursday’s numbers foretold a worsening problem in 2012-13, Pawlenty pronounced it “very manageable.” He allowed that most of it would have vanished already if his old nemeses, the DFLers who controlled the 2009-10 Legislature, would have done his bidding.

And Pawlenty was absolutely right.

Had he been paired with a legislature that was focused on anything other than catastrophic spending as a matter of principle, we wouldn’t be in this jam. 

But this is the DFL – the party that believes your money belongs to the government first and foremost.

Even though the 2010 Legislature gave its blessing to virtually all of the spending cuts and shifts Pawlenty imposed unilaterally (and, it turned out, illegally) in 2009, it deviated from the governor’s script in one respect. The cuts were designed to boomerang back for reconsideration by a new governor and the 2011 Legislature. (Those crafty DFLers didn’t anticipate that in the 2011 Legislature, they would be in the minority.

Did you catch that?  Sturdevant is saying that the DFL engineered the “budget crisis” to try to embarass the GOP!  

The DFL – the Party of Fiscal Sabotage!  Lori Sturdevant says so!  And if there’s an official voice of the DFL, Sturdevant is it in all but official name.  

How very statesmanlike of the DFL!  Way to look out for the future of Minnesota!

  The answer is simple; the GOP majority should show the new “Governor” no mercy, and no quarter.   He and his constitutional officers are the last vestiges of a party that gambled with Minnesota’s fiscal well-being, and lost. If that’s what the DFL did – essentially set a fiscal IED to try to pad their own political nest – then they deserve a good crushing. 

Spanish has a good word for that; Degüello.  Applied rhetorically, of course.  I – insignificant schnook blogger that I am – certainly plan to practice it for the next four years.

Look it up in the dictionary yourself.  It’s your cliché, not mine.

I love this story; a 23 year old waitress is  on her way to the Michigan state legislature:

Diane Okay and Betty Turk were enjoying coffee after a lunch of fish and spinach pie at Ken’s Country Kitchen when they found out their 23-year-old waitress is a state representative-elect.

After a moment of stunned silence, Okay expressed her approval: “Good for her.”

Still, she was a bit skeptical, saying she thought Andrea LaFontaine is a bit young to understand some of the problems Michiganians face.

“I have a son that age, and looking at it from the standpoint of a mother, she doesn’t have a lot of life experience at 23,” Okay said.

Still, if you watch the video (follow the link), Miss LaFontaine has a better understanding of economics than, say, Minnesota’s probable governor-elect and his entire party.

LaFontaine, a Central Michigan University student, beat three other Republicans in the August primary before winning the 32nd District seat over Democratic incumbent Jennifer Haase in the November election.

LaFontaine will be one of the youngest legislators to be sworn into office Jan. 1. Also taking the oath will be 24-year-old Republican Frank Foster of Pellston, who won the 107th District seat vacated by term-limited Democrat Rep. Gary McDowell of Rudyard.

Better yet, when Miss LaFontaine goes to Lansing, she will be a gratifyingly conservative voice of sanity in a state that needs it even more desperately than Minnesota.  Not just because she’s a conservative – although that is the building block of all worthwhile legislators – but because she’s not part of the professional political class.  She’s one of The People.

More of this, please.

It might amaze you that even in this flaccid employment market, some workers choose to gamble their job.

Rick Raymond parked his black Kia SUV behind a row of trees and peered out at his target. It was 4 a.m. on a recent morning, and Raymond—a seasoned private detective who has worked roughly 300 cases, from thieves to philandering spouses—was closing in on a different sort of prey.

Playing hooky without getting caught—as immortalized in the cat-and-mouse skirmish between Ferris Bueller and Principal Rooney in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off—used to be an adolescent rite of passage. Now it has given rise to a thriving industry, with stern legal precedent to back it up.

…and that industry, the surveillance they conduct and the terminations that are a result are backed by legal precedent – you sue you lose.

But what do you think?

Jay Nygard wants to erect a small wind turbine in an unobtrusive spot on his own property.

Nygard admits he poured a concrete pad for the turbine after the city rejected his application for a building permit. But he and his attorney claim the city is overstepping its authority and discouraging a homeowner and entrepreneur from helping the environment.

“Here I’m trying to go green and they’re trying to throw me in jail,” Nygard said.

Here’s the interesting part:

…even though Orono doesn’t explicitly ban wind generators in Nygard’s neighborhood, the city has broad authority to limit what people build on their property.”We’re not going to discourage people from doing green things,” White said. “It’s just when and where.”

…city zoning ordinances typically prohibit everything that is not explicitly allowed…

Discuss.

A known criminal steals a car, drives erratically, law enforcement gives chase. One minute later three innocents are dead.

One minute after a Minnesota State Patrol trooper began to chase an erratic driver early Sunday, the suspect’s car slammed into two others in north Minneapolis, killing a mother and her two young children.

Two thoughts come to mind in light of this tragedy. First, are police chases and the risks they pose to the public worth it? I’ll pass on that for now (but feel free to run with it in the comments section).

Second, can law enforcement equate a criminal failing to stop with the same individual pulling a gun in a robbery?

In fact, if someone, anyone, were to brandish a handgun and start waving it around in a public place would law enforcement be faulted if deadly force were employed to neutralize the situation with due warning?

What’s the difference? Both are wielding deadly weapons and threatening the public.

How many times have you heard a police chase, sometimes for the most minor of offenses, result in the injury or death of bystanders?

Innocent bystanders account for one-third of those who are killed in high-speed police chases, a USA TODAY review has found. The deaths have several communities around the USA wrestling with whether to restrict pursuits only to suspects in violent crimes.

About 360 people are killed each year in police chases, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

So here’s where I’m going with this: if a perpetrator runs, why aren’t the good guys given the authority to stop the chase by putting a bullet through the back of the f*cker’s head? (I recognize by the way that in this particular case, there was not enough time for anyone to alter the outcome)

Discuss.

I have to believe that many Republicans and possibly even some fiscally-conservative Democrats are quietly hoping to themselves that the gubernatorial recount might actually drag on so long as to allow current governor Tim Pawlenty to preside over a Republican Legislature…if for even fifteen minutes.

It’s not without risks…

A lawsuit from Tom Emmer offers one obvious benefit. It likely would keep GOP Gov. Tim Pawlenty in office beyond his appointed term, giving the party more power when the state’s Legislature convenes next month under Republican control for the first time in decades. But some worry that it also risks damaging the party’s image if the lawsuit appears to be nothing more than a stalling maneuver to keep Dayton out.

Several influential Republicans are warning that unless new information emerges to question the integrity of the election, Emmer should concede soon to avoid hurting the party. It’s not an easy decision, especially in a polarized political environment where both sides had legal teams in place even before the election to prepare for a contested outcome.

…but imagine what could be accomplished.

And even if Emmer doesn’t prevail, that’s not really the point as long as you care about the integrity of the electoral process.

“This egregious disregard for election laws calls into question the integrity of one vote per person,” Emmer said, “and is, I believe, an assault on the very principles of the American voting system, diluting every legally cast vote. Again, that’s when you have more ballots, than supposedly you have people that voted in the election.”

So I will come right out and say it, I’m all for expediency in the electoral process but let’s take all due care, and maybe a smidgen of undue care to make sure that the final tally reflects each and every voter’s sentiment.

In the end, even Democrats know full well that in the likely event that Mark Dayton becomes the bona fide winner, the Republican legislature is going to bounce Dayton around like a volleyball, which is to say for lemonade-loving conservatives this is something of a win/win scenario.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism from 9AM-3PM.

• Volume I “The First Team” –  Brian and John or some combination thereof kick off from 11-1.
• Volume II “The Headliner” – Ed and I follow from 1-3PM Central
• The King Banaian Show! – King is on from 9-11 on AM1570, Business Radio for the Twin Cities!  We’re broadening the franchise; two stations, now!
• And for those of you who like your constitutionalism straight up with no chaser, don’t forget the Sons of Liberty, from 3-5!

(All times Central)

So tune in to all six hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of sanity. You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• streaming at AM1280’s Website,
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• UStream video and chat (at HotAir.com or at UStream).
• Podcast at Townhall, usually by Monday
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488!
• And make sure you fan us on Facebook!

Join us!

I wrote on this earlier this week but Paul Krugman does a great job of beating a dead horse, to make sure he’s dead.

About that [federal workers’] pay freeze: the president likes to talk about “teachable moments.” Well, in this case he seems eager to teach Americans something false.

…freezing federal pay is cynical deficit-reduction theater. It’s a (literally) cheap trick that only sounds impressive to people who don’t know anything about budget realities.

Ironically, Krugman beats the president about the head and shoulders for a surprising reason:

Anyway, slashing federal spending at a time when the economy is depressed is exactly the wrong thing to do. Just ask Federal Reserve officials, who have lately been more or less pleading for some help in their efforts to promote faster job growth.

Krugman confuses a bloated federal payroll with the kind of federal spending that purportedly, by liberals at least, boosts the economy, requiring a supsension of disbelief that the American people have no tolerance for, the elections being exhibit A.

Krugman goes on to incredulously assert that the extension of the Bush tax cuts is a “break” for the wealthiest versus a tax hike. He ignores the fact that those cuts were very good for the economy and the equally pertinent fact that a tax hike for anyone in this fragile economy is a ridiculous notion to anyone that would benefit by our economy creating more jobs.

But then he goes on to redeem himself by exposing Obama’s dundering miscues:

he apparently intended the pay freeze announcement as a peace gesture to Republicans the day before a bipartisan summit. At that meeting, Mr. Obama, who has faced two years of complete scorched-earth opposition, declared that he had failed to reach out sufficiently to his implacable enemies. He did not, as far as anyone knows, wear a sign on his back saying “Kick me,” although he might as well have.

There were no comparable gestures from the other side. Instead, Senate Republicans declared that none of the rest of the legislation on the table — legislation that includes such things as a strategic arms treaty that’s vital to national security — would be acted on until the tax-cut issue was resolved, presumably on their terms.

It’s hard to escape the impression that Republicans have taken Mr. Obama’s measure — that they’re calling his bluff in the belief that he can be counted on to fold. And it’s also hard to escape the impression that they’re right.

The real question is what Mr. Obama and his inner circle are thinking. Do they really believe, after all this time, that gestures of appeasement to the G.O.P. will elicit a good-faith response?

Mr. Obama almost seems as if he’s trying, systematically, to disappoint his once-fervent supporters, to convince the people who put him where he is that they made an embarrassing mistake.

I think they already know that Paul.

In a bizarre perversion of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inspirational platitude, the only thing today’s Minnesota DFL Party has to offer is fear itself.

The DFL (and its chanting points repeater blogs MNPublius, mnpACT and Minnesota “Progressive” Project, among others, not to mention the regional mainstream media) are tossing about the figure “$6.2 Billion” as the defict the next Administration and Legislature will need to deal with.

This, of course, is the first step in the Left’s big-government-through-fear playbook:

1. Note a gap between planned spending and available revenue.
2. Warn of the “Service” cuts involved in cutting planned spending.
3. Ram that warning home with threats to gut police and fire departments, along with draconian cuts among teachers (while, mysteriously, leaving administators, pensions, convention and visitors bureaux, human rights offices and other such waste untouched) if politicians at all levels don’t raise the revenue needed by any means necessary – which means, inevitably, tax hikes.

As Tom Emmer pointed out over and over during his gubernatorial campaign, it was nonsense, of course.  The “budget” against which revenue left a “deficit” was not a “budget”, it was an “autopilot” adjustment of the existing budget based on increasing existing “services” by the amount the DFL-dominated bureaucracy says they’ll need to be increased.  It’s like setting a family budget according to your kids’ Christmas wish lists.

Gary Gross at LFR breaks it down (with emphasis added):

…what’s being called a $5,000,000,000 deficit is based on last biennium’s budget tails, which were wildly oversized vs. the projected revenue. According to the figure from the campaign trail, Minnesota is projected to take in almost $33,000,000,000 compared with $30,700,000,000 for the current biennium.

When omnibus spending bills are put together, the spreadsheet contains the amount that will be spent for that biennium and the amount that they’d like to spend in the next biennium. The second biennium request is called a budget tail. It’s what the MMB people are required to use for their budget projections. It isn’t something that must be spent.

The media don’t tell you this because – well, I’m not sure.  Maybe they figure that everyone is a government wonk and they already know all this. 

The DFL and its chanting-points-bots won’t you because, again, all they have to offer is fear.   And because an ignorant citizenry is a DFL citizenry.

It’s rare that they spend what the tails call for. In fact, the legislature can just as easily choose to spend significantly less. In fact, I suspect that’s what will happen, partially because Republicans have a number of reforms that will save significant amounts of money, starting with King Banaian’s reform to ZBB and Steve Gottwalt’s Healthy Minnesota Plan.

Those 2 reforms will save Minnesota taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars this biennium.

Your mission this next month, before the next session (which starts on January 3, a month from today): when you hear your neighbors and co-workers worrying about “the six billion dollar deficit”, set them straight.  And tell them to call their Reps and Senators; the GOP ones need the encouragement to do the right thing; the DFL ones need to know that the long electoral knives of last autumn aren’t nearly done yet.

There’s nothing that leftybloggers like more than stories where a conservative Christian – usually white and male – freaks out and does something really off-color or awful.    You’ve seen it; fromar Larry Craig through Tom Hackbarth, they gambol and prance around such stories like a bunch of happy little pixies.  You know what I’m talking about.

Hold that thought.

I’m not one to make light of other peoples’ misfortunes.  Seriously.

I read this story about the Apple Valley woman who, apparently distraught over her son’s death, lit her house on fire with her husband in it, hammered a screwdriver into her chest, and then led police on a high speed chase.

Police got a call about 9:15 a.m. saying that Rhonda Arkley, 49, had poured gasoline inside her house at 4754 142nd St. in Apple Valley and was threatening to kill herself.

When officers arrived at the home, flames were coming out of the rear of the house. Arkley, locked in her car outside of the house, was stabbing herself in the chest with a screwdriver, police said.

Her husband was in the house.  He escaped, apparently with some burns.

When she saw the officers, Arkley drove away, triggering a chase that ended in neighboring Eagan, police said.

Rosemount resident Jim Corrigan was in his car trying to make a left-hand turn from Pilot Knob Road to Cliff Road when a squad car “came whipping down Cliff and backed up onto the sidewalk at the traffic lights.”

Corrigan said the officer pulled a set of road spikes out of his trunk and “waited, talking on his radio.”

“I could see in my rear-view mirror there was this car coming really fast,” Corrigan said.

The car, which he said was a station wagon, “went right over (the spikes) like it was nothing.”

According to police, as officers approached Arkley’s stopped car, she was using a hammer to pound a screwdriver into her chest.

In all seriousness, sounds like the woman needs some help, not to mention any prayers, karmic imvocations or best wishes  you can peel off for her.

Although that last bit may seem ironic.

This bit here almost escaped me:

Criminal records show Arkley served a year of probation after a fifth-degree domestic assault conviction in 2005…Arkley was a DFL candidate for state Senate District 37 in 2002. At the time, she called herself very progressive and said she was active in environmental and atheist organizations.

If she had been a conservative Christian (male!) active in business and faith organizations, she’d have not only been story number one with a couple dozen local leftyblog hamsters this morning, the storyt would wind up as an episode of Law and Order.

New undershirts, ready for TSA scanning:

Count me in.

Republicans now outnumber Democrats.

Of course, we have to win the war to define what “Republican” means, but that’s all doable.