Over the years, I’ve given the Minnesoros…er, Minnesota Independent a lot of crap.

Of course, they’ve deserved much of it; from their early, fingers-crossed insistence that nosirreebob there was no link between their parent groups (The Center for “Independent” Media) and the various tentacles of George Soros’ propaganda machine (it turned out, by golly, there were) to plagiarism, comical reporting and, finally, the shocking revelation that the whole enterprise was a propaganda tool (“Shut up!“), the publication has been at times a carnival of errors.

Which doesn’t mean they haven’t had good writers on board; Andy Birkey, Paul Demko and Paul Schmelzer are all perfectly capable journalists on their respective beats.

Chris Steller,on the other hand, needs some work:

Here’s evidence that Minnesota’s post-election battle for U.S. Senate has permeated pop culture. Al Franken and Norm Coleman were cited this week by contestants in another competition that attracted millions of partisans: the race between movie actor Ashton Kutcher and news juggernaut CNN to be first to gain one million followers on Twitter, the social-media phenomenon.

Ah.  Well, now we know we’re into vital news territory.  It’s good to kinow we have seasoned (citizen) journalists covering that crucial King/Kutcher beat.

Two leading players in the new-media stunt known as the ”Twitter War“ compared themselves to Minnesota’s Senate rivals. Kutcher tweeted “now I know how Al Franken must have felt” when the race looked tight on Thursday. After the actor bested the network today, CNN host Larry King said, “I’m not a sore loser. I’m not gonna pull a Norm Coleman and take this to the courts.”

Well, by all means, Minnesota, let’s let Larry King serve as our rudder in difficult times. Let the bland, mushy-left, softball-tossing star-hugging King, the emptiest of all the talking heads, steer the ship of state!

It’ll make things so much easier.