But there is so much about Mitt Romney that makes me detest him more than any public figure I've known in my life. In my mind he's the worst kind of person that should be involved in politics. It basically comes down to this: Mitt Romney has spent his entire life preying on the weak and defenseless, always from a position of complete safety for himself. In other words, he's a coward...

You can't find one instance where Mitt Romney actually stood up and fought for someone other than himself. Find a case where Mitt Romney put himself at risk on someone else's behalf. Look and see if you can find a single case where Mitt Romney sacrificed something for someone else's benefit. You can't because he doesn't.

As reported in Lodi Valley News, Walker has hired Texan Dr. James Kroll to serve as Wisconsin's "deer czar," a position that gives Kroll considerable power over Wisconsin's deer management policy. Kroll is an outspoken proponent of game farms, and an opponent of public lands and public game management, which he is on record as describing as "the last bastion of communism."

The public lands Kroll despises include the state parks, state and national forests, and other publicly held property that hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites-particularly in the northern part of the state-rely on for deer hunting. Hunters on public land may be surprised to discover that Walker regards their annual trek into a state forest as a radical left wing activity akin to marching in a May Day parade in Red Square. But so it is.

Matt Dean couldn't answer questions from business owners on MPR this morning. Two called in and explained that the way the free market works is that companies hire more people when they get more customers. To get more customers, it's the middle class that needs relief, not businesses. He fell back on the crutch of "The MN Chamber supports it." Well, this local Chamber of Commerce President doesn't.

Since he's a Paul follower, I wonder if Econ 101 means going on the gold standard and laws against adopting the amero as our new currency. Yes, that will fix the economy.

In even plainer English: AGs, who are typically the consumer's lone public advocate these days, may not file suit against, say, a tobacco company, a mortgage fraudster or a national company flaunting state law, unless the legislature passes a bill saying he -- or in our case, she -- can.

The one Minnesota member of ALEC's Civil Justice Task Force is Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa, who apparently could tear himself away from snowpiles in the Sears parking lot.  

The House voted Wednesday to eliminate the detailed surveys of America that have been conducted by the Census Bureau since the nation's earliest days.

House Republicans, increasingly suspicious of the census generally, advanced a measure to cut the American Community Survey. It passed 232 to 190.

The survey is not part of the constitutionally mandated population count, but some version of it has been done by law as part of the decennial survey since the time of Thomas Jefferson to assess the needs of the nation. It's generally considered a vital tool for business.

The trick is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal, and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators. Employers, for example, can simply program their computers to shave a few dollars off each paycheck, or they can require workers to show up 30 minutes or more before the time clock starts ticking.

Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. When supplemented with late fees (themselves subject to interest), the resulting effective interest rate can be as high as 600% a year, which is perfectly legal in many states.

America's Most Endangered Rivers is more than a list. It is a call to action to engage concerned citizens in the fight to protect rivers. With public support, we can directly impact the fate of these rivers and save them for generations to come.

Offices of Inspectors General (OIG) serve as independent watchdogs within federal agencies and are essential to a well-functioning federal government. They conduct audits and investigations that identify wasteful government practices, fraud by individuals and government contractors, and other sorts of government misconduct, even including torture. Congress and the public rely on OIG reports to hold agencies and individuals accountable for wrongdoing, identify a need for legislation, and evaluate the effectiveness of government programs and policies. Unfortunately, many OIGs across the government do not have permanent leadership.

Since 2009 tax revenue has withered across Europe as economic growth slowed to nothing. The old budget requirements started to look like a straightjacket, and were quickly labeled "austerity" by the opposition. Calls for a bit of spending to spur growth in contrast to the old regime has defined politics across Europe since.

This debate may seem strange to observers in the US because we have never had it. Our conservatives have never favored austerity, especially not through the spendy Bush years - as Vice President Cheney famously said, "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter." The closest we have come to austerity was the negotiation over the debt ceiling last August. That process spooked everyone so badly that the net result was a tacit agreement to never talk about it again. Even the "Super Committee" that was supposed to fashion a budget agreement quietly failed with no repercussions at all.

May last year to last month was the hottest year in the US since record keeping began. Of course, it would be correct to point out that this is just the US, and the global temperature is what matters.

Except last year was the hottest year ever --- globally.

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The armed forces have been experimenting extensively with alternative energy technologies. It seems less likely they've been taken over by tree-hugging greenie socialists, and more likely they want shorter supply lines, less dependence on nations which might be hostile in a war, and less vulnerability to price spikes in oil. Not good enough for House Republicans though. They want to prohibit the use of biofuels if they aren't cheaper than "traditional" fossil fuels.

Tucked away in the House Armed Services Committee's proposed Pentagon budget is a provision that could bring the U.S. military's ambitious foray into biofuels to a screeching halt.

Earlier this week, the Republican-led committee voted to ban the Department of Defense from purchasing alternative fuels that cost more than "traditional" fossil fuels.
That would eliminate several emerging biofuels that have undergone successful testing by the Air Force and Navy over the past year on aircraft and ships.

It's been presumed since proposition 8 passed in California that marriage opponents are able to split off non-whites from white liberals on this one issue. Actual election results say this is wrong, in keeping with other polls showing non-whites do not generally support marriage base. The real predictor was urban-rural (though the article doesn't look into suburbs which in Minnesota have to be looked at separately from rural areas and urban areas). This is specifically about the North Carolina amendment voted on last week and specifically about blacks, but the likelihood is this is true in Minnesota.

There's a problem with this story line: It ignores the actual results of the election, which show that the fault line in North Carolina was not racial at all, but rather urban-rural.

It's impossible to calculate exactly how black voters came down on Amendment 1, because there was no exit polling and voting precincts are rarely single-race. What is clear is that urban voters opposed the amendment; rural ones supported it; and that division cut cleanly across the color line.

In each of North Carolina's five largest cities, voters in majority-black precincts rejected the measure: Charlotte (52 percent), Raleigh (51 percent), Greensboro (54 percent), Winston-Salem (55 percent), and Durham (65 percent). Durham's results were dramatic: Not a single majority-black precinct supported the amendment. Several crushed it by margins of 3-to-1 and even 4-to-1.

The National Partnership for Women & Families released a new report that assigns grades to states based on their laws protecting new parents, like paid parental leave, paid sick days, and laws to accommodate breastfeeding mothers. While many of these laws benefit both moms and dads, they're certainly more important for women, since we actually have to give birth and all.

In a recent speech, Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi expressed concerns about climate change, saying "societal expectations on climate change are real, and our industry is expected to take a leadership role."

It would be nice to think that the Saudis were doing this for climate change reasons. But they're doing it for more selfish objectives: jobs and efficiency.

In that same speech, Al-Naimi explained the need to support new energy industries that can create more jobs than the oil sector: "We know that pumping oil out of the ground does not create many jobs. It does not foster an entrepreneurial spirit, nor does it sharpen critical faculties."

According to the Saudis, what fosters that entrepreneurial spirit? Renewable energy.