Bluestem Prairie

Cornish's shares gallows humor with DFL colleagues via publically-funded email system

Scrolling through my Facebook wall late yesterday afternoon, I noticed this post by a state representative:

During our extended floor session, Rep. Cornish sends photo to all DFL representatives with subject: Crime Bill on My Desk. It contains only a photo of a gallows with two empty nooses.

Yet another way to fostering the bipartisanship the public so desires, as well as promoting public confidence in the institution as well on Cornish's part.

I messaged the House member to see if I could have the email forwarded; a screen shot is at right. What a kidder, that Tony Cornish.

Cornish chairs the Minnesota House Public Safety and Crime Prevention Policy and Finance committee. That's might clever of him to send that photo to his Democratic colleagues.  What a kidder.

Given the symbolic meanings that gather around nooses these days, meanings differing by race, age and other factors, perhaps one might have wished that the chair of the House Public Safety and Crime Prevention Policy and Finance Committee might have been mature enough to control his wit for a moment, or at least reflected on the possibility that his colleagues on the other side of the aisle might not all share his taste in rick-rolling emails.

It's not as if he's just a poor country blogger or something. He's actually a poor country chief of police. UPDATE: Reader T.Pa Or Coffee notes: "By the way, Cornish is no longer a police chief. He resigned so that he could do a better job as a legislator."  Point taken. [end update].

But there's something else that might have given him pause if he grasped a larger sense of history: the role hanging played in Minnesota's decision to end the death penalty. In 2008, the Star Tribune's Brian Leehan reviewed that story in Botched hanging led state to halt executions:

A small item in the Wednesday Feb. 7, 1906 edition of the Minneapolis Tribune reads, "Sheriff Miesen has arranged to test the rope and gallows upon which William Williams is to be executed next Tuesday at midnight."

Ramsey County Sheriff Anton Miesen's test seems to have been successful, but it didn't keep the execution of Williams at 12:31 a.m. on Feb. 13, 1906, from being a hideously botched affair that resulted in him being the last person executed in Minnesota.

Double murderer William Williams was certainly guilty of killing his former lover (a teenager) and the lover's mother, but his death was cruel, if not usual:

Sheriff Miesen was confident of his rope's strength, and the proper functioning of the trapdoor of his gallows, but his math was faulty in calculating both the height of Williams and the gallows platform.

As the condemned man dropped, his feet hit the floor.

A lurid description in the next day's issue of the St. Paul Daily News said that William's "neck stretched four and one-half inches and the rope nearly eight inches."

So deputies quickly grabbed the rope and pulled it upward, then took turns holding Williams' feet off the ground for almost 15 minutes while the life was choked out of him.

The death certificate stated that the cause of death was strangulation.

The debacle, and the newspaper coverage of it, gave ammunition to those in the state Legislature who opposed the death penalty.

House member George MacKenzie, R-Gaylord, had tried to abolish capital punishment in Minnesota in 1905 and again in 1909. He succeeded in 1911 when Republican Gov. Adolph Eberhart signed the legislation into law.

But Bluestem suspects Cornish didn't have that in his mind--or much else--when he decided to send the "Crime Bill on My Desk" email to colleagues while they were meeting in chamber. Perhaps he should just stick to the little handcuffs pin he loves to wear.

The photo can be found on Cornish's Facebook page in an album called "Arizona Trip 2012" that documents a short stay in Tombstone. The caption below the photo there? "The Only Sure Cure for Repeat Offenders."  Stay classy, Representative Cornish.

Screenshots: The gallows humor of Tony Cornish.

Related posts: Cornish denies rumors he's running for Blue Earth County Sheriff day after spreading them

Tony Cornish likes opponent, but freaks over her totally rad liberal Facebook ties to a Democrat

 Civility and its discontents: Tony Cornish is an honorable man (just agree with him)

Former Wells Mayor Shannon Savick seeks to challenge Representative Tony Cornish

Teabagger turns carpetbagger: left off Patriot Program, Cravaack moves family to NH

Today's Duluth Tribune News reveals that Cravaack’s re-election campaign begins; family moves to New Hampshire.

Thus, Bluestem's headline isn't exactly accurate: the term "carpetbagger" entered America's political lexicon during Reconstruction, where Southerners used the power of metonymy to describe Northerners who moved in on South during that era,  reducing the newcomers to the luggage they carried into town.

In modern usage, the word describes those who run for office in a place where they don't live. But perhaps Cravaack is simply acting according to a revised definition drawn the Michele Bachmann History Channel. First, Cravaack stages an upset win by portraying 18-term Congressman Jim Oberstar as as out of touch with a district from which the incumbent was often absent. Next, a successful Cravaack moves from the district before the first year of his first term is up. He may have carpetbagging in reverse, but, hey, close enough for a teabagger.

The News Tribune reports that Cravaack is a bit whiny about having to defend his seat early:

“We’re putting our team together a little bit earlier than I thought we were going to have to, but it seems as though the campaign is just on us,” Cravaack said. “When you’re the No. 1 target  of the (Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee) and you’ve had three major campaign ads already run against you, it’s unfortunate, but I had to put my team together earlier than I anticipated. We had to be able to respond to some of these, quite frankly, attack ads.” [links added by BSP]

If only Cravaack hadn't moved his family to New Hampshire--had he not, the freshman legislator culd have asked third-term representative Tim Walz how he did it in the 2007-2008 cycle after upsetting Gil Gutknecht and the attacks came in early.

But since Walz's 30+ victory in 2008 came after Tim and Gwen Walz's commitment to their home in Southern Minnesota was firmly established in voters' minds, Cravaack may have to find another mentor, as well as hope district DFLers pick a candidate as hapless as Brian Davis.

Cravaack revealed the deets of the move to the DNT:

The family’s decision to move to New Hampshire was made so that Cravaack and his wife, Traci, could spend more time with their two children. Cravaack said his wife often had to spend three days a week in the Boston area for her work with a medical supply company.

Cravaack said he’s selling his home in Lindstrom and moving to North Branch, where he’ll be closer to his office.

“We have decided to move the kids closer to me in the New Hampshire area,” he said. “She’ll probably be no more than 40 minutes away from the children.”

Cravaack said he’ll spend most Saturdays in the 8th District and his Sundays in New Hampshire.

“My wife and I said, ‘Just because I’m in Congress, I’m still a father.’ And being a father comes first,” he said. “I have to take care of my children the best way possible, and still be able to serve the country at the same time.”

It sounds like Cravaack will be a once-a-week visitor, while Congress is in session, to the district he represents. One does wonder, though, how often he'll see his children, who now live in New Hampshire, during the campaign season.

Perhaps as often as a good father should. Today's news might go some distance in explaining both Cravaack's lackluster fundraising and his absence on the NRCC's incumbent protection Patriot Program. Did the NRCC know the move was coming? On June 1, the Strib's Hot Dish blog reported in Cravaack not in first round of GOP incumbent-protection program:

The National Republican Congressional Committee has released the first members of its Patriot Program —an incumbent-protection program that offers fundraising and other help — and Minnesota’s most vulnerable House freshman is not on the list.

Rep. Chip Cravaack, who won his Eighth District seat in a close upset in 2010, was not among the 10 House Republicans included the NRCC’s program.

Cravaack is considered one of the most vulnerable freshmen Republicans in 2012, as he represents a district that went Democratic for more than 60 years. . .

. . .One potential issue for Cravaack is his own first-quarter numbers: He has raised less than eight of the 10 House members on the list.

In Q1 2011, Cravaack raised $121,024.70, with $113,039.72 cash on hand and $32,550.30 in debts and obilgations at the end of March.  The second quarter numbers?  Decide for yourself:

Covering Period 04/01/2011 Through 06/30/2011

	Column A This Period	Column B Election Cycle-To-Date
6. Net Contributions (other than loans)
(a) Total Contributions (other than loans)	223703.91	406575.37
(b) Total Contribution Refunds	0.00	1800.00
(c) Net Contributions (6(a) - 6(b))	223703.91	404775.37
7. Net Operating Expenditures
(a) Total Operating Expenditures	69014.25	181196.63
(b) Total Offsets to Operating Expenditures	1213.30	2124.61
(c) Net Operating Expenditures	67800.95	179072.02
8. Cash on Hand at Close of Reporting Period	268942.68
9. Debts and Obligations Owed TO the Committee	0.00
Itemize all on SCHEDULE C or SCHEDULE D
10. Debts and Obligations Owed BY the Committee	32550.30
Itemize all on SCHEDULE C or SCHEDULE D

Image: A Bachmann History Channel carpetbag. However one reads this story, Cravaack is going to be doing a lot of packing. Just saying.

Mankato Free Press publisher: "I have great fear for the Republican Party today"

Jim Santori, publisher of the Mankato Free Press, isn't afraid of the current manifestation of the Republican Party of Minnesota.

Rather, he fears for them:

I was weaned on politicians like Republican Sen. Everett Dirksen from Illinois who is famously quoted for saying, “I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.”

Who today is aspiring to join these ranks? Or do we today perceive these lawmakers as nothing more than “old fogies” with outdated ideas?

Unfortunately, the whispers in St. Paul are how the freshmen GOP are having an inordinate influence on the direction the party is going. And the loss of so many incumbents last year now has other GOP representatives looking over their shoulders.

They walk and talk very carefully as to not upset their new watchers who seem hell-bent on conflict rather than resolution.

This isn’t leadership; it’s capitulation. And to the freshmen, there is a synonym for “anti-government;” it’s called anarchy. You don’t join the Legislature to tear down government, you join to ensure it does its job of service better for the people, not the party.  

Personally, I don’t recall any great leader who consistently said no without offering acceptable alternatives and then convincing others they are right.

I have great fear for the Republican Party today — both in the state and nationally. Leadership is not about blockage but offering a smarter, more reasonable alternative that people can agree upon. If no new taxes are really what’s on the table, then tell the people which services will be cut. Convince us we all have to make sacrifices and let’s get to work on doing that. It’s ownership not only for your ideas but the consequences as well.

Read the whole thing in the Mankato Free Press. 

Not surprisingly, Bluestem recalled the words that opened a recent column by the conservative editor of the McLeod County Chronicle in Republicans sticking to their guns, but that may not work as planned:

Prior to the November elections, House District 25A candidate Glenn Gruenhagen of Glencoe said that if Republicans do not stick to their beliefs, "they could quickly find themselves in the minority.

What he may not have foreseen, however, is if the Republicans continue their inflexible position on the budget, as has been the case this session, the result may be the same.

Republicans like to stamp their little feet and complain about that liberal media, but really much of the talk here is simple common sense. Funny how these voices parallel that of Wayne Cox, a genuine liberal, writing in The state's GOP has lost its way - and many party veterans know it, a column in today's Star Tribune.

Photo: Everett Dirksen (center left) and today's 100th birthday guy, Hubert H. Humphrey (center right). From Life.

Roch Tea Party Patriots' demands for taxation without representation move to conference fight

Family legend has it that an ancestor once dressed like an indigenous American and, in the company of some good friends, asserted his sentiments about local representation by pitching some untaxed corporate tea into Boston Harbor.

While the family story is a bit suspect--I think our Houghton was a brother or cousin--whichever relative helped make Sam Adams a household name is probably rolling over in his grave, given a Southeastern Minnesota lawmaker's pandering to the new Tea Parties.

After micromanaging $58.5 million out of a proposed extension of Rochester sales tax, House Tax Committee Chair Greg Davids will bring his objections to allowing the Med City citizens to decide for themselves to the conference committee. Davids seems to be pandering to area Tea Party activists, who object to any taxation, it seems--and their own elected representation in St. Paul.

The Post Bulletin reports in Roch sales tax fight heads to conference committee:

The Rochester Tea Party Patriots launched an urgent call to action in an attempt to get the Senate to adopt the trimmed-down House version of the sales tax plan. But Sen. Dave Senjem, R-Rochester, sponsor of the sales tax measure, said he believes the voters of Rochester should have the right to vote on the $160 million proposal crafted by members of the community.

"I am a local control person at heart, and I just felt it wasn't my role to change what many, many people had worked on," he said. "Let the voters decide. That's basic civics. We ought to trust the voters."

Rep. Tina Liebling, DFL-Rochester, said she has been getting tons of emails from residents who support the $160 million sales tax proposal and that Davids should let the residents vote on the issue.

"He doesn't represent Rochester, and I think he should stop telling us what is good for us," Liebling said.

Yes, you've read thart right. A powerful committee chair doesn't want Rochester to vote on the local sales tax proposal forged by local leaders, a one that will be presented to voters for an up or down vote. Instead, he knows better and devised his own plan when the bill was in committee. This is what he'd put forth for the voters to decide.

It's partially  a pander to those "Tea Party Patriots" who would rather see the legislature eliminate the tax altogether, however much their local elected officials support the bill. And however much local people would have the chance to vote on the extension. They know better than the entire pool of voters.

No wonder these folk love Michele Bachmann, Queen of the Tea Party. Their understanding of the meaning of "taxation without representation"  is straight out of the Bachmann School of Don't Know much about history. But then, Rochester is where Bachmann made stuff up about the Japanese medical system at an Allen Quist town hall--and the tea partiers and local Republicans ate it up.

Photo: Olmsted County Overlord Greg Davids (R-Fillmore County)

Getting sideways: New Ulm Journal wonders, What if Emmer won?

In today's Thumbs Up/Thumbs down short editorial, the board at the New Ulm Journal posted this:

What if Emmer won?

SIDEWAYS THUMBS: The Republicans in the Legislature had a busy week passing legislation that is sure to be vetoed by Gov. Mark Dayton. Their spending proposals left barely anyone untouched - cities, higher education, K-12 education, social services, schools, prisons, nursing homes all saw either financial cuts proposed, or major policy shifts, or both. Only the income tax payer is untouched, and in fact would benefit from proposed tax cuts.

Dayton has said he will reject all such bills until the GOP presents a complete plan for a balanced budget, and one that uses the projections from the Minnesota Management and Budget office, the non-partisan agency that has analyzed spending and tax bills for years.

Imagine now that Tom Emmer had been elected instead of Dayton. Most of these bills would have been signed already.

I suppose getting sideways is a polite way to speaking of the state the state would be in if Emmer were governor. I'll grant them that.

Note that it's "income taxpayer" that the paper says is untouched. As for the total tax --including property taxes--many middle and lower income Minnesotans could be enjoying nonquality horizontal time from that.

Photo: Sideways and belly up.

The gaffe heard 'round the twitter: challenged by history, Bachmann flubs geography as well

Life on the road is tough for Michele Bachmann. She seems to forget those social studies fundamentals she fought so hard to restore with the repeal of the Profiles of Learning.

In a speech today,  she located Concord, where the shots heard 'round the world were fired, in New Hampshire, where she happens to be right now. Politico has the scoop in Bachmann fails political geography 101:

"You're the state where the shot was heard around the world at Lexington and Concord," she said Saturday morning at an event organized by the Republican Liberty Caucus of New Hampshire. "And you put a marker in the ground and paid with the blood of your ancestors."

Good, patriotic stuff … only the “Shot Heard ‘Round the World” was fired about 70 miles to the south in Concord, Massachusetts.

Perhaps the gentlewoman from Minnesota's Sixth has simply located "secret" gunshots the founders and the media--including that rascal Ben Franklin--concealed from the rest of us, like the "secret" funding in a recent bill she lamented. The Star Tribune today editorialized that Michele Bachmann's 'bombshell' is a dud: There was nothing secret about health care funding.

And given her level of understanding of early American history, it's no wonder she is the Queen of a Tea Party that defends tax breaks for corporations and the stripping of power from local officials, when the original Boston Tea Party protested tax breaks for corporations and taxation without representation.

Photos: Michele Bachmann (above); Statute of the Minuteman, Concord, MA (below).

Because, pardner, Ol' T-Paw done grew up punchin' cows in South Sain' Paul

A Facebook friend wondered yesterday morning, "Anyone just hear Pawlenty on MPR?  Where did this new cowboy accent come from?"

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank noticed the same thing in With Pawlenty's Iowa speech, a side of syrup:

But now Pawlenty is campaigning as if he's some sort of Southern preacher. At the Faith & Freedom event, he was dropping g's all over the place, using "ain't" instead of "isn't," and adding a syrup to his vowels not indigenous to Minnesota. He didn't utter the word "jobs," made only passing reference to economic woes, and instead gave the assembled religious conservatives a fiery speech about God, gays and gynecology.

There's a logical explanation.  When Tim Pawlenty grew up in South St. Paul, the stockyards were still going. Little Timmy probably slipped out of the house and his father's Teamster vernacular to punch a few cows and pick up the inflections of the High Plains drifters who herded Elsie through the streets to her fate.

It doesn't sound like he was talking to Minnesota farmers who raised the cattle, by golly.

Milbank notes that the problem for the GOP in 2012 might not be inflection, grammar, or diction, but content:

In 2010, Republicans harnessed anger at Obama for his perceived overreaching, particularly on health care. But that theme has been blunted: Now in power, Republicans such as Scott Walker have demonstrated that they are every bit as capable of overreach. Likewise, the Republicans' economic message is beginning to atrophy as private-sector job growth improves and the new House Republican majority struggles to focus on the economy.

Instead, the religious conservatives who dominate primaries are pulling Republicans back toward themes such as abortion and gay rights. The Tea Party is morphing from an economic movement into a conventional moral crusade.

Or as in the case of Minnesota, they might follow Glenn Gruenhagen's lead and mix it a bit, blaming both "sodomy" and, as I noted yesterday in Playing politics with pain: Glenn Gruenhagen blames Hutch Tech lay-off on taxes, taxes--in cases where manufacturing lines (set up during the administration of  a Democratic governor of a neighboring state or in Thailand) were the greatest factors influencing restructuring.

But why play straight with the facts?

Note: As someone who studied poesy at the University of Arkansas with some wonderful writers from North Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas, I appreciate an authentic southern accent. But those of us from South St. Paul and Southern Minnesota have our own dulcet tones.

Photo: The last days of South St. Paul's Central Livestock Association in 2008. via the NYTimes.

"10x more awesome": facing loss of Badgercare, farmers to join workers' protests Saturday

The tractorade, a tool for agrarian protest developed by the American Agriculture Movement in 1979, is being revived in Wisconsin.

In ‘Tractorcade’ moves farmers into budget debate, the Wisconsin Farmers Union reports:

Farmers, many driving their tractors, will descend upon the Wisconsin Capitol Saturday to express concerns about the effects Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget repair bill and 2011-2013 biennium budget would have on rural Wisconsin.
 
The farmers will be part of the Farm Labor Tractorcade, hosted by Wisconsin Farmers Union and Family Farm Defenders. The rally on capitol square and at the capitol will include music and presentations by farmers speaking out against the governor’s proposals.
The event will start at noon.
 
“There’s plenty in the bills which, if they’re passed, would really hurt farmers and rural communities,” said Wisconsin Farmers Union President Darin Von Ruden, a Westby-area dairy farmer. “Our members have been telling us they want their voices heard, so we’re giving them the forum for the governor and Legislature to get the message that there are problems with the bills.”
 
The budget repair bill would threaten BadgerCare, on which more than 11,000 state farm-family members depend for health insurance coverage, and would nearly eliminate collective bargaining rights for public employees. The biennial budget takes more than $800 million from public schools while allowing 0 percent levy increases without referendum -- which means small rural schools each would have to either increase farmers’ property taxes by hundreds of thousands of dollars or drastically cut programs. Shared revenue cuts to municipalities also would make it difficult for townships to offer services.
 
Organizers of Saturday’s event say those issues would greatly hurt family farmers and their rural communities. Just as important, efforts to cut public workers’ collective bargaining rights is an affront to the collective bargaining process, in which family farmers participate through cooperatives and pooling.

“Farmers need to stand behind workers and their freedom to collectively bargain,” said Family Farm Defenders vice president Joel Greeno, a Kendall-area dairy farmer. “All farmer cooperatives depend upon the same principle, so any attempt to take away that right needs to be challenged.  If you lower the bar for anyone, you ultimately lower it for everyone else. Just because farmers are going bankrupt due to unfair prices doesn’t mean workers should lose living wages, too. There is no way to repair the budget until we restore fairness to the whole economic system.”
 
“A lot of family farmers depend upon BadgerCare because they have no other insurance options,” said Tony Schultz, a member of WFU and FFD and an Athens-area community-supported agriculture farmer. “Many of our CSA customers also happen to be teachers, nurses, and other public workers so this backward proposal has a direct impact on our future livelihood.”
 
Von Ruden said the bills, which together would remove $1.25 billion from school and municipal aids, shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
 
“Many of these important programs were implemented by Tommy Thompson’s administration,” Von Ruden said. “He saw the importance of creating two-thirds state school funding and BadgerCare, which was backed by the Doyle administration. Gov. Walker keeps saying he’s giving schools and municipalities the tools to cut costs and somehow be able to operate better than they operate now. But the only tool we see the governor providing is a hammer to smash things.”
 
Farmers who take their tractors to the event will gather in a downtown Madison parking lot and drive their tractors to the capitol. Anyone interested in driving their tractor or providing a tractor for another farmer to drive should contact Greeno at (715) 463-7634.
 
Donations to help offset farmers’ expenses for taking their tractors to Madison are being accepted at http://www.razoo.com/story/Farmer-Labor-Tractorcade-Fund?1299566160.

There's even a Facebook page if you want to sign up. Boing-boing noted:

This has been a very weird event, by U.S. standards. We don't often have protest movements that sustain their momentum, at this level, over this long a period of time. Hell, one day is usually the maximum. So it's been interesting to me to see the Madison protests evolve. Up next, apparently, are theme protests. Next Saturday, March 12, starting at noon, it's farmer-labor day at the Wisconsin Capitol Building—with farmers from across the state set to bring a tractorcade of support to the protesters in Madison. Yes. A tractorcade. This just got 10x more awesome.

Farmer and labor alliances are nothing new for Midwest Unrest. North Dakota was home to the Non-Partisan League. In Minnesota, the Farmer-Labor  Federation, later the Farmer-Labor Association, united rural and urban citizens.

Photos: A flag-draped John Deere from the 1979 tractorcade (above); a Farmer-Labor Party campaign vehicle from 1925, via the MSHS (below).

Note: I'm active in the Minnesota Farmers Union.

Burying our dead: the SCOTUS decision, Westboro Baptist and Becky Lourey

Long before they threatened to show up in Hastings to  protest the staging of a play  based on the murder of a young gay man,  the Westboro Baptist Church first hit my radar back in the early 1990s.  I was living in Southwest Missouri at the time when Phelps' pickets showed up at a funeral of a man who died from AIDS.

Even in deeply conservative Springfield, home to the Assemblies of God and John Ashcroft, the action registered as deeply cruel, beyond all politics.

Certainly, Phelps' theology was a slap upside the head for those who centered their faith not in the hand of an angry God bringing vengence, but in the reflection of Christ in the faces of those who fed the hungry, nursed the sick and comforted those who mourned.

But their right to free speech, however deeply offensive? Not much different than that of the local Klan, who also turned out on occasion to note their objections to all forms of equality.  Like Phelps'  pickets these days--when they actually show--back then, the Klansmen were overwhelming outnumbered by counter-protesters. 

In the Queen City of the Ozarks, that more recent ratio was the poetry of long overdue bills of history, for brutality, cruelty and murder based on hatred once were embraced by the town's white majority.

To this day, the city remains disproportionately white  because much of the Ozark town's once-flourishing black community had packed up and moved in 1906, following  vicious lynchings of three African American men on the town square. 

But over time, public sentiment had indeed changed--mostly--and the Klan used unhooded, daylight "rallies" to try to sway public opinion. Mostly. And those holding the tiny rallies--I remember fewer than a dozen Klansmen gathering-- were outnumbered by counter-protests. While the area had a violent, racist past in which whites used lynching to terrorize black people, the Klan members had a right to assemble and speak.

Make no mistake in my meaning: the Westboro pickets compare to the Klan "rallies" of the 1990s, not to the earlier lynchings--or homophobic violence like the murder of Matthew Shepard.

Demonstrations by the Klan and Westboro are the rude and ugly price for a free society.

Now the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of Westboro, in a case that pitted free speech versus the pain  and other  damages it can cause mourners. The decision is post in a pdf here, and as much I disagree with Phelps' feral Christianity and urge readers to support actions in support of those Westboro targets, I think the court made a sound choice.

I deeply understand the pain this might cause--some friends and former students are now serving in the wars and other deployments, and if any of them were to lose their lives serving their country, I'd be ready to rip Fred Phelps' head off if he showed up at a funeral.

But I wouldn't. Self-control's not just part of being a citizen, but being an adult.

For me, the best model of both is my friend former state senator Becky Lourey, a  peace activist whose eldest son Matthew died when small arms fire brought down his helicopter in Iraq. Phelps' crew didn't threaten her son's memorial service, a rawly emotional ceremony where hundreds openly wept (I was one of them), nor at the later burial in Arlington National Cemetery.

Lourey later cast the only dissenting vote for a law which forbids protests at funerals.

At the time of the vote in 2006, conservative blogger Ed Morrissey wrote in Is Becky Lourey The Last Minnesota Voice For Free Speech?:

Lourey, a DFL member who had planned on demonstrating with Cindy Sheehan before the media star left her campout in Crawford, is the only member of the Senate to understand what this ban means. Her son died in Iraq as part of an effort to bring democracy and liberty to an oppressed people, an effort Lourey opposed then and now. But she is correct in pointing out the bitter irony that Minnesota will impose speech restrictions in a heartfelt but misguided effort to honor the sacrifice of those who fought for freedom.

The law carries a ninety-day jail sentence for anyone who intentionally disrupts a memorial service or funeral. It also bars protestors from any demonstrations at the houses of the families. All of these sound reasonable, but it represents a government restriction on speech and organizing that finds no parallel elsewhere in law. . . .

Lourey had told the Star Tribune (quoted in Morrissey):

"This is very emotional because the speech we're addressing is very ugly, but we can't repeal the Bill of Rights because of it."

Protest isn't always pretty, but the response to free speech and assembly is--as those who gathered to support theater students from a threatened Westboro picket in a far, far less emotional situation in Hastings last month attest--is more free speech and assembly.

In a subsequent post, Morrissey saw recourse through tort law as one appropriate legal response; the Court threw out lower courts' agreement with that argument. While I'm sympathetic to it and the Snyder family's pain, I think the Court made the right decision.

Via the Strib, the Washington Post reports in Even hateful speech is protected that the church will probably use the decision to challenge state laws such as that passed over Lourey's objections:

Margie Phelps, the daughter of Westboro's founder, the Rev. Fred Phelps, and a lawyer who argued the case before the court, called Wednesday's decision a providential ruling that was more than she had hoped for. It could encourage the group to challenge some of the more than 40 state and federal laws that seek to protect funerals from disruption, she said.

The article quotes Justice Roberts' opinion for the majority:

While these messages may fall short of refined social or political commentary, the issues they highlight -- the political and moral conduct of the United States and its citizens, the fate of our nation, homosexuality in the military, and scandals involving the Catholic clergy -- are matters of public import.

What recourse will families have in the face of the public discussion carried on just beyond the private steps of a house of worship or funeral home? There's already the Patriot Guard Riders, motorcyclists who shield families from Phelps' ugliness when asked to do so.

And there's Hastings' style support.

And, while it won't comfort a family in mourning, raw and immediate, there's the long moral arc of history that some call justice and others, truth. The Klan in southwest Missouri had a chronic case of it in the 1990s. Recent gains for equality --and  the size of Phelps' own tiny band--suggest that Fred's own funeral might deliver a bit of both to the Westboro Church.

Photos: Springfield Missouri's Park Central Square with the Gottfred Tower, undated postcard via Springfield Public Library. Three men were lynched from the tower in 1906, which was topped by a statue of Liberty; the tower was removed from the town square in 1909 (above). Becky Lourey (below).

Sarah Anderson: Civil War and the Safety Net

Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, grew up in nearby Litchfield, Minnesota, where her family members are respected business people and farmers. Litchfield is also home to the last remaining authentic Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) hall in Minnesota, one of the few anyway in the country.

In a recent column, Anderson's harkening  back to the 19th century origins of the American safety net is grounded a bit to the that past, in her great-grandfather's post-war experiences in Rhode Island and North Dakota .

Her commentary from the IPS's Other WordsProject, was published by the Sunday Winona Daily News:

With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, get ready for grand pontificating on its meaning for whites, African-Americans, the nation, and the world.

Here's what it meant for my family.

My great-grandfather Albert Cordner was a private in the Union Army. In a pocket-size diary, he recorded battlefield experiences that were the stuff of movies.

"Commence the fight at daylight," he wrote on Sept. 17, 1862. "First we drove them and then they drove us. Then we drove them back again. The fight lasted all day."

The next day's entry: "No fighting today. We are burying the dead."

This was the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in U.S. history, with 23,000 casualties.

Few movies have bothered to explore what happened to Civil War soldiers after the South surrendered.

Looking at great-grandfather Albert's experience, I'm struck by the efforts of a young nation, ravaged by war, to invent new ways of creating economic opportunities and protections-at least for one segment of its citizens.

As today's deficit hawks push for massive spending cuts, it's revealing to look back at these early experiments with social safety nets.

After three years at the front, Albert mustered out with all of his limbs still attached. He was one of the lucky ones. One out of every three men who served in his unit wound up dead, wounded or missing.

Back in Rhode Island, Albert got a job as a mail carrier on a route from Westerly to Newport. During the war, President Abraham Lincoln had introduced free postal delivery service in a few areas. In peacetime, the government expanded the service, in part as a way to create jobs for former soldiers.

Some years later, Albert set out for new adventures as a homesteader in Dakota Territory. The Homestead Act required that applicants spend five years on a plot of land before they could claim ownership. As a Union Army veteran, Albert could deduct his time served from the residency mandate.

Homesteading was no picnic for this East Coast city slicker.

"Mr. Cordner has been unfortunate in grain raising," the Bismarck Tribune reported in 1890. "His crops have been hurt by hail twice since he located here and one fall he lost his barn and several head of stock and some farm machinery by fire."

In these rough times, Albert got another leg up from the government. According to his pension records, which my nephew and I found at the National Archives, his payments began in 1890. They started at $6 per month and rose to $24 in 1906, which would be $566 in today's dollars. After he died, the pension passed to his widow.

The Civil War pension system was a precursor to Social Security, at one point accounting for 37 percent of federal expenditures.

It's important not to paint too rosy a picture of these benefits programs. Some historians note that the pension system was biased against African Americans. At 160 acres, Homestead plots were so small that it was tough to make a decent living off farming them. Far too many veterans lived out their post-war lives in grinding poverty.

And yet, we should reflect on how these modest benefits from long ago may still be paying off. My great-grandparents had received good public educations in Rhode Island and probably would have been fine without these perks. But the public jobs and land giveaway programs certainly expanded their horizons-and their children's.

Albert's son followed his path into the postal service and became the North Dakota postmaster. The security of that post helped insulate the next generation from the Great Depression. It paid for my mother's advanced education, which she used to teach children, including her own.

So thank you, 19th-century legislators, for making those early steps toward building a nation that cares for its citizens. Let's hope we aren't about to take a massive slide backwards.

Photo: Albert Cordner. Photo and column via Other Words.

The Coolidge effect: New congressman Chip Cravaack is hot for Silent Cal

An item in MPR Capitol View's Daily Digest:

GOP Rep. Chip Cravaack says Calvin Coolidge is the president he admires most (sans Reagan).

The link heads to the FrumForum post, On Presidents’ Day: Lincoln is King:

On Presidents’ Day, Americans take a day to recognize the office of the presidency – and to reflect upon the country’s best.

FrumForum asked freshman Republican members which president they admired the most, but excluded President Reagan from contention to give the other presidents a fair chance. The fourteen Republican members who responded gave a range of answers, but President Abraham Lincoln came out on top. . . .

But not so for freshly-minted Eighth District Congressman Chip Cravaack, who opted for an early 20th century president:

Rep. Chip Cravaack (MN-8) pointed to the economic accomplishments of the Coolidge administration to explain his choice: “During the Coolidge administration the federal budget shrank, the national debt was cut in half, unemployment stood at 3.6%, consumer prices rose just 0.4% and Americans personal wealth increased 17.5%,” he said.

The Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia's American President online reference resource paints a slightly different picture of Coolidge's Impact and Legacy:

Although the public liked and admired Calvin Coolidge during his tenure, the Great Depression that began in 1929, less than a year after he left office, seriously eroded his reputation and changed public opinion about his policies. Many linked the nation's economic collapse to Coolidge's poor policy decisions. His refusal to aid the depressed agricultural sector seems shortsighted, as nearly five thousand rural banks in the Midwest and South shut their doors in bankruptcy while many thousands of farmers lost their lands. His policies that favored tax cuts for the rich seriously contributed to an unfair distribution of wealth and the overproduction of goods. By 1929, the nation had over five hundred families with incomes over $1 million, and the top fifth of the population controlled nearly 60 percent of the nation's wealth. On the other hand, 70 percent of American families earned less than $2,500 a year, placing them at or near the poverty line for a family of four. Eighty percent, moreover, had no savings. Most of them were deeply in debt for having purchased consumer goods on easy installment credit terms.

Moreover, Coolidge's support for giant corporations meant that two hundred major corporations controlled more than 50 percent of the nation's wealth. Few of them were willing to lower prices because little competition existed. And with the European market generally saturated and dependent upon American loans, little room existed for shifting surplus production overseas. To make matters worse, many of the very rich and the upper-middle class had invested their surplus, untaxed wealth in speculative stocks rather than into savings or productive enterprises. . . .

Perhaps the implications of Cravaack's choice will sink in with Eighth CD voters, and Cravaack will be a one-termer like his ideal as the populace seeks a new congressional suitor.

On the other hand, I do give Coolidge credit for a terse sense of humor, especially for a guy who looked like he was weaned on a pickle.

Photo: Calvin Coolidge, all hat and no legacy.

Update: We're probably going to see a good bit of flooding this spring. Coolidge opposed federal involvement in flood control projects:

Coolidge has often been criticized for his actions during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927, the worst natural disaster to hit the Gulf Coast until Hurricane Katrina in 2005.^[122] Although he did eventually name Secretary Hoover to a commission in charge of flood relief, Coolidge's lack of interest in federal flood control has been criticized.^[122] Coolidge did not believe that personally visiting the region after the floods would accomplish anything, but would be seen only as political grandstanding. He also did not want to incur the federal spending that flood control would require; he believed property owners should bear much of the cost.

The flood (and a visit from Coolidge) is immortalized by Randy Newman:

Playing hide the senator: Wisconsin follows a tradition of midwest unrest

The walkout by the Wisconsin 14 may remind CNN of Abraham Lincoln:

In 1839, a young Abraham Lincoln, serving as a Whig in the Illinois House, jumped out of the building in a futile bid to prevent Democrats from getting a quorum to vote on a banks bill.

but the hiding part has me thinking about an infamous episode in Minnesota history. The New Ulm Journal editorial board got there first in posting about a memorable territorial legislator.

The spirit of Joe Rolette must have inspired the Wisconsin Senate Democrats this week. Like the pioneering Minnesota legislator who stole the bill that would have made St. Peter the state capital and hid out until the end of the session, the Wisconsin Democrats disappeared this week, leaving only the 19 Republicans on the Senate floor. Since 20 senators have to be present before a budget vote can be taken, the Dems have blocked passage of Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to reduce public employee collective bargaining rights. . . .

An article in the collections of the MSHS tells more:

In March 1857 a short, merry, prank-loving member of the Minnesota territorial legislature made away with a recently passed bill in order to prevent it from going into law. For several days he stayed holed up in a local hotel where he ate sumptuous meals, drank fine wines and whiskies, played poker, and partied with his male and female friends. On the last day of the legislative session, just as the final gavel fell, he appeared, ready to report the bill, to the laughter of supporters and opponents alike. The following day he was paraded by torchlight through the streets of St. Paul. . . .

The author speculates on the enduring fascination with Rolette:

The tale of Joseph Rolette Jr. is one of the key stories that Minnesotans of generations past have remembered about the territorial years. It was Rolette, also known as Jolly Joe, who “stole” the bill that would have moved the capital of Minnesota from St. Paul to St. Peter. . . .What explains the popularity of Rolette—the character—and the endurance of the legend about the capital bill, an unusual one for a state that prides itself on clean politics? Perhaps it is simply a colorful, romantic legend, helpful in enlivening otherwise dry accounts of bills written, debated, and passed. Or perhaps the story provides a much-needed example of an individual making a difference in a world where committees and quorums govern. It could be that the legend of Joe Rolette is like the trickster stories found in the literature of many cultures, designed to amuse and to provide children with examples of otherwise unacceptable behavior.

Are the Wisconsin 14 the new tricksters, culture heroes working in the spirit of Joe Rolette? Whatever the case, those who approve of their action can contribute $14  (or more) to the Wisconsin state senate committee.

Will Bachmann propose retroactive repeal of 1862 Homestead Act in fight against federal hand-outs?

In English-only bill is unnecessary but assures Drazkowski's re-election, a recent column about anti-immigrant legislation sponsored by state representative Steve Drazkowski, St. Paul Press columnist Ruben Rosario observed:

Which leads me to what's really the bedrock driving this English-only push: a perception that the immigrants of today are refusing to learn English or not quickly enough when compared with those very romanticized European-centric immigrants of yesteryear.

B.S., to put it as plainly as I can in a family mainstream newspaper. Joe Salmons, who heads the German department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pretty much debunked that often-anecdotal myth.

Analyzing old census data and other historical documents, Salmons and a university colleague concluded in a 2008 study of the German immigration experience in Wisconsin that "many immigrants and their descendants remained monolingual, decades after immigration had ceased.

Elsewhere in the column, Rosario suggests that Drazkowski's introduction of an Arizona-style law might predispose the Mazeppa pol to throw other back-to-the-future style bills in the hopper like opposition to observing Martin Luther King Jr's birthday and the revived "displaying those "no dogs or Mexicans" signs that once adorned Arizona eateries and other public venues in the not-too-distant past."

Word comes to tonight from Iowa that Michele Bachmann, the competitive gentlewoman from Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, may have felt a need to upstage the Draz. Kathie Obradovich, political columnist for The Des Moines Register, reports in Bachmann impresses some top Iowa Republicans:

Bachmann’s speech included a lengthy description of her ancestors’ arrival in America from Norway, their hopes and aspirations and the challenges they faced. She didn’t segue into today’s immigration issues, but noted that the country’s original settlers “didn’t come here for a federal handout.”

This is a stunner, even by Michele Bachmann's high standards of truth telling. After all, as one timeline of immigration to America notes:

The Homestead Act provides free plots of up to 160 acres of western land to settlers who agree to develop and live on it for at least five years, thereby spurring an influx of immigrants from overpopulated countries in Europe seeking land of their own.

In fact, many European settlers came to this country to get a handout: 160 acres of land west of the Mississippi; one didn't need to be a citizen, merely have the desire to become one. Norwegians jumped on it:

The end of the Civil War brought about a great increase in Atlantic crossings. The number of Norwegian emigrants leaped from 4,000 in 1865 to 15,726 in 1866, heralding the era of mass migration. The migration occurred until 1873 when, in the course of only eight years, some 110,000 Norwegians left their homeland. The second, and also the greatest, period of emigration lasted 14 years from 1880 to 1893, when on the average 18,290 left annually—ten for every 1,000 Norwegians. During this time Norway's emigration intensity was the second greatest in Europe, surpassed only by Ireland. . .

. . .The majority of Norwegian agrarian settlements developed in the northern region of the so-called Homestead Act Triangle between the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The upper Midwest became the home for most immigrants. In 1910 almost 80 percent of the one million or more Norwegian Americans—the immigrants and their children—lived in that part of the United States.. . .

That federal hand-out--along with crushing poverty in Norway--provided an incentive to come to America. Like today's immigrants to the United States, they worked pretty hard. There is one big difference between today's and yesterday's immigrants, though, when we consider "federal handouts."

Today's documented immigrants are ineligible for most federal benefits until they have been here for five years or have become citizens; the undocumented worker can legally receive very few "federal handouts." The federal hand-out of 160 acres of land to improve that the nineteenth century immigrant  received was touted as an economic development tool. Not that there wasn't any protest about this: indigenous people weren't very happy about the federal handouts.

Since immigrants coming to the United States to bag federal hand-outs bothers her so much, perhaps Bachmann will propose a reactive repeal of the Homestead Act and a radical unsettling of America west of the Mississippi. It's not a new idea.

Next, she might demand an apology from all those Norwegian-Americans who, like Germans, clung to their traditions and language long after their ancestors got off the boat:

The cultural baggage of Norwegian immigrants included their specific local dialect and a Danish literary language. The latter played a significant role in the immigrant community, attaining a nearly sacred quality. It was the language of their institutions, secular and religious, and of sacred and profane literature. The immigrants had little appreciation for the linguistic reforms in the homeland; often such changers were viewed as a betrayal to a common cultural heritage. Changes in the official written language in Norway made the older form even more difficult to retain in America. A newspaper such as Decorah-Posten in Decorah, Iowa, persisted in using a Dano-Norwegian orthographic tradition from the 1870s well into the 1950s. The situation created confusion among teachers of Norwegian at American high schools, colleges and universities, who felt obligations to the language of the immigrant community. Only just before World War II did they in principle agree to teach the written standard—generally the Dano-Norwegian bokm'al — which at any one time was recognized as the official one in Norway.

English was another threat to the maintenance of the Norwegian language in America. Rural settlement patterns protected spoken Norwegian so it still can be heard in some Norwegian communities. According to researcher Joshua A. Fishman, about half of second generation Norwegians in the period 1940 to 1960 learned the language; and in 1960 there were as many as 40,000 of the third generation who had learned Norwegian. As of 1990, about 80,000 speakers of Norwegian remained in the United States. In Minnesota, Norwegian, with 16,000 speakers, is the second most common European language after German. Across the country there are still two bilingual newspapers, Western Viking in Seattle and Nordic Times in Brooklyn. The bygdelag promoted the use of rural vernaculars and, indeed, their annual reunions provided an environment where rural speech was honored and encouraged. It was, however, a mixed language with English words and phrases integrated.

Perhaps Bachmann could find an expert to free the children of those immigrants from the numbing cycle of living off federal hand-outs.

Commemoration: three views of the 1862 mass execution in Mankato

Today marked the 148th anniversary of the largest mass execution in American history, in Mankato following the U.S. - Dakota War of 1862.  I've written before about the conflict; today the Mankato Free Press and columnist Nick Coleman each touched on the execution.

In Our View: Heeding a history lesson, the Free Press staff writes:

Today, as on many a Dec. 26 of decades past, the Dakota Indians will commemorate the hanging of 38 of their ancestors in the largest mass execution in U.S. history.

They will hold a ceremony at Mankato’s Reconciliation Park to remember this dark time in our history. 2012 will mark the 150th anniversary of the hangings.

Already there are preparations at the Minnesota Historical Society for a large exhibit and report on this significant historical event. Ancestors from both white and Dakota sides will be interviewed. Memories will come forth in a narrative that will be a somber reminder on the price paid by what seems like it could have been an avoidable conflict.

Many Mankato area residents know the story, although more and more it seems, some young people have not paid as much attention to it as their elders. . . .

. . . We should give pause to any reaction to declare a winner in a conflict that extracted so much violence on both sides. As we’ve watched the Dakota commemoration over the years, we see that spirit running through the ceremony. Many non-Indians have been invited and welcomed to the ceremony.

So it’s difficult sometimes to face an annual reliving of sorts of this dark chapter of U.S. and Dakota history, but it’s also a living reminder the reconciliation is just as important to history as the conflict itself.

Read the whole editorial at the MFP. Now writing at his own website, The State We're In, Coleman notes in Minnesota’s Darkest Memory: The Hanging of the 38:

Dec. 26, 1862: The execution of the 38 Dakota warriors at Mankato: Revenge and rage drove the flawed legal proceedings behind the kangaroo-court convictions of 303 Indians who surrendered after the U.S.- Dakota war of that autumn. Only President Lincoln’s aversion to mass punishment limited the hangman’s toll to 38. But the stain of those official killings, followed by the official banishment of the Dakota Sioux from their home (banishment or extermination was the state’s policy) left a mark of shame on Minnesota that has colored all the years since, and which has made it almost impossible to even talk about the events of 1862. Now, proposals have been made to extend a posthumous “pardon” to one of the hanged. Pardoning one man doesn’t even come close to an official recognition of the wrongs done to the Dakota, or to comprehending the scale of an avoidable tragedy that claimed hundreds of lives on all sides of the racial divide that was the cradle of Minnesota’s birth. . . .

After reviewing his extensive history of learning and writing about the war and its aftermath, Coleman includes his column from December 19, while observing that through the comments on columns about the conflict published at the Strib, he'sdiscovered:

through the kind of readers’ comments those efforts have received that the well of ignorance and outright racism remains deep and largely unplumbed in this state.

There's a great deal of truth in that observation. What will the 150th anniversary of the war draw from most: the spirit of the commenorations in the park today--or from that poisoned well at which so many readers of Coleman's columns drink?

On December 23, MPR aired a segmented about how a New documentary remembers largest mass execution in US history:

— The largest mass execution in U.S. history occurred 148 years ago, when 38 Dakota warriors were hanged from a single scaffold in Mankato.

The shock waves of that mass execution still reverberate today among the Dakota people. A new documentary film remembers the 38, and also a group of Dakota who ride on horseback each year at this time to Mankato to commemorate the executions of Dec. 26, 1862.. . .

At the end of Dakota 38, the filmmakers reveal that one of the young men featured in the film recently committed suicide.

Dakota 38 co-director Sarah Weston, a member of the Flandreau Santee Sioux Tribe, said the suicide is part of what she calls the 'historical grief' left over from the traumatic collision in the 1800's between Native Americans and white settlers.

One of the film's messages, Weston said, is that the Dakota and other Indians should take a simple but difficult step: forgive the misdeeds of the past.

"The past is really, really traumatic," Weston said. "But we're going to reach our hand out and say that we forgive. Because when you're not in a forgiveness place, you're linked to that person or that trauma for the rest of your life, all day long. And so by forgiving we're no longer linked to that."

A point worth reflecting on in a dark and snowy December.

Image: Condemned Dakota men in the Mankato prison. Via The Dakota Conflict Trials.

Star Tribune picks up Giefer pardon story, drops ball by forgetting Sjodin tragedy

Sunday, Bluestem Prairie broke the story of the 2008 pardon extraordinary of Jeremy Giefer. Late Monday, the Star Tribune noticed:

The criminal charges filed against Giefer this month have drawn attention to the earlier pardon as Pawlenty weighs a possible run for president.

Since reporter Pat Doyle's passive construction doesn't reveal where that attention was drawn (and I know of no other blog or news source other than Bluestem to post on the pardon), the source of that attention will simply have to remain a mystery to Star Tribune readers.

Unless, of course, they noticed the linked headline on the paper's online Politics page "Blog Forum" beginning Sunday night, where the paper is kind enough to list Bluestem.

Doyle's article focuses mostly on the potential impact of the board pardon on the governor's presidential ambitions. The veteran reporter interviews political pundits from across the land for their opinion on how the news might impact Pawlenty's chances.

My favorite?  The nicely understated wit of Larry Sabato:

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia and a veteran presidential campaign observer, said the circumstances of Giefer's pardon differ sharply from commutations granted by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, another potential Republican candidate for president. Still, Sabato said Giefer's pardon could be used against Pawlenty if he becomes a serious candidate for president.

"Could it hurt him?" Sabato asked. "To some degree."

Since Pawlenty has yet to make an impression on the GOP base nationwide, that's one heckova an "if."

However, both Sabato and Doyle overlook another incident of a sex offender being released under Pawlenty's watch; a Bluestem reader's memory proved more reliable this afternoon. One can hardly fault Sabato for missing the story of Dru Sjodin.

"Janine" notes in her comment:

Have sex offenders ever been a priority with Pawlenty?
Pawlenty initially let out both Dru Sjodin and the Groene's family killers.

She then cites sourced information from Pawlenty Unplugged (apparently via this 2008 post on Daily Kos--I've had to locate soures that document the information at the now-defunct PU site).

Here's the passage at DK:

STATEMENT: As a candidate for governor, Tim Pawlenty said that, "We won’t have a catch-and-release program for violent criminals...."1( Jack B. Coffman, "Lt. Gov. Joanne Benson Gets Boostin Republican Straw Poll; Party Activists Prefer Her Over Quist--For Now," St. Paul Pioneer Press, Sept. 21, 1997, Nexis All-News, accessed 11/30/2010).

And, as Majority Leader, Pawlenty criticized Governor Ventura for not spending money on criminal justice initiatives, saying, "If you have children being abducted and murdered because repeat offenders are falling through cracks in our criminal justice system, I’d say that’s a pretty good emergency. You ask regular people what bugs them most...and this is right up there."2 (James Walsh, "GOP crime plan tackles repeat offenses, information issues," Minneapolis Star Tribune, January 11, 2000, Nexis All-News, accessed 11/30/2010).

YO-YO: In January, 2003, Governor-elect Pawlenty said that with the state facing a budget deficit, the corrections budget would be on the table for cuts, like every other area. 3 (Ashley H. Grant, "Pawlenty names chief of staff, corrections commissioner, others," Associated Press, January 2, 2003, Nexis All-News, accessed 11/30/2010).

True to his word, in his 2004-05 biennial budget recommendation, the Governor proposed "significant budget reductions" in such core services as sex offender evaluation and sex offender notification.4

In May, 2003, Dr. Anita Schlank, head of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, resigned after being told that the program was growing at an "unsustainable rate" and being directed to draw up a list of 40 civilly committed sex offenders to place in community housing in order to save money.5 (Star Tribune)

Governor Pawlenty’s Human Services Commissioner initially called Schlank’s claim outrageous, but later recanted after another employee corroborated Schlank.6 (Star Tribune)

In December, 2003, the Pawlenty Administration was severely criticized for releasing Alfonso Rodriguez from prison, rather than referring him for civil commitment as a sexual psychopath, where he would have been confined in a secure mental hospital. Rodriguez, a convicted sex offender, allegedly kidnapped and murdered Dru Sjodin. It was recently noted that referrals to the sex offender program have surged since Dru Sjodin’s murder.7 (Star Tribune)

This is because the Pawlenty Administration had been allowing dangerous sex offenders like Rodriguez to leave prison without being properly referred for civil commitment prior to the Sjodin murder. . . .

Since the PU post was created, Rodriguez has been convicted of Sjodin's murder in North Dakota and sentenced to death.

Will the Republican base link the Giefer pardon and the Rodriguez murder--and find a disturbing pattern in Pawlenty's record with predators?

 

Recycled: Corn night: St. Peter's forgotten tradition?

Modified from an October, 30, 2009 post.

Today is "Mischief Night," and, appropriately enough, friends say, my birthday. While October 30 is a fearful Devils' Night of arson in Detroit, Michigan, the evening was the more mild Corn Night of teen pranks when I was growing up in the St. Peter area in the 1960s and early 1970s.

While the tradition has a longer lineage than any of us knew according to Wikipedia, we understood St. Peter's Corn Night as a time when older youth could go out and pull pranks on neighbors and friends.

Throwing shelled corn was more or less officially condoned, and I remember walking down corn-littered sidewalks in the pleasant college town when I was still trick-or-treating age. As an older kid, I learned that t-ping a home involved little more risk, as did soaping car windows, but mostly the police turned a blind eye on all but the most destructive behavior.

And of course, our parents discouraged the use of the notorious go-bang-go bag as friends who grew up in New Jersey and Philadelphia called them.

If an old high school friend with teenagers of his own now living in St. Peter is correct, Corn Night is forgotten. He received blank looks from his teenage sons, and there's no Internet chatter anywhere about the old custom.

One blogger who grew up in Red Wing, where the tradition lives on, tells about her escapades here, as well as providing more background on its origins:

Once, when I was in the third grade and had time to kill, I picked up Mrs. Blomme's Encyclopedias for some light reading. For some reason, I happened upon a section that explained the origins of not only Halloween, but Corn Night. Corn Night's original intent was for residents to roam their villages and throw corn at people's houses as a sign of protection from the spirits that would come a'visitin' on Halloween.

Corn Night's original intent in Red Wing was to give kids one night in their young lives to band together in mutiny and stick it to The Man by smashing pumpkins, overturning garbage cans, chucking various objects at people and their houses (preferably eggs if we didn't like you) and T-P'ing people's trees and lawn ornaments. It was awesome, especially if you had watched "Children Of The Corn" right before you traipsed out to join your neighborhood buddies.

Others write about how teens set the bluffs on fire for uncontrolled burns, so some activities are not so benign.

My correspondent Joel speculated that the police are no longer as tolerant as the officers in the St. Peter of our childhood, but didn't know how or when St. Peter's Corn Night vanished into the past.

Perhaps Corn Night prepared my for an adult appreciation of tricksters and pranks. Or perhaps I learned the difference between harmless tomfoolery ad destructive behavior. Whatever the case, here's hoping for safe trick-or-treating for the kiddies, and civility and civil rights in the coming Tuesday.

Crowdsourced research from the comments: more on the American Action Network's Malek

While Republicans and their allies are carrying on about Tim Walz's heart being in Washington, rather than Southern Minnesota, two asute readers were researching the peculiar history of a key player in Norm Coleman's American Action Network, Frederic Malek.

Let's hope the legacy media considers sharing information about what sort of Washington money-men want Randy Demmer in office.

Phoenix Woman dug this up:

Wow, Norm Coleman's certainly an inclusive kinda guy. One of the donors to his new group is none other than Fred Malek. Yes, this Fred Malek (http://www.slate.com/id/2254653/): -- Malek's fulfillment of Nixon's deranged request that he identify the "Jewish cabal" within the BLS was first reported by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in their 1976 book, The Final Days. In September 1988, shortly after Vice President George H.W. Bush (then running for president) installed Malek as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee, Woodward and Walter Pincus published a follow-up of sorts in the Post. Two months after Malek had written his July 1971 memo, Woodward and Pincus wrote, two Jewish BLS officials named Peter Henle and Harold Goldstein had been "ousted from their posts and moved to less visible positions in the Labor Department agency."

Max followed up with this:

Thanks to the Phoenix Woman for reminding us of part of Malek's past. Much more recently, the SEC censured him and his firm, and accepted a $250,000 settlement from them, for helping the outgoing Connecticut state Treasurer steer over half a million dollars to a friend, in exchange for giving tens of millions of dollars of state pension fund business to Malek's firm. See http://www.sec.gov/litigation/admin/33-8457.htm

From the SEC document cited above:

1. Thayer is a Washington, DC-based private equity firm founded in 1996 that manages funds totaling over $1.2 billion. Thayer organizes funds that provide investment opportunities for its participants. Thayer is also associated with at least four unregistered investment advisers, including TC Partners IV and TC Management IV, which are Thayer affiliates. At all relevant times, Thayer has acted as an unregistered investment adviser.

2. TC Partners IV is the general partner of Thayer Equity Investors IV, L.P. ("Thayer IV"), an $880 million private equity fund founded in 1998 in which the Connecticut state pension funds is a limited partner. Thayer, through its senior management, controls TC Partners IV. At all relevant times, TC Partners IV has acted as an unregistered investment adviser.

3. TC Management IV is a private management company that manages, and receives fees from, Thayer IV. At all relevant times, TC Management IV has acted as an unregistered investment adviser.

4. Malek, age 67, is a resident of McLean, Virginia. Malek is the Chairman of each of the Thayer affiliates.

                                                       Summary

In November 1998, the then-Connecticut Treasurer invested $75 million of the Connecticut state pension fund with Thayer IV. In connection with this investment, Thayer, through Malek, agreed to hire a consultant at the Treasurer's request. This consultant, who was paid nearly $375,000 by TC Management IV, had no previous involvement with the proposed investment and ultimately performed no meaningful work on the deal. Respondents failed to disclose this arrangement to the Connecticut pension funds.

What's a $100,000 SEC fine among friends?

The New York Times wasn't off in recalling the ghosts of Nixon-era, the Return of the Secret Donors that plan to flood the airwaves with anti-Walz ads. There's a ghost in the GOP machine all right.

Byberg's back to the future; or, our leaders are ignoring Constitutional debates from 1775

  I have to give endorsed Republican congressional candidate and Norwegian-American "anchor baby" Lee Byberg credit for zeal for the United States Constitution, if not for accuracy about its creation.

The McLeod County Chronicle reports in Lee Byberg wants to bring U.S. back to the Constitution:

Lee Byberg had an appropriate audience when he spoke to Tom Schoper's American History class at GSL High School Friday.

Byberg, the Republican-endorsed candidate for U.S. Representative from Minnesota's 7th District, wants the country to get back to the roots established when its Founding Fathers adopted the U.S. Constitution.

"I want to bring government back to the Constitution," Byberg told the students. "Our leaders have ignored the Constitution."

Byberg said the framers of the Constitution, in 1775, debated a new form of government, a change from the autocracies of Europe, which were based on the idea that the common man was incapable of making decisions regarding government.

The question the Constitution framers debated, Byberg said, was "can man govern himself - are we capable of self-government?"

As someone who spent near five years of her mid-to-late twenties working in The Library Company of Philadelphia and who has held the sacred documents of the revolution (or at least the homework assignments for it) in her hot little hands, I find this passage to be most fascinating.

The Library Company was used as a reference library by the First and Second Continental Congresses, as well as the Constitutional Convention, since the library was at that time located near the  Carpenters and Independence Halls. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 to debate a response to the Coercive or Intolerable Acts. The Second Continental Congress began meeting in 1775 but didn't write the Constitution, though the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms,  Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation came out of this body.

The United States Constitutional Convention convened in 1787 to write and adopt the Constition, which was quickly ratified by the states; the Bill of Rights was added in 1791. Typically, distinctions are made when discussing the Signers of the Declaration and the Framers of the Constitution.

On the other hand, Byberg is quite correct in a very strict sense. Our nation's leaders do ignore the Constitution that was debated in 1775. Yes, indeedie. Why, that rascally Ben Franklin at The Library Company of Philadelphia didn't even record that sacred document as ever having been on file.

2012: How should Minnesota remember the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862?

In August, I served as a guide for Twin Cities freelance journalist and theater artist Sheila Regan in a tour of sites related to the U.S. -Dakota War of 1862.

The three-part series is a fascinating read over at the Twin Cities Daily Planet. As a partner of the TCDP, I'm posting one of the articles today, and links to the other articles are below.

By Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet

September 16, 2010

In 1987, on the 125th anniversary of the execution of the Dakota warriors who were hanged at the end of the war, Minnesota's Governor Rudy Perpich declared a Year of Reconciliation.  A statue, called Winter Warrior was created at the site of the execution, and the remains of the executed men were returned from museums to the Dakota for proper burial. 

[As the sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 approaches, our series addresses the ongoing "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century -- and about the remembrance and commemoration of the historical events of 1862.  The series:

Forest City to Fort Snelling: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
Trail of treaties: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
Telling the story today: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862]

 

Naming events and places is a powerful part of history-making, and today's battles center over both naming and telling the story.

Many historians and activists insist that Fort Snelling was, in fact, a concentration camp for the 1600 Dakotas interned there after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Those interned in the camp were women, children and old men, not combatants. Hundreds died as a result of the cold and abuses, and those who lived were removed from Minnesota in the spring.

The Minnesota Historical Society, which has a historical interpretive center at Fort Snelling, doesn't call it a concentration camp and doesn't mention the concentration camp on their website's Brief History Page.  However, the Visitor Center at Fort Snelling State Park, which is run by the Department of Natural Resources, does have a memorial for the Dakota who were held at the camp and uses the term "concentration camp." 

In Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America, Jack Weatherford writes about a picture from the 1862-3 encampment at Fort Snelling:

The tepees seem so traditional, yet the identical appearance of the tepees, neatly arranged with an enclosure, offers a strange glimpse of a form that was to haunt the twentieth century.  The pictures show us the birth of an institution, the beginning of a whole new social practice of concentrating innocent civilians into an area and imprisoning them for protracted periods without charging them with any crime.

 Mankato State University's Minnesota history website also describes Fort Snelling as a concentration camp:

The remaining Dakota surrendered. Sibley's force rounded up 1700 Dakota women, children, and elders and began a forced march from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. They walked 20 miles a day. Along the way they were subjected to physical and verbal violence by local white people. New Ulm residents poured hot, scalding water over their heads. Many were killed or died from hunger and sickness. ...

The remaining Dakota prisoners were treated with brutality. Soldiers held prisoners at Fort Snelling through the winter. The soldiers treated them brutally, violating the women and then killing them. Many people died from disease because of the crowded conditions. Others committed suicide because of the horrors they saw there. Some days soldiers buried as many as 50 people in a mass grave.

The Lower Sioux Agency historical site, which is run by the Minnesota Historical Society, also does not use the term "concentration camp." Instead, the term "prison camp" is used.   The problem with "prison camp," is that it implies that the inhabitants of the camp were criminals, which they were not. 

At the Lower Sioux Agency Historical Site, which is run by the Lower Sioux Community with funding from Minnesota Historical Society, Anthony Morse provided documentation for changes that were made on the historical markers inside the visitors' center.  The changes were made, he said, in 2000. 

The documents indicate historical information that used to be shown at the site and which now has been removed.  For example, there was information about Major Lawrence Taliaferro, an Indian Agent at Fort Snelling.  Previous signage spoke of Taliaferro's "sincere interest in the welfare of the Dakota and Chippewa," who "came to respect his truthfulness."  The marker read:  "His efforts went far to keep peace on the Minnesota frontier for many years." 

Another marker, about Fort Ridgley, formerly titled "Big Guns Hold the Fort," then was changed to "The Door to the Valley." 

Prairie Rambles: visiting 1862 U.S.-Dakota War sites

On Sunday, Twin Cities Daily Planet reporter Sheila Regan was my guest for a tour of places associated with the 1862 U.S. Dakota War. Regan had not traveled before to the upper Minnesota River Valley where many of the significant actions of the conflict took place, as her coverage of indigenous people's issues for the Twin Cities Daily Planet, The Circle and other publications focused on the Twin Cities.

Though the day was sweltering and part of our travels took us down dust-choked gravel road, the beauty of the wide valley impressed Sheila after driving miles through Meeker County's rolling hills and Renville County's flat farmland.

Not that either county was just drive-through. Leaving Hutchinson, we stopped at the marker near where Thaóyate Dúta (Little Crow) was murdered in 1863. The commemorative plaque on the side of Meeker County 18 used the name "Little Crow," while a red wooden stake stake near it honored the Dakota leader with his name in his own language.

The contrast underscores the tensions surrounding the story Regan is researching for the TCDP, described in Spot.us:

2012 marks the 150th Anniversary of the U.S.- Dakota war of 1862. The war ended with the largest one-day execution in American history, where 38 Dakota warriors were hanged on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. Some 1,700 Dakota women, children, and elders were forcibly marched to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. 

Many American Indian advocates hope to bring attention to what happened, although there is disagreement about the best way to honor this dark history.

Some American Indians focus on the need for better American Indian representation both in cultural institutions such as the Minnesota Historical Society and in school curricula. Others call for the razing of Fort Snelling, which to them symbolizes the genocide of the Dakota people. 

I propose to write a story about the ramifications of the Dakota war for Minnesota today, and on the events and actions that will lead up to and mark the 2012 anniversary.

Spot.us is a tool for funding projects by freelance journalists like Regan who take on more extensive projects. Please consider visiting the Spot.us page set up for Sheila's project, and contributing what you can to help her with the expenses for the story.

The trip wasn't all business, though. As we tooled eastward on Renville County 15, I ordered Sheila to stop and back up, for there was a stand of ripe wild thicket plums beside the road.

While we grabbed a bag to put them in, we may have eaten more warm, ripe plums on the spot, the slight wild sour bite in each fruit surprising the palate inside the more familiar domestic plum sweetness.

When we reached the Lower Agency, the supervisor for the historical site noted that elders in the nearby community had observed that wild plum were now less abundant, given the use of farm chemicals.

I'll be dreaming about that sweet and biting memory of warm fruit on a northern slope for awhile, I think.

Photos: Roadside marker, photo by Sally Jo Sorensen (above); Wild Plums, photo by Sheila Regan (below).

Note: Bluestem Prairie is a Contributing Blog for the Daily Planet; we exchange articles at no cost to either venue under this agreement.