Monday digest: economic guru down on the link farm edition

The Post Bulletin reports Walz appoints staff member to stimulus questions.  Meredith Salsbery engages in a Q & A with PB political writer Heather Carlson.  Great photograph.

Last night we had to drive into the pelting rain; high winds threatened to blow us into the wrong lane. A testament to the energy waiting to be harvested.

Though buffeted by the economic downturn, Southern Minnesotans still seek a piece of the wind industry. The Jackson county Pilot reports in Wind forum packs 'em in:

It was standing room only at the Lakefield Multi-purpose Center Thursday and, when asked by wind lease legal expert Stan Duran how many in the room had been approached by a wind energy development company, an estimated 80 to 90 percent had hands in the air.

The New York Times looks at how the Energy Secretary Serves Under a Microscope:

As a physicist, Steven Chu has seen atoms suspended in a powerful laser beam and DNA stretched out in a vacuum chamber.

But in his new job as energy secretary, Dr. Chu is observing phenomena he never saw in the science laboratory.

At a recent Senate hearing, for example, he witnessed a junior cabinet member (himself) being systematically dissected by a senior senator (John McCain).

Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, was unhappy when Dr. Chu affirmed the Obama administration’s intention to suspend work at a planned nuclear waste site in Nevada. “What’s wrong with Yucca Mountain, Dr. Chu?” he demanded repeatedly as Dr. Chu tried to explain.

“I think we can do a better job,” Dr. Chu finally replied.

For a slight, soft-spoken Nobel laureate, Washington has been an initiation that he has likened to being “dumped in the deep end of the pool.”

Read the rest in the NYTimes. We were shocked to learn in the Washington Post article, Why Righties and Lefties? that the late President Ronald Reagan was a lefty like us. Not surprised, though, to learn that we have the advantage in a fight.

Wellstone Action breaks down the arguments in the war over the Employee Free Choice Act.

House Ag Subcommittees will hold three hearings this week on the USDA's management of conservation programs, tobacco production and obesity.  This item is a bit old, but the House Agriculture Committee Reaches Out on Climate Change. The instructions [pdf] and the biographical information./questionnaire [word doc] are online.

Follow the House Transportation Committee on Twitter.  Sub committee hearings this week on the Coast Guard and the DOT's disadvantaged business enterprise programs.

A Veterans Affairs subcommittee will hold a hearing tomorrow at 1 p.m. our time on The Nexus between Engaged in Combat with the Enemy and PTSD in an Era of Changing Warfare Tactics.

In other news, blogger Amanda Terkel gets stalked and Michele Bachmann thinks she's a foreign correspondent instead of a member of the House of Representatives.  In honor of the rich inner lives of our conservative friends, stalkers and sock puppets, a nice video: