Governor Tim Walz
COLUMN: Victory for senior citizens, high school students, Stillwater Gazette
Minnesota Legislature
Ballot boxes: MInnesota delivers common sense, MinnPost
Minnesota News
Canadian wildfires threaten BWCA, worsen air quality across Minnesota, Star Tribune
Delta variant causing 75% of new Minnesota COVID-19 cases, Star Tribune
No water falling from iconic Minnesota waterfall, KSTP
As Drought Conditions Persists, Minnesota Cities Announce Water Conservation Measures, WCCO
The panel typically focuses on the Senate’s inner workings, but its chairwoman, Amy Klobuchar, is seeking to transform it into a major force on voting rights.
WASHINGTON — The usually obscure Senate Rules Committee is the most insider of insider panels, typically responsible for doling out precious Capitol office space, keeping the Senate running and handling fights over arcane floor procedures.
But circumstances and the ambitions of the committee’s current chairwoman, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, have thrust the panel into the middle of things. In just six months, she has spearheaded a push for a sweeping voting rights bill sought by Democrats while her committee has investigated failings in the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol. The panel was also in charge of staging President Biden’s inauguration, only two weeks after the deadly riot.
“For so long people have been focused, understandably, on the inner workings of the Senate with the Rules Committee,” said Ms. Klobuchar, who answered with an emphatic “yes” when asked if she was trying to turn the panel into a force. “But the point is we have a bigger jurisdiction, and that’s our democracy.” Continue reading.
According to a report from Business Insider, fledgling presidential candidate Donald Trump hung out backstage with the rock band Aerosmith before one of his debates with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and proceeded to anger lead guitarist Joe Perry with an offensive remark in front of the band member’s wife.
The report notes that band members scored tickets to the debate in Cleveland and were invited backstage where the New York businessman bantered with members of the group instead of doing last-minute prep before taking on his 2016 Democratic opponent.
According to Business Insider, all went well until Trump made an off-hand comment in front of Perry and his wife that “soured” their relationship with him and later led to them banning him from using their songs at his rallies. Continue reading.
NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, licensed to governments around the globe, can infect phones without a click
Military-grade spyware licensed by an Israeli firm to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and two women close to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16 media partners.
The phones appeared on a list of more than 50,000 numbers that are concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens and also known to have been clients of the Israeli firm, NSO Group, a worldwide leader in the growing and largely unregulated private spyware industry, the investigation found.
The list does not identify who put the numbers on it, or why, and it is unknown how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled. But forensic analysis of the 37 smartphones shows that many display a tight correlation between time stamps associated with a number on the list and the initiation of surveillance, in some cases as brief as a few seconds. Continue reading.
Washington (AFP) – Top US scientist Anthony Fauci on Saturday blasted commentators who sound an anti-vaccination theme, saying America might still be battling smallpox and polio if today’s kind of misinformation existed back then.
The comments from the country’s leading infectious disease expert reflected mounting frustration over the sharp slowdown in the Covid-19 vaccination rate in the United States, even as the disease has been surging in states with low rates.
It also came days after President Joe Biden expressed his own visible frustration, saying social media that carry widely heard misinformation about vaccines are “killing people.” Continue reading.
Social media companies are facing new pressure from the federal government to crack down on health misinformation as the Biden administration makes a push to encourage reluctant Americans to get COVID-19 vaccines.
Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued an advisory Thursday stating that misinformation is an “urgent threat” and called on the tech companies he accused of amplifying the misinformation to take action to fight the false, and often dangerous, claims.
“Health misinformation didn’t start with COVID-19. What’s different now is the speed and scale at which health misinformation is spreading,” Murthy said at a White House briefing. Continue reading.
It’s been three weeks since the Arizona “audit”—a process that involved the most partisan of Trump partisans searching for “bamboo ballots” and the ghostly fingerprints of Hugo Chavez, under the supervision of a firm created expressly to bolster conspiracy theories—apparently came to a close. That is, the audit farce is still officially underway, but three weeks ago Cyber Ninjas tweeted out an announcement that they were done pretending to count ballots, and had moved onto the most critical part of the process: terminal whining.
As CBS News reports, Cyber Ninjas is now complaining that they “don’t have enough information” to complete the audit. Because getting to finger every single ballot, take control of the voting machines (which will now be discarded after the auditors did who knows what to them), and initiating a plan to go door-to-door asking people how they voted just isn’t enough. As has happened several times in the process, the Ninjas, along with supporters in the Arizona Senate, are directing fingers at the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors—the Republican-controlled Board of Supervisors—for failing to “cooperate” enough in an audit where they’ve turned over every ballot, every machine, and every scrap of paper related to the election. That’s not enough, say the Ninjas. They want … well, it might be easier to say what they don’t want.
Until they get everything on their unreasonable list, and whatever unreasonable list comes after this, the “auditors” insist that they are not going to issue a report. Since July 2, all the ballots, machines, and accoutrements of Ninjaing have been parked at an unairconditioned building on the Arizona state fairgrounds. It’s unclear whether anyone is actually working there. Continue reading.
Former President Donald Trump issued three statements in two days claiming that voting fraud and irregularities cost him Arizona’s electoral votes.
PHOENIX (AP) — Former President Donald Trump issued three statements in two days falsely claiming that voting fraud and irregularities cost him Arizona’s electoral votes.
Trump relied on comments made Thursday by contractors hired by state Senate Republicans to oversee a partisan review of the 2020 vote count in Maricopa County, which includes metro Phoenix.
The “forensic audit,” as Senate GOP leaders are calling their review, is overseen by Cyber Ninjas, a small computer security firm with no election experience before Trump began questioning the 2020 results. Its CEO, Doug Logan, spread false conspiracy theories about the election before he was hired to lead the Arizona review. Continue reading.
Trump believes he was a shoo-in for 2020 if not for COVID-19, he told authors of “I Alone Can Fix It” — contradicting his claims of a rigged election.
Former President Donald Trump told the authors of a new book that he believes he would have had a good chance of winning a presidential election against George Washington, even with Abraham Lincoln as Washington’s running mate.
Trump made the outlandish observation as he indicated that his re-election in 2020 was inevitable had it not been for the COVID-19 pandemic — which appears to contradict his comments about a “rigged” election.
“I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice-president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me,” Trump told Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, they recount in their new book “I Alone Can Fix It.” Continue reading.
GOP seizes on critical race theory as partisan divider.
ASHBY, MINN. – Jason Kirchenwitz wanted to know more about an issue arising often now in his conversations, and he suspected others did too, especially Republican activists he helps organize in rural Grant County.
He was right. Nearly 100 people filed into a gymnasium in this town of fewer than 500 people last week for a meeting he called. They all came to hear about critical race theory.
“I have kids in school,” said Kirchenwitz. “I don’t want them pressured or pushed into other views.” Continue reading.
