Minnesota

There are a few telling details about yesterday’s rally against the House’s health care reform bill that got lost in the coverage. The rally was not planned by the GOP leadership, which was focusing on a 12-hour online health care “town hall.” Rather, the rally was initiated by Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), the loose-tongued rising [...]

Politico reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann’s (R-Minn.) chief of staff Michelle Marston is stepping down.
Multiple sources have confirmed that Michelle Marston, a veteran Hill aide, is leaving Bachmann’s office.
In an e-mail exchange with POLITICO, Marston declined to say why she’s going.
“I’m just not talking about it, and frankly I don’t think there’s a story here,” [...]

Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) is out front with a statement congratulating Bob McDonnell on his big win in Virginia:
“I want to send my congratulations to Bob, Maureen and their family. Bob ran a positive campaign based on the conservative principles of fiscal responsibility and low taxes. Virginians embraced his conservative message, rejecting more taxes, card-check and [...]

Via TPM, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) took to Fox News this morning to plug the anti-health care reform rally — which she referred to as “the Super Bowl of Freedom” — she is organizing in Washington with the corporate-funded, small-government group Americans for Prosperity. After the rally — which is scheduled for noon Thursday on [...]

The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has thrown her support behind a Nov. 9 fundraiser in St. Paul for the Citizens’ Council on Health Care, which bills itself as “a free-market resource for designing the future of health care.” The fundraiser’s top-billed speaker, Maria Anne ‘Hansi’ Hirschmann, is known for [...]

The Minnesota Independent reports that Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) has introduced a bill that would allow Election Day registration for federal elections across the country.
The Same Day Registration Act would let people register at the polling place on Election Day rather than requiring registration weeks or months ahead of time, as most states do.

Rep. Michele Bachmann, the iconoclastic Minnesota congresswoman becomes, as far as I can tell, the first incumbent Republican to back the Conservative Party candidate Doug Hoffman over Republican Dede Scozzafava in the roiling NY-23 special election. On her radio show yesterday, Laura Ingraham skillfully pushed Bachmann to take a stand on the race — the [...]

Nice catch by The Minnesota Independent’s Andy Birkey. During an interview with the Sioux City [Iowa] Journal published Tuesday, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said she was not weighing a run for president — despite recent suggestions that she may hold ambitions for higher office — but she did offer an endorsement of her own: Rep. [...]

Earlier this month, Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield of Maine raised plenty of eyebrows when it sued the state for refusing to grant an 18.5 percent premium hike on 12,000 individual policy holders — an increase that would have generated a 3 percent profit margin for the company. Instead, Maine’s insurance superintendent granted a 10.9 [...]

In an interview with ABC News on Sept. 20, President Obama said that the ACORN scandal “is not the biggest issue facing the country” but that the case “deserves to be investigated.” At the Heritage Foundation today, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) reproached him for his response.
“The President still has failed to come out and distance [...]