Minnesota

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 [...]

At today’s Heritage Foundation briefing, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) told the audience of conservative bloggers that “‘Republican’ still isn’t a positive brand name for people but ‘conservative’ is.” She said that a new conservative movement “under that banner coalition of respecting the constitution [...] is a winning formula going forward.”
Bachmann announced a threefold strategy: “Number [...]

At a briefing for conservative bloggers at the Heritage Foundation today, Rep. Michelle Bachmann (R-Minn.) dismissed MSNBC as a network neither she nor “most of the American people” paid attention to.
“Quite honestly I don’t even know anything about MSNBC,” said Bachmann. “It’s not a network that I watch, and most of the American people agree [...]

On a morning conference call, I got a chance to ask Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) about voter registration, voter fraud, and his new PAC’s political adviser Sara Taylor. In the Bush administration, as a White House political director, Taylor got tangled in the scandal over the firing of U.S. attorneys who, the attorneys claim, were [...]

Yesterday, TWI’s David Weigel appeared on MSNBC’s “The Ed Show” to talk about his reporting on this past weekend’s “How to Take Back America” conference in St. Louis. In case you missed it, you can watch the video after the jump.

This is some extremely shoddy journalism from Mickey Kaus. The Slate blogger asks if “ACORN chicanery” elected Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), who won a razor-thin 2008 race for the U.S. Senate after eight months of legal challenges. Kaus links a “tactfully phrased Minneapolis Star Tribune story” to argue that fraudulent votes might have stolen the [...]

Minnesota congresswoman draws on Obama fears at St. Louis event.

ST. LOUIS — Speaking to a packed hotel ballroom at the conservative How to Take Back America Conference, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said that exposes of “criminal tomfoolery” inside of ACORN could kick off a campaign to “defund the left.”
Bachmann was introduced warmly by Phyllis Schlafly, the iconic conservative activist whose Eagle Forum was the [...]

Just in case he wasn’t familiar with it, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) decided to read the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution to David Kris, assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, who was testifying to the Senate Judiciary Committee today to urge reauthorization of expiring provisions of the USA Patriot Act.
Franken, who [...]