A Christmas Day homily

December 25, 2016

St. Thomas University Law School professor Mark Osler is recognized as a national champion in the cause for clemency for low-level non-violent offenders in federal prisons. A former Assistant United States Attorney in Detroit, he had ample opportunity to see the implementation of draconian sentences. He was a speaker at Drinking Liberally some months ago […]

by Steve Timmer

Dogs get blamed for farts, too

December 17, 2016

There was a reprint of a WaPo article in the Strib this morning, about how the FBI was now agreeing with the CIA about Russian hacking of the DNC and Clinton campaign chair, John Podesta. Great, I thought, seizing the newspaper, now we will get to the bottom of this! But not really. It was […]

by Steve Timmer

Shut chur pie hole an’ getta work!

November 23, 2016

As we near the season of shopping savagery, I repeat a story I did the day before Thanksgiving in 2011. Black Friday was then a mere shadow of what it is now. There has been some push back of late, with retailers like REI saying, “Go outside. Enjoy the day with friends and family. All […]

by Steve Timmer

Damn you, Electoral Collage!

November 22, 2016

I saw a tweet the other day blaming the “Electoral Collage” for Hillary Clinton’s loss. A typo, no doubt, but I like the imagery. There has been a lot of blaming of the Electoral College for the Democrats’ losses, noting that Clinton won the popular vote, which she did. But that is not the way we […]

by Steve Timmer

Welcome to LeftMN

November 14, 2016

There are some new readers here because of my Commentary in the Star Tribune (Monday evening on the website and in the Tuesday paper edition; please read it before continuing here) in support of Keith Ellison’s run for the chair of the Democratic National Committee. We’re glad you came over to check us out and hope […]

by Steve Timmer

Absentee Voting at Minneapolis City Hall

Hinderaker at his pearl clutching, fainting couch finest

November 8, 2016

It has take me a bit to get to this one, but a reader sent me a link to a post by John Hinderaker at Powerline about voter fraud, or so he claims. He says that Secretary of State Steve Simon “refuses to follow the law.” A suit for a temporary restraining order was brought in […]

by Steve Timmer

This is why you can’t get a majority opinion out of the Supreme Court

November 6, 2016

In the Op Ex section of the Strib on today, rather than trying to write a single editorial about What the Hell is Going On, they gave everybody some ink in signed pieces. They called it What, us worry? It was pretty good, really. I can only imagine the editorial board meeting leading up to […]

by Steve Timmer

Ron Erhardt is the far better choice for women

November 5, 2016

This story is necessary because of the odious effort to smear a long time and popular Edina representative, Ron Erhardt. The Republican house caucus campaign committee figured a smear was necessary, because there was no way on earth it was going to defeat Ron on policy. Heck, the people who put this stink bomb together […]

by Steve Timmer