Free Republic

Ten participants in the mass demonstration at the Mall of America in protest of police brutality were charged Wednesday for their roles in what Bloomington authorities say was an unlawful rally. Authorities say the 10 organized the Dec. 20 gathering. They face an array of misdemeanor charges, including public nuisance, trespassing and disorderly conduct. The large-scale demonstration drew between 1,500 and 2,000 people to the Mall of America rotunda in protest of recent grand jury decisions that cleared white police officers in the deaths of unarmed black men in Missouri and New York. The protest lasted more than two hours...

Minneapolis Public School employees are using district credit cards for unauthorized purchases — including personal use — and have routinely failed to follow expense policies, a Star Tribune review of school expense records found. Several school district leaders — including the outgoing superintendent and the current CEO — repaid the district for expenses only after the Star Tribune inquired about them. The Star Tribune reviewed $1.5 million in credit card expenses submitted by 262 employees over the past six months. School officials spent thousands of dollars at grocery stores, Target, Wal-Mart and restaurants in Minneapolis and around the country. The...

Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation face a difficult balancing act. Their supporters who are advocates of renewable energy anticipate them to vote against the pipeline. President Obama has threatened to veto the present pipeline bill due to the fact it quick-circuits his administration’s assessment course of action. But Minnesota politicians who oppose the pipeline flirt with a attainable lengthy-term raise in oil train traffic on tracks that quite a few constituents say are already overloaded with railcars carrying flammable fuel. “It is a precarious position to be against oil train transport and to be against the Keystone pipeline,”...

From the first day of 2011, Mitt Romney was the favorite to win the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign. No one else was even close. The 2016 outlook could not be more different. Offered the choice to bet on one single candidate to win the nomination versus the rest of the field, the choice would have to be "the field." For the first time in years, there is no one next in line. And without a former vice president or powerhouse former candidate looking likely to run, Republicans are shaping up to spend the next year and a half fighting...

The repeal of ObamaCare is the priority of the Republican party, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Sunday. “There will be a vote on repeal. The president, in the White House, will veto that,” he said of the symbolic gesture offered by GOP lawmakers still unsatisfied with the healthcare legislation. However, Barrasso told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” that there would also be other bills that strike at other parts of the Affordable Care Act – some of which have gained bipartisan support – including a repeal of the medical device tax and the employer mandate. There is...

WATERTOWN, N.Y.— Elise Stefanik, the youngest woman ever elected to Congress, has never held elected office, but her résumé looks more like that of a Beltway insider than a political newcomer. By the time she won her seat representing a swath of upstate New York in the November election, she had served as a domestic policy aide for former President George W. Bush , a policy director for former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty ’s 2012 presidential campaign and head of debate preparation for vice-presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan .

Rep. Michele Bachmann, founder of the House tea party caucus and a high-profile spokeswoman for conservatives during her eight years in Congress, has no plans to run for another office right now. Instead, she’ll live in Minnesota, give speeches around the country and write a nationally syndicated column. Here's a look back at her political career.

Minnesota's highway needs can't be met without more tax revenue, Gov. Mark Dayton said Tuesday -- setting him up for a possible clash with the new Republican majority in the House. Dayton is finalizing his 2016-17 budget proposal, which aims to raise what he says is the $6 billion Minnesota's roads need over the next 10 years. The plan calls for a 6.5 percent wholesale surtax on gasoline -- separate from the existing 28.5 cents-per-gallon tax already levied. That means the tax would bring in more money when gas prices increase. "Our transportation systems are getting worse," Dayton said. "Anybody...

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — Gas prices are finally falling, but those savings might not last long.At least 18 states, including Minnesota, are considering taxing drivers based on distance. Gas prices aren’t the only reason for the idea, since newer cars get better gas mileage. Oregon has a pilot project that will start next year to test the idea. They’re having 5,000 volunteers pay 1.5 cents per mile instead of the 30-cents-per-gallon tax.An electronic device attached to their vehicle will report how far they drive in state.

Rep. Steve King has summoned the potential field of 2016 Republican presidential candidates to Iowa next month for his Freedom Summit, and they are jumping at the opportunity — underscoring the conservative firebrand’s political pull and marking the event as the first major gathering of the next campaign for the White House. Mr. King told The Washington Times that the Jan. 24 gathering in Des Moines will give the kinds of activists who turn out for Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses a look at their options and will give the candidates an early reality check. (SNIP) Though Mr. Santorum achieved victory without...

<p>DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Gardeners at hundreds of spots around the country are sharing seeds as part of an increasing interest in locally grown food, but some agriculture officials say the well-meaning effort violates state laws.</p> <p>In spots like Duluth, Minnesota, the conflict has surprised gardeners and library officials who never thought to examine the intricacies of state seed laws.</p>

Formed in 2005, the Minnesota Voters Alliance (MVA) is the only conservative organization in Minnesota, and one of a few in the nation, dedicated solely to expanding liberty through legal action, determined to strike at the liberal forces which degrade and reduce our freedoms. A critical component of that dedication is the ability to pursue an objective for as long as it takes to win. So, while we have achieved several recent victories in other cases, our commitment to changing Minnesota’s defective Election-Day Registration (EDR) laws continues in full force. Today, I am requesting your support for our impending lawsuits...

Think electric cars are the only form of transportation that can save the world from the dangers of the gas-powered engine? A new study warns that they could actually have the opposite effect. Gannett’s Cincinnati website cites the findings of a study to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences next week. In it, co-author and University of Minnesota engineering professor Julian Marshall explains the findings. “It’s kind of hard to beat gasoline [for the environment]… A lot of the technologies that we think of as being clean … are not better than gasoline.” Electric cars...

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has been an outspoken voice against the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into the halls of the United States federal government, and she has taken the shots against her, even by those who claim they are on her side. Recently, the Minnesota congresswoman was interviewed by Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council (FRC) and told him that Barack Obama has embraced “the agenda of Islamic jihad,” and that agenda includes both the destruction of Israel and converting the “United States into an Islamic Caliphate.” “While the president continues to say that this is not about...

Minnesota Congresswomen and presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has become the latest politician to call for an impenetrable fence along the entire length of the border with Mexico. "President Obama has failed the American people by failing to secure the southern border," said Bachmann. "I will secure that border and that will be Job One." Statements like that may get some attention, but they are not practical. Don't take our word for it; take Rick Perry's. The Texas governor has been called a lot of things, but he's hardly a mushy liberal. Yet even this tough Texan sneers at calls for...

Outgoing Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) says President Obama has embraced the “agenda of Islamic jihad” at every turn. “I have been very surprised, to answer your question, to see the president of the United States, at every turn, cut the legs off of our ally Israel, and in fact embrace and lift up the agenda of Islamic jihad,” she said in an interview released Wednesday with "Washington Watch," a radio show produced by the socially conservative Family Research Council. Bachmann criticized the president for writing to Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, to encourage a deal on Tehran's nuclear program....

In the next few days, the Bloomington City Attorney Sandra Johnson expects to file criminal charges against the organizers of Saturday’s protest at Mall of America. The mall went into a partial shutdown for about two hours as thousands of protesters filled the rotunda on one of the busiest shopping days of the year. The group, “Black Lives Matter” chose the mall for its high visibility, but was warned repeatedly that it was private property.

Protesters from the group Black Lives Matter staged a demonstration on one of the busiest shopping days of the year at the Mall of America in Bloomington. Chants of "Hands up! don't shoot!" and "Black lives matter" filled the rotunda. After about an hour, police escorted protesters out and arrested about a dozen people. Photojournalists Jackson Forderer, Yi-Chin Lee and Angela Jimenez documented the day.

SARTELL, Minn. (KMSP) - Police in New York say the man who murdered two police officers while they were sitting in their patrol car has been arrested 19 times for assault and robbery. Ismaaiyl Brinsley was angry at police for the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, making an online pledge to kill two “pigs.”

Liberals powerless to stop the Clinton-Wall Street gravy train.Despite her best efforts and most passionate gesticulations, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) failed to shut down the government on Thursday, thus proving her political clout is vastly inferior to that of GOP colleague Ted Cruz. Warren had urged House Democrats to block a controversial spending package, which included a provision to roll back a portion of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill known as the “swaps pushout” rule. Warren, for the record, does not like Wall Street. “It is time for all of us to stand up and fight,” she said on...