Free Republic

Late last summer, and with great fanfare, Xcel Energy announced its proposal to close the Comanche I & II power units in Pueblo a decade ahead of schedule. They offered as replacement the euphemistically titled “Colorado Energy Plan” , a massive $2.5 billion fuel-switching scheme to move its Colorado customers away from baseload, reliable hydrocarbons in favor of intermittent renewables. ... the Minneapolis-based monopoly utility will force captive ratepayers to cough up at least another $287 million. That’s on top of the modeling errors we already found in their accounting, and Xcel acknowledged. In other words, ratepayers will pay higher...

A Minnesota teen has been arrested after police say he tore out his elderly relative’s eyes with his bare hands.Mahad Aziz, 18, was taken into custody on July 27 after Rochester police were called to his family’s apartment. Officers reportedly found Aziz on top of his 74-year-old relative, who had already been severely beaten and was missing both eyes.“Other than murder, it’s as bad as it gets,” said Captain John Sherwin of the Rochester Police Department, via Southern Minnesota Today. Police say the teen’s victim had also lost several teeth in the attack. The eyes were reportedly not found in the apartment...

Activists and family members of a black man who was fatally shot by Minneapolis police marched through downtown, blocking trains during the evening rush hour as they chanted some of Thurman Blevins' last words: "Please don't shoot me! Leave me alone!" Hundreds of people gathered for the protest which started at the Hennepin County Government Center Tuesday evening. They held signs calling for justice for Blevins, who was shot June 23 by Minneapolis officers after they chased him into an alley in north Minneapolis. Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman declined Monday to charge the officers involved in the incident —...

John wrote about the police shooting and resulting death of one Thurman Blevins here. Police had been called to the scene by a citizen reporting gunshots fired from the street. When the police arrived, they found the perpetrator and his pistol in plain view. The video released yesterday shows the officers doing what they should have done, but Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey could only rouse himself to declare that he found the video “traumatic.” As the (Star Tribune) puts it, Frey “declined to address the actions of Blevins or the officers.” KARE 11 included the video in its report (below)....

Former Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.) said he hadn't ruled out the possibility of running for public office again during an interview with a CBS Minnesota television station on Monday. Franken attended the dedication of Bug-O-Nay-Ge-Shig High School on the Leech Lake Indian Reservation. He sat on the Indian Affairs Committee in the U.S. Senate and helped secure $12 million in funding for new facilities to replace the old one, which was in dismal condition. "That means a lot to me. It was very moving for me. It was very gratifying. I put my heart in the job," Franken said....

“Please don’t shoot me,” Thurman Blevins begged as the two Minneapolis police officers closed in during a foot chase. “Leave me alone.” Moments later, he was fatally shot, and police said he had a handgun lying in the alleyway next to him. The exchange is captured in body-camera footage released by the city of Minneapolis on Sunday, a little over a month after Blevins, 31, was killed. His death June 23 would lead to protests across the city as activists decried the killing of yet another black man at the hands of white police officers. The graphic videos, which include...

Body camera footage released Sunday showed the fatal police shooting of an armed man during a frantic foot pursuit -- the video ordered released by Minnesota officials in the interest of "transparency" after two other high-profile deadly police shootings in the state. In a Sunday evening press conference, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey called the video of 31-year-old Thurman Blevins' death "traumatic" and said the Blevins family had viewed the video Sunday. Frey said the video was released in the interest of "transparency," FOX9 reported. [SNIP] The video released Sunday shows the two officers pulling their cruiser up to Blevins, who's...

Minneapolis police released multiple videos on Sunday of the frenetic chase that led to the fatal shooting of a 31-year-old man in an alley as he fled from officers. The video shows the chase, which lasted only about a minute from when police officers Justin Schmidt and Ryan Kelly pulled up to the scene to when Thurman Blevins was shot and killed in an alley in North Minneapolis. The officers were responding to the area after a 911 call was made saying someone was firing a gun into the air.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Two teenage boys sued the Minnesota State High School League on Wednesday, alleging it maintains unconstitutional rules that bar boys from joining girls’ competitive high school dance teams. Dmitri Moua and Zachary Greenwald filed a federal lawsuit with help from their parents and the Pacific Legal Foundation, which has worked on similar cases with students in at least two other states. The two 16-year-olds want to try out for their schools’ dance teams in suburban Minneapolis, but the league’s rules prohibit boys from competing on girls’ dance teams, according to the lawsuit. The suit argues the rules...

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Rep. Keith Ellison asked himself the question that lingers over his political career before any of the 1,000-plus supporters at his recent rally could: Why was he leaving the safe congressional district he’s represented for more than a decade to run for state attorney general? “Attorneys general all over this country led the fight against this Muslim ban,” he said to raucous applause. “It is attorneys general that are fighting and suing to protect an open internet.” A year after falling short in his bid to chair the Democratic National Committee and with his party stuck...

Republican Rep. Jason Lewis has repeatedly demeaned recipients of welfare and government assistance, calling them "parasites" and "scoundrels," and said the black community had "traded one plantation for another." Lewis made the comments on a conservative radio show he hosted, "The Jason Lewis Show," from 2009 to 2012. CNN's KFile previously reported that Lewis made racist comments about African-Americans and lamented not being able to call women "sluts" on his program.

Democrats and the media have a playbook for undermining Republicans, and their favorite themes are racism and misogyny. Comments have all too frequently been distorted to mean the opposite of what was actually said.

Last week, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, wrote to Amazon.com’s Jeff Bezos , demanding that he no longer sell at Amazon any material that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) dislikes. Yes, it has come to this. Ellison’s letter to Bezos focuses on an alleged neo-Nazi’s material being sold at Amazon and published through Amazon’s self-publishing service. However, Ellison makes clear that his intentions are far more sweeping, particularly with his opening gambit: I am writing to you with my concerns about the amount of money Amazon has made from the sale...

The family of Justine Damond filed a lawsuit Monday against the city and key figures in the case of her death. Damond died just over a year ago when she was fatally shot by former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor. In the lawsuit, Damond's father, John Ruszczyk, claims the defendants violated the Fourth and 14th Amendments. The lawsuit seeks damages in excess of $200 million from Noor, Officer Matthew Harrity, the city of Minneapolis, former Minneapolis police chief Janee Harteau, and current Police Chief Medaria Arradondo. The lawsuit states Damond "suffered the loss of her enjoyment of life, including marrying,...

The National Education Association thinks Colin Kaepernick is an ideal role model. Many members, however, may take their loyalty elsewhere. And frankly, they should. On July 1, the NEA honored Kaepernick, along with several other persons and organizations, with a “Human and Civil Rights” award in recognition of the former pro-football star’s campaign “to fight racial oppression through education and social justice activism.” The born-again political revolutionary, who these last couple years has been peddling the idea that police are conducting a nationwide pogrom against innocent blacks, accepted the honor with predictable melodrama. “To me, this is bigger than football...

The mainstream press is ignoring a report from Big League Politics contributor Laura Loomer about Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), who is running for Minnesota Attorney General without a law license. “As your next attorney general, I will be a people’s lawyer who will hold those in power accountable when they step on your rights — whether that’s Monsanto telling you how to raise your crops, Navient cheating student loan borrowers out of more money, or the federal government infringing upon health care, a woman’s right to choose, or the human and civil rights of all,” Ellison wrote in The Minneapolis...

A liberal woman of color with zero name recognition and little funding takes down a powerful, long serving congressman from her own political party. When Tahirah Amatul-Wadud heard about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s stunning upset over U.S. Rep. Joe Crowley in New York’s Democratic primary last month, the first-time candidate saw parallels with her own longshot campaign for Congress in western Massachusetts. The 44-year-old Muslim, African-American civil rights lawyer, who is taking on a 30-year congressman and ranking Democrat on the influential House Ways and Means Committee, says she wasn’t alone, as encouragement, volunteers and donations started pouring in. […] Still, the...

Former Gov. Tim Pawlenty has made immigration the major policy focus of his comeback bid for governor, delivering a tough message amid a heated national debate as he tries to win over Minnesota Republicans. Since launching his campaign in April, Pawlenty has decried undocumented immigrants receiving government benefits, highlighted the case of a 90-year-old Carver County farmer beaten to death by two undocumented immigrants in 2015, called for a “pause” in refugee resettlement to Minnesota and spent weeks hammering some of the DFL candidates for governor for saying Minnesota should be a “sanctuary state” that bans local police from enforcing...

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is coming to Minnesota to support Rep. Keith Ellison's bid for attorney general. Sanders was set to headline a rally for Ellison Friday morning at First Avenue in Minneapolis. The pair was scheduled to hold a rally in Duluth later Friday. The one-time presidential candidate's visit is the latest reminder of the high stakes surrounding the Democratic primary in the normally sleepy race for attorney general. And it could galvanize Democrats.

Chicago alderman Carlos Ramirez-Rosa penned an op-ed for NBC that encapsulates the reasons why Democrats will be unable to capitalize this November on the relative unpopularity of Republicans in the Midwest, given the Dems' turn to the hard left. Rosa is described as "Queer, Latinx and a democratic socialist" – whatever that means. In political terms, it means he would be a gone goose if he ran for Congress in the vast majority of districts anywhere in the Midwest. But Rosa doesn't see it that way. In fact, he believes that Midwesterners would embrace a socialist candidate and are "not...