Free Republic

It’s a major blow to the MNsure health insurance exchange – the insurance company with the lowest rates and the most customers signed up through MNsure will not be back in 2015. The decision is expected to have a major impact on health insurance customers and the governor’s race. Golden Valley-based PreferredOne Health Insurance just notified MNsure and the Minnesota Department of Commerce of their decision through a letter. Sources tell KSTP’s Tom Hauser that MNsure CEO Scott Leitz was notified by phone Tuesday morning. PreferredOne Spokesman Steve Peterson tells Hauser this is “purely a business decision.” He says the...

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - U.S. law enforcement is investigating a new phenomenon of women from the American heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants' recruiting at home. At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the families to contact police. In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St. Paul snuck...

College scholarships will be some of the newest victims of the calorie-shaving, sodium-lowering Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010. Improving child nutrition is the focal point of the federal legislation that authorizes funding and sets policy for the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s core child nutrition programs. It also speaks to the drinks and snacks available to students during the school day more than ever before. Effective July 1, 2014, the only snacks school districts may sell to students during the school day – including food and beverages sold in school stores, vending machines and through fundraisers – will be...

Democratic Rep. Keith Ellison, who represents a sizable Muslim community in his Minneapolis district, has a message for Obama administration officials: Work with the locals during this time of unrest in the Middle East. “The most important thing to understand about the Islamic community in Minnesota is it sees itself as part of Minnesota,” said Ellison, who was the first Muslim to be elected to Congress. “We need to work with the local community and build trust with the local community … so it’s important to monitor web traffic and also to engage with the local community in countering violent...

A big part of the fight against the terror group known as ISIS and ISIL is taking place on American soil in places where young people are leaving the country to go join their cause, even fight and die overseas. Perhaps the biggest question of all is: Who is recruiting? It's a question no one seems to be able to answer definitively in Minnesota, but a lot of fingers are pointing at Amir Meshal, a former al Qaeda suspect who lived on a quiet cul de sac in Eden Prairie, Minn., until recently. Yet, some believe he may actually be...

WASHINGTON (CBSDC) — Rep. Michele Bachmann says she was told by the FBI that Americans who joined the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria in the Middle East would be allowed to return to the U.S. Speaking to Newsmax, the Minnesota Republican detailed a private meeting she had with the federal agency earlier this summer when she asked them if any Minnesotans had joined ISIS. “The FBI told me … that there were two Minnesotans that had joined up with the Islamic State. I asked the FBI, ‘If they choose to return to Minnesota, will they be allowed to?’ The...

A growing chorus of liberal Democrats is pushing President Obama to get Congress's explicit approval before launching missile strikes into Syria. The pressure from supporters on Capitol Hill is not only a headache for Obama, but also puts House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other top Democrats in the difficult position of bucking a broad segment of their own caucus in order to protect an ally in the White House. Scores of Democrats had signed letters a year ago advocating against military strikes targeting the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad without congressional backing. Thirteen months later the enemy...

BRAINERD, MINN. Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan’s impassioned speech at a darkened bar here was a decided departure from those given by dozens of vulnerable Democrats across the country. “Of course we support the Affordable Care Act for all the good things it’s done for so many people, but that doesn’t mean we’re done. We’re not going to be done until we have a single payer system!” Nolan said, his hoarse voice rising above the friendly crowd sipping pitchers of light beer and sitting among peanut shells. “Let’s get back to returning the House of Representatives to the people’s chamber …...

The NFL, already swamped with negative news in what has been a horrible week for the league, now has to deal with Adrian Peterson, one of its biggest stars, being indicted for injuring a child. Multiple reports, including TMZ, Fox Sports and the Fox affiliate in Houston, said Peterson was indicted on Thursday in Montgomery County for reckless or negligent injury to a child. NFL Network's Ian Rapoport said the indictment stems from Peterson disciplining his son with a switch, which is a flexible rod.

President Barack Obama did not mention in his Wednesday night address the recruitment of Minnesotans by ISIS (or ISIL) and their dying in battle overseas. There are reports that as many as 15 young men and women with Minnesota ties have left to join the terror group. The State Department confirmed that Douglas McCain, who grew up in the Twin Cities, died in an ISIS battle. The reported death of Minnesotan Abdirahmaan Muhumed has still not been confirmed by the U.S. government. While the president outlined his strategy to “degrade and destroy” ISIS, the leaders of Ka-Joog, a nonprofit group...

At least three young Minnesota women are now believed to have traveled to Syria to give aid to the ISIS terror group responsible for the brutal beheadings of American journalists, MailOnline has learned. The trio left some three weeks ago, Omar Jamal, a leader of the Somali community in the state capital, St. Paul, tells MailOnline. They said they intended to become nurses tending to fighters injured in ISIS' violent surge in Syria and Iraq. The news comes as 19-year-old suburban Denver woman Shannon Conley who federal authorities say intended to wage jihad has pleaded guilty to trying to help...

St. Paul police plan to release skyway surveillance videos Wednesday related to the controversial arrest of 28-year-old Chris Lollie earlier this year. Lollie, of St. Paul, recorded his interaction with police officers on Jan. 31 and posted the cellphone video to YouTube on Aug. 26. The video, which Lollie titled "Black man taken to jail for sitting in public area," has been viewed more than 1.2 million times. The video goes dark after about 2 minutes, when Lollie said an officer put his cellphone on a ledge, but the audio continued.

At 22, Kadra Mohamed is a civilian employee of the police department, a community liaison officer making a courtesy call to a merchant, a time-tested neighborhood policing method. Still, this visit -- and many she makes -- breaks new ground. In March, the St. Paul Police Department hired Mohamed, its first female Somali community liaison officer, a move designed to improve the sometimes tense relations with 80,000 Somali-Americans in the Twin Cities -- more than half of them in St. Paul -- the nation's largest Somali community. Each time she wears her crisp blue police department uniform with its thick...

A Minnesota youth center is at the heart of a federal grand jury investigation into a suspected ISIS terrorist pipeline. The FBI says that someone on the ground in Minnesota is convincing young people to join the terror fight in Syria, then giving them money to get there. Up to 30 Somali-Americans who have reportedly joined or tried to join terrorist groups overseas had attended Al Farooq Youth and Family Center in Minnesota. That’s the same mosque that kicked out 31-year-old Amir Meshal this summer for allegedly proselytizing radical Islam ideologies

Amir Meshal has a fascinating history. He's originally from New Jersey, but back in 2007 he was detained and interrogated by the FBI in Kenya after escaping from Somalia. Somehow, his travels brought him to Minnesota, and to a mosque in Bloomington, which kicked him out this summer. Friday prayers bring hundreds to the Al-Farooq Youth and Family Center, which is perhaps the largest mosque in the Twin Cities. But not everyone is welcome -- not after Meshal began attending prayer and hanging out earlier this year. In June, the center called police and had Meshal, 31, removed and ticketed...

It begins well enough. A trail of admirers follow Franken as he tours Bryant Avenue, listening to the activists he meets. Behind an ice cream truck, he shakes hands with a disabled vet and, after a lengthy chat, asks an aide to take down the old soldier's contact information. "North Minneapolis is very important," Franken tells us. "We unfortunately have, as a metropolitan area, some of the greatest disparities in terms of everything -- education, employment, and health care. All of this stuff is connected." He expounds on the same point on stage, noting the need to fund early childhood...

Chris Lollie was in a public area of the St. Paul skyway when a security guard told police he was in a private area, the city attorney said Wednesday. A guard said the 28-year-old man was sitting "for some time" in a skyway-level lounge area designated for building employees, a police report said, and officers were responding to that information when they arrived, St. Paul City Attorney Sara Grewing said. The guard's report led to the Jan. 31 encounter with police that has drawn national attention and criticism. Whether the downtown area where Lollie was sitting was public or private...

3D castle printed by Andrey Rudenko in Shorewood, Minnesota as seen at the end of August 2014. The castle is about 3.5 metres high.People have used 3D printers to print everything from medical devices to guns. But one Minnesota man is hoping to take this new technology to the next level and print a house. Andrey Rudenko, of Shorewood, Min., plans for the house to be about 10 metres by 20 metres. If it is two storeys, it will be about 3,600 square feet. And he is hoping to print the entire house in about a week. It would be...

Atwater Police Chief Trevor Berger 'dispatched' the chicken on August 16 after a neighbor complained of a 'chicken on the loose' The bird, named Carson Petey, belonged to five-year-old Phoenix Turnbull Phoenix's mother Ashley Turnbull had been asked to remove three hens and two ducks she had given her son as a birthday gift, but was not home when Berger killed the hen

A U.S. citizen who died fighting for ISIS reportedly had a job in one of the places where you would least want him to be — a major American airport. Before fleeing to Syria, Abdirahmaan Muhumed, 29, worked a cleaning job at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport that gave him security clearance with access to the tarmac and planes, KMSP reported. Several sources told the Minneapolis station the traitor was employed by Delta Global Services, a subsidiary of Delta Airlines. It is unclear when Muhumed left Minnesota to join the thugs who have been spreading terror throughout northern Iraq and Syria....