Free Republic

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrat Al Franken will resign from the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Minnesota Public Radio reported, after more than half of his Senate Democratic colleagues urged him to do so in light of sexual misconduct accusations.

Humorist and long-time radio host Garrison Keillor, of A Prairie Home Companion fame, says he might have to move out of the country after being ousted from the Minnesota Public Radio for inappropriate behavior. Keillor, the 75-year-old veteran broadcaster who is married, confirmed his firing on Wednesday, claiming that it stemmed from an incident from years earlier in which he says he accidentally touched an acquaintance’s bare back while attempting to console her. Keillor later took to Facebook, bemoaning his downfall after five decades of ‘hard work’ and lamenting that he was feeling ostracized everywhere he went. The post has...

RUSH: Hey, there’s another one! Another one, Garrison Keillor, Prairie Home Companion, fired for alleged improper behavior by Minnesota Public Radio. “Minnesota Public Radio has confirmed it fired Garrison Keillor after he was accused of inappropriate behavior. Garrison Keillor, the former host of A Prairie Home Companion,” and he used to be loved and adored by all touchy-feely progressives. In fact, I remember when this program began in August of 1988, it was within a year or year and a half that AP or somebody went out asked Garrison Keillor, “What do you think of this Rush Limbaugh, this new...

Garrison Keillor, the former host of "A Prairie Home Companion," was fired on Wednesday by the Minnesota Public Radio after the network received an allegation of "inappropriate behavior" against the radio personality. MPR said in a statement it was “terminating its contracts with Garrison Keillor and his private media companies after recently learning of allegations of his inappropriate behavior with an individual who worked with him.”

In the great state of Minnesota, we have something called the Legacy Amendment which increased our state sales tax to create a slush fund for all kinds of extraneous goodies related to "outdoor heritage, clean water, parks and trails, and arts and cultural heritage." The result has been increasingly odious lobbying efforts to claim a slice of that taxpayer pie. Legislators can't seem to give the money away fast enough. As the state wrestles with a $5 billion budget deficit, funds raised by the Legacy Amendment go to such essential items as paying a science-fiction writer $40,000 to speak to...

Our building trembles, sometimes, but perceptibly. It is unmistakably a tremble, and I can't imagine what brings it about because the heavy machinery is across the river, where the paper is printed. I've worked in newspapers that house the presses, and when those babies start rolling, you have to grab a strap and hold on because the place feels like a submarine that just got the dive command. Probably, old buildings like ours occasionally settle themselves even more comfortably on their haunches and it is nothing to get worked up over. It only comes to attention, the trembling down at...

NORFOLK Public radio is taking on Christian radio in a lawsuit over who has the right to use the name, The Current. Minnesota Public Radio, which runs a progressive music station called The Current, filed a federal lawsuit against a Virginia Beach Christian radio station that operates Positive Hit Radio, The Current. The public radio station says the Beach station is trying to "mislead and confuse" listeners and has asked the court to issue an injunction stopping Positive Hit Radio from promoting itself as The Current. MPR says listeners could be led to believe that the two stations are affiliated.The...

Minnesota Public Radio President Bill Kling, in defense of his decision to purchase Classical 89.3 (WCAL-FM), says that members desire many more programs than MPR's current stations can provide, and he acquired WCAL to fill this need. I find this argument highly suspect. As he surely knows, radio is converting from analog to digital. This conversion, as I understand it, allows broadcasters to transmit two channels on one frequency. This means that MPR will be able to double its programming without the WCAL purchase. Rather, I look at the fact that WCAL broadcasts classical music, which competed directly with MPR....

I was shaken and disturbed to hear that Minnesota Public Radio had purchased radio station WCAL of Northfield. WCAL broadcasts largely classical music. The loss of classical music is not the cause of my distress. It stems from the loss of another independent voice from the radio spectrum and the death of a truly listener-supported radio service. This purchase is another example of the MPR's efforts to squash independent radio stations throughout the state and assure that its homogenous radio programming permeates every nook and cranny of Minnesota. Radio is an especially personal medium and an extremely powerful communications and...

In the wake of the controversy over Minnesota Public Radio's proposed purchase of WCAL-FM in Northfield, MPR president Bill Kling took listener calls and e-mail Thursday on Gary Eichten's "Midday" program. Kling's primary position remains that St. Olaf College, which owns WCAL, had decided to sell and that it was far better for MPR to acquire the station than to have it fall into the hands of some narrowly focused broadcaster with little or no local commitment. Kling specifically referred to a California religious group, the Educational Media Foundation, which says it offered St. Olaf more for WCAL than MPR...

I wrote a brief amazon.com review of Garrison Keillor's "Homegrown Democrat," one of the most vile, bigoted tracts published by a major publisher this year. Apparently the lefties have been voting against my review in droves! Please stop by and vote for it. Muchos Gracias!

Minnesota Public Radio will take the "wait and see" approach to Slate.com the radio show. The marriage between Microsoft-owned Slate, one of the Internet's most reliable sources for reliable journalism and commentary, and National Public Radio was formally announced last week at public radio's annual confab in New Orleans. Bill Buzenberg, MPR's news boss, likes the idea but says "Day to Day," as the one-hour show will be called, will make its Minnesota debut this July on MPR's Web site, not on KNOW-FM. "We're going to evaluate it. Part of the problem is that we have what we think is...

Click here to listen to Norm Coleman debate Walter Mondale at 10 AM Central Time!