Free Republic

The Minnesota Supreme Court has ruled that the Minnesota Department of Health is violating the Minnesota Genetic Privacy Law with its storage, use and dissemination of newborn screening test results and newborn DNA.

Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday ordered an election to allow Minnesota's in-home child care providers to vote on whether to unionize. But his executive order drew swift response from Republicans who vowed to sue to prevent the vote. "There is nothing in Minnesota law that provides the governor with the power to do the thing that he says he's going to do," said Sen. David Hann, R-Eden Prairie, who chairs the Senate health and human services committee. "And I think the real question for us is, what do you do with a governor who won't follow the law?" Dayton, a...

President Obama wants to control all the land and all the water in the United States. Legislation that would have deleted the word "navigable" from the federal Clean Water Act and given the EPA and Army Corps of Engineers jurisdiction over every drop of moisture in the country crashed and burned last Congress. But Obama's EPA, as usual, won't take no for an answer, and is now attempting to ignore two Supreme Court decisions, commonsense, and the American people and vastly expand federal Clean Water Act jurisdiction via guidance document. AFP activists put more than 21,000 comments into the regulatory...

Gov. Mark Dayton has ordered a vote among home-based child care providers about whether they should unionize. His executive order issued Tuesday sets an election for December. It affects thousands of self-employed providers. The state Bureau of Mediation Services will oversee the election. Dayton says if a union is authorized during the vote, membership would be voluntary. Dayton's decision furthers an already politically charged debate over union rights. The Democratic governor and majority Republican lawmakers have clashed for months about Dayton's authority to call an election and whether a union should exist.

Generations of Valor - Pearl Harbor survivor Houston James of Dallas embraces Sgt. Mark Graunke Jr.

UW-River Falls official declined Thursday afternoon to discuss the personnel records of a 42-year-old professor charged in St. Croix County Court with sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl, but attorneys soon will know the contents of those documents. University officials Thursday released the records of Thomas W. Barnett of Baldwin, who has pleaded not guilty to felony charges of second-degree sexual assault of a child and false imprisonment. Barnett, a professor of music, is on administrative leave with pay and has been directed by the university not to have contact with any UW System students. A status conference is set...

Roger Christian, one-half of the Warroad, Minn., based brothers who helped lead the U.S. hockey team to the 1960 gold medal, died Wednesday at the age of 75. He and Billy Christian were linemates on the first USA hockey team to win gold medals. The key game was the USA's first victory ever against the Soviet Union, when Roger assisted on two goals scored by Billy in a 3-2 decision. The brothers also were partners in forming Christian Brothers, a Warroad-based company that made hockey sticks. Roger, who played on five U.S. National teams, is a member of the U.S....

It’s been 36 years on Thursday since the ore boat Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a violent storm in eastern Lake Superior taking all 29 crew members with her. The storm of November 9-10, 1975, ranks among the most powerful to strike the Lake Superior region.

East metro voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved extending school district levies already on the books, but mostly rejected requests for more cash. West St. Paul-Mendota Heights-Eagan was the anomaly. It was the only district that successfully passed a tax increase for operating costs.

The Bill: S. 1769, Rebuild America Jobs Act Annualized Cost: $8.1 billion ($40.7 billion over five years) Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) sponsored the Rebuild America Jobs Act to rebuild and improve the nation’s infrastructure. The bill establishes short- and long-term national development priorities through new construction programs.

Walker said Monday that the evergreen decorated with ornaments and adorned with a star in the center of Wisconsin's Capitol Rotunda is a Christmas tree, not a holiday tree as it's been called for the past 25 years. The roughly 30-foot-tall tree was called a Christmas tree from the first display in 1916 until 1985. That's when politicians bowed to concerns about government endorsing religion and started referring to it as a holiday tree. The Madison-based Freedom From Religion Foundation has opposed the term Christmas tree, saying it offends nonreligious people and amounts to a government endorsement of Christianity. The...

The phone banks have been humming for three weeks straight in the headquarters of the teachers' union for Minnesota's largest school district, as Anoka-Hennepin teachers and their allies plead with voters to renew an operating levy worth $48 million a year. "If this levy were to fail, I don't know what our district would look like," said Julie Blaha, president of the local chapter of Education Minnesota.

Despite recent layoffs, teachers still have greater job security than workers in private businesses. While employment in education declined by 2.9% between September 2008 and July 2011, according to BLS data, overall private-sector employment declined by 4.4%. Moreover, from 2005 through 2010 the unemployment rate for public school teachers averaged 2.1%, versus 4.1% for private school teachers and 3.8% for occupations that some consider comparable, such as computer programmers and insurance underwriters.

Voters approved the project in 2003, to replace a freeway damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. Back then, the cost was $647 million. Today, the price tag is $1.6 billion, with the lion's share of the funding still to come from the federal government. In July, San Francisco's Civil Grand Jury concluded the project was poorly designed, won't meet projected ridership levels, and, as the scathing title of its report says, costs "too much money for too little benefit." At about $1 billion per mile, the Central Subway has become a driving force in Tuesday's mayoral election.

HITE BEAR LAKE - Big changes are coming worldwide as shifting demographics and economic conditions combine for a "New Normal." Whether Americans see those changes as debilitating or a huge opportunity will decide America's future. Those were among messages from State Economist Tom Stinson and State Demographer Tom Gillaspy as they made the presentation "The Boomer Tsunami" to a group of about 80 at Century College Oct. 5.

are they really free? do they want a credit card # ? are they understandable and offer a real score?

For about $1 million, you can get a taste of Lake Wobegon on the St. Croix River. Garrison Keillor has put his 11.5-acre riverfront property in Pierce County, Wis., up for sale. Complete with 460 feet of shoreline and clay tennis courts, the two-parcel property features four dwellings: a nearly 1,900-square-foot log home, a log guest home, a studio and a detached office. "It's in the woods - it feels like a hamlet," said Joyce Peterson, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker Burnet. The office, which, Peterson called "a writer's cottage," was where Keillor wrote the novel "Wobegon Boy," she said....

The day after playing in a Minneapolis concert, Cory Smoot - also known as Flattus Maximus, the guitarist for metal band GWAR - was found dead on the band's tour bus Thursday. GWAR frontman Dave Brockie released a statement Thursday to Brooklyn, N.Y.-based MetalSucks, an online site featuring posts on heavy metal music. "Cory was found deceased this morning as the band prepared for a border crossing. There is no word as to the cause of death and the members of GWAR are completely shocked and devastated that this has occurred. At this point there is no word on arrangements...

The news media watchdog Accuracy in Media (AIM) released a video Wednesday that may denounce the notions from some that the Occupy protesters are primarily concerned with jobs. In it, “head hunters” set up a table full of job applications near the protest and start offering them to protesters. But the reception they get, according to the video, is less than warm. To many, that might seem odd considering the protesters have camped out in our nations capital for over a month following the Occupy Wall Street protest that began on September 17, partly because of no jobs. Accuracy in...

DES MOINES, Iowa - Republican presidential hopeful Michele Bachmann is telling college students in politically important Iowa that all Americans should pay taxes since they all benefit from services such as roads and bridges, national defense and the courts. Her position, which she was outlining today at Iowa State University in Ames, is a direct challenge to rivals Rick Perry and Herman Cain, who are advocating plans that would allow low-wage earners to continue paying no taxes while implementing a form of a flat tax on all other workers. The Tax Policy Center estimates that some 46 percent of households...