Free Republic

A Ford dealer, Muscatell Burns Ford, in Hawley, Minnesota, is offering a free shotgun with each new pickup truck it sells.    A shotgun costs a few hundred dollars and a pickup truck tens of thousands, so while a nice addition, it is not a big deal. It tells the customers that the dealership supports a constitutional republic, in a way that is willing to make national news and take a little heat from the "progressive" media.  This is a proven promotional idea that savvy dealerships have used a number of times to gain free publicity.  This promotion is scheduled...

Minnesota Statutes 204C.18 and 204C.22 contain protections against vote buying fraud that have been in place in some form through court rulings and statutes as long as Minnesota has had a secret or “Australian” ballot, which was adopted statewide in 1891 with strong bipartisan support. Prior to the advent of the Australian ballot system, scholars and historians note that vote buying corruption was common practice, but voters would generally need to provide evidence that they have voted the “right” way to collect their bounty, typically ranging from $2 to $20 in those days. The proof could often be a mark...

Jonathan Kealing was on his way to the dog groomer Sunday morning when his car hit a line of potholes on eastbound Minnesota 62 in Minneapolis. "We hit some normal potholes, then it got so intense. We slammed into this chasm in the Earth," Kealing said. It wasn't until a stop later in the morning that he saw just how intense: The rim was no longer round, but flat, and the tire couldn't hold air. After getting a $500 repair bill from the auto shop, Kealing took to Twitter to alert the Minnesota Department of Transportation to the situation. "Dear...

The schools will never have enough money. That should be clear by now. Trying to get a handle on what public education costs us is like trying to get a handle on Bigfoot, a large, out-of-focus monster that has never been successfully photographed. Remember, as the union activists from the St. Paul Federation of Teachers dutifully put on their red T-shirts to tell us of their current distress, that we just went through something similar as recently as 2012. That time, we were told we had to vote for a levy increase so the kids could have better access to...

ST. PAUL, Minn.—Democrats who lead the Minnesota Legislature left no doubt Wednesday that a minimum wage increase of some kind will prevail in the upcoming session. The assurance that a minimum wage plan will get through—after stalling last year—came during a preview session with Capitol reporters sponsored by Forum News Service. The details, however, are still in flux and will be negotiated early in a session that begins next week. "I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be able to move pretty expeditiously on this bill and get it passed after working out what are legitimate public policy issues,"...

Minnesota's largest police group and police union are suing the NFL and the Vikings, claiming the league's new ban on off-duty cops carrying their guns to games is illegal. The Minnesota law that allows businesses to bar weapons specifically exempts "active licensed" peace officers, and state law trumps NFL rules, the lawsuit says. But the National Football League disagrees, saying the law doesn't apply to it. Although an NFL spokesman declined to comment on the suit, when police officials complained about the policy last fall, the league's security chief said a ticket to a game is a license that teams...

The 14 states running their own health insurance marketplaces had all their startup costs footed by the federal government, but they're supposed to pay for themselves starting next year under the new federal health care law. In several states, it's not clear whether it will work out that way. Projected enrollments are lower than expected, meaning the insurance surcharges designed to sustain the exchanges might not generate enough revenue in the years ahead without significant changes in the financing model. Officials in some states are stashing away federal grant money to continue paying for operations beyond the January 2015 target...

It's expected to be the most passionately debated piece of education policy for the legislative session that begins Feb. 25. Supporters say that Minnesota's current law, at 37 words, doesn't do enough to prevent bullying and that sweeping change is needed. "Nobody should be OK with the fact that all we have to protect students and make schools safe from bullying is 37 words," Kurzer-Zlotnick said. "To me, that's ridiculous." Opponents argue that the 20-page bill goes too far by taking away local control and imposing costly new layers of bureaucracy on schools. "I think it's a bad bill," said...

A startling number of Minnesota drivers don't have a valid license and should not be behind the wheel. A KARE-TV/MPR report found that approximately 1 in 8 drivers don't have driving privileges because their licenses have been suspended, revoked, canceled or disqualified. In some cases, they had no license at all. Yet they still drive. Reporter Trisha Volpe analyzed court records between 2008 and 2013 and found that nearly 310,000 people have been convicted for driving when the law says they can't. In the Twin Cities metro area that number was 181,000 with scores of repeat offenders. Volpe reported that...

Party caucuses are going on tonight in precincts across Minnesota. Caucuses are an old-fashioned civic tradition, more noted for boredom and long nights than anything else, but tonight there was some excitement at a DFL caucus in Minneapolis. A fight broke out: A very tense night at a caucus site in Minneapolis where DFLer Mohamud Noor is challenging longtime DFL state Rep. Phyllis Kahn. The heat in one Minneapolis location resulted in police being called out. With 300 people at the Byan [sic] Coyle Center, a fight broke out and people rushed the stage. After the melee, the Minneapolis police

Fourteen MNsure managers were paid bonuses totalling more than $26,000 in November as Minnesota launched its troubled online health insurance exchange, state officials said Wednesday. After MNsure went online Oct. 1, software problems bogged down website users and led to long delays for callers to its overwhelmed call center in St. Paul. Rep. Joe Hoppe, R-Chaska, first raised questions about the bonuses in a letter to Gov. Mark Dayton on Tuesday. "After MNsure's catastrophic launch, MNsure executive staff received bonus compensation," he said, citing a state report prepared last week. "Given the chaos that was apparent within MNsure, this is...

State officials plan to update the way they consider environmental and health effects when determining the overall cost of energy production, a move that could help guide decisions ranging from the fate of aging power plants to using cleaner sources of energy. The state Public Utilities Commission has agreed to update the way it considers costs, the St. Cloud Times reported . That could mean taking into account issues such as climate change, infant mortality and emergency room visits. "What this would do is to cause Minnesota to take a hard look before investments are made in power plants so...

ST. PAUL, Minn.—The Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis paid millions of dollars in costs associated with clergy misconduct in the last decade, according to internal church documents. An investigation by Minnesota Public Radio News ( http://bit.ly/1aMnkYs) found that from 2002 to 2011 the archdiocese used two secret accounts that were controlled by the archbishop to pay nearly $11 million in costs related to allegations against priests. The figure represents about 3 percent of overall archdiocese revenues in those years. MPR reported Thursday that the money was used for persuading priests to leave active ministry, for legal settlements, for therapy...

While limping along in the short-run with its troubled website, MNsure must quickly pick a strategy for making long-term software fixes and get beyond the recent "crisis mode" that has dominated program management, according to a consultant's report released Wednesday. Some improvements can be made in the coming weeks, but the website can't be completely fixed by the March 31 deadline for people to obtain health insurance, according to a report from Optum, a unit of Minnetonka-based UnitedHealth Group. The company recommended doubling the call center workforce with the equivalent of 100 full-time workers, and utilizing an Optum call center...

Target Corp. said Tuesday that it will stop offering health insurance to its part-time employees because new online health exchanges offer workers an opportunity to buy coverage. The Minneapolis-based retailer will give each worker $500 to help buy health insurance, and has arranged for one-on-one consultations with benefits manager Towers Watson to help with the transition. The retailer announced the decision through its online site, “A Bullseye View: Behind the Scenes at Target,” in a Q&A with Jodee Kozlak, Target’s executive vice president of human resources. In the article, Kozlak acknowledged the disruption to workers. But she said the exchanges...

<p>ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Have you heard about the two kids from St. Paul, brothers, actually, who started their own bait company and are now getting the attention of pros?</p> <p>They produce their own fishing videos, hawk their brand with shoe-leather savvy, and have landed a sponsorship of sorts, being named to the "pro staff" ranks of a major fishing-gear manufacturer.</p>

Susan Tuthill was once hailed as an outstanding rookie on the White Bear Lake police force. Now she's a disgraced former cop at the center of a harassment investigation for the second time. Tuthill has been charged with stalking a former boyfriend and his new love interest -- about five years after being fired by White Bear Lake police amid allegations she sent threatening letters to a previous ex-boyfriend and his new girlfriend. The charges came after the 46-year-old Cottage Grove woman reported she was the one being harassed. But investigators didn't buy it. "For being a former police officer,...

People sometimes express frustration over how difficult it is to pass new laws in our system. I consider that a positive. But in 2013, we saw how one-party rule under the Democrats can open the floodgates on lawmaking. In one short year, Democrats eschewed sound governing principles, even sidestepping the rule of law, to satisfy their interests: government subsidies, bailouts, expanding bureaucracies, favored businesses, and government unions. One-party rule got us some 300 amended statutes in the 2013 tax bill alone. That is astounding. Among those pages were controversial taxes and fee increases of nearly $2.5 billion to pay for...

Gov. Mark Dayton wants Minnesota to embark on one of the state's most ambitious and expensive public works construction programs ever. Dayton called Wednesday for borrowing nearly $1 billion this year to modernize state college and university buildings, revitalize downtown business centers and upgrade parks, prisons and other facilities while leaving enough money to complete the renovation of the deteriorating state Capitol building. He predicted his bonding bill would create more than 27,000 jobs in the state. "This jobs bill would address many of our critical infrastructure needs while strengthening Minnesota's economy and getting people back to work," the Democratic-Farmer-Labor...

New budget projections for MinnCare, the state's health insurance program for low-income workers, could show a deep financial hole in the next five years. An email from the Minnesota Council of Health Plans indicates what 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS has been told, that MinnCare could be in the red "around 500 to around 600" million dollars. The email was in response to our inquiry about the financial status of MinnCare. We asked Gov. Mark Dayton for a response to the new budget numbers, but his office referred us to the Minnesota Management and Budget Office (MMB). The Minnesota Department of Human...