Rumor IDs replacement for Blatz

An anonymous call from a "downtown lawyer" came across the transom late this afternoon. The voicemail seemed reputable, identifying Governor Tim Pawlenty's choice to succeed Kathleen Blatz as the state's Supreme Court chief justice.

The source spelled the name and noted the law firm of the rumored pick: Eric J. Magnuson of Rider Bennett in Minneapolis.

Magnuson has his bona fides: Twenty years of practice in state and federal appellate courts, named in the 2003-2004 edition of Best Lawyers in America, a "Super Lawyer," according to Minnesota Law & Politics.

The source also describes Magnuson as a longtime Pawlenty crony. This would seem to be borne out in Magnuson's CV, which curiously notes that he has dealt with cases involving "the consitutionality of the public school finance system."

Perhaps Pawlenty is looking to continue his neo-con acolyte quest to dismantle the public school system as we know it.

The two worked together at Rider Bennett from 1989 until Pawlenty left the firm in 2000. In 2003, Pawlenty appointed Magnuson chair of the state's Judicial Selection Commission. Here's an interview from that time with Magnuson.

The source says there's no word on whether Magnuson, if the scuttlebutt is true, will take the position. Accepting would involve, according to the source, "a major paycut." And the governor has to at least go through the motions of assembling a screening committee.

Two different scientific research teams have determined that the source of the SARS virus, which has killed at least 774 people worldwide thus far, is the Chinese horseshoe bat.

According to a story in today's New York Times, the each team arrived at its conclusion that the horseshoe bat was the culprit independently. "In Asia, many people eat bats or use bat feces in traditional medicine for asthma, kidney ailments, and general malaise."

By the way, there are no Chinese horseshoe bats in the United States.

To a lot of observers, Tom DeLay has long been regarded as one of the more unseemly characters in the U.S. Congress. This distinction is roughly equivalent to being deemed the most ill-behaved denizen of a crackhouse. In other words, it is for good reason DeLay is known as "the Hammer." With an an awe-inspiring gift for wielding his political heft, he transformed himself from a Houston bug exterminator into the great Beltway Machiavelli of his day. As much as anyone this side of Karl Rove, he is responsible for constructing what--until very recently--looked like a permanent Republican majority in D.C.

But overreaching has also become the defining feature of the modern Grand Old Party. This was most recently illustrated by DeLay's indictment for gross violation of Texas campaign law. So it's no surprise that some of the Hammer's fellow Republicans--fearful of a general backlash in the 2006 elections--might decide to put a little distance between themselves and the now reeling ex-majority leader.

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What would the ticker symbol be for Air Tegucigalpa?

Harold Meyerson has a nice commentary in the American Prospect that starts with JetBlue's near miss last week at LAX and the troubles with outsourcing airline maintenance, and then segues into the larger, and in some ways thornier, issue of how American workers (and consumers) might weather globalization.

The non-crash, for those who might have missed it, involved the emergency landing of an Airbus A-320 with jammed wheels. News that this isn't an isolated problem with this plane, which was likely inspected and/or overhauled either in Canada or El Salvador, was eclipsed by the much easier headline that passengers had watched the near-catastrophe on TV monitors from their seats. Almost as post-modern as the economy that underlies the debacle, no?

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You don't have to open up the piles of daily mail from mortgage companies to know they all offer similarly specious-sounding promises: Do you rent? Have good credit? Let us put you in the home of your dreams for as much as you're paying in rent! But if your apartment is the home of your dreams, you can pretty much forget about paying as much in rent once it's converted into a condo. In fact, in some cases you'll be paying almost twice as much.

One such apartment building at 35th and Hennepin was renting one-bedroom apartments for $750 a month. The same apartments recently were converted into condos and put up for sale for $183,900. With $15,000 down at a 30-year-fixed mortgage, the monthly payment with condo fees jumps to $1,378 a month. According to Home Line, a local tenant advocacy organization, the condo conversion craze is putting the squeeze on Minneapolis' already depleted affordable-housing stock. In the last five years, the city has lost 1350 affordable apartments to condo conversions.

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The "moment of zen" concluding Jon Stewart's Daily Show last night truly was a stunner. William Bennett, former Secretary of Education and author of Book of Virtues, appeared to advocate aborting all black children in the United States as a means of reducing crime.

Here is what Bennett said exactly on his radio show Wednesday: "If you wanted to reduce crime, you could--if that were your sole purpose--you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down."

Between the financial derring-do of Tom DeLay and Bill Frist and the loose lips of Bennett and Pat Robertson, it appears as if the Republican establishment is throwing itself over a cliff.

Pioneer Press editor Vicky Gowler is not the only high-profile staff member to announce plans to leave recently. Dave Peters, a much beloved senior editor who oversaw coverage of St. Paul and public safety issues, has departed for the Star Tribune. Starting monday he will edit the Strib's nation and world coverage.

"He was a guy who quickly grasped a story and wanted it in the paper," says veteran Pi Press reporter Charles Laszewski, who has known Peters since they were both at the St. Cloud Times. "He would work with the reporter to get it in the paper as quickly as possible, but in as complete a form as possible."

Peters is another key loss for the St. Paul daily. In recent years columnists D.J. Tice and Nick Coleman have also jumped ship to the Strib.

New York Times reporter Judith Miller, jailed since July for refusing to talk to the grand jury investigating the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson, got out of the hoosegow last night and will testify today. Afterward, we'll see whether Patrick Fitzgerald has plugged the press leaks that regularly sprang from the grand jury last summer.

Why now? Miller says she was at last released from her pledge of confidentiality by the source in question, Cheney chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby. This flies in the face of what Fitzgerald and Libby's own attorney have said. They claim Libby's waiver has existed for a long time. According to today's WashPost:

Joseph Tate, an attorney for Libby, said yesterday that he told Miller attorney Floyd Abrams a year ago that Libby's waiver was voluntary and that Miller was free to testify. He said last night that he was contacted by Bennett several weeks ago, and was surprised to learn that Miller had not accepted that representation as authorization to speak with prosecutors.

"We told her lawyers it was not coerced," Tate said. "We are surprised to learn we had anything to do with her incarceration."...

One lawyer involved in the case said Miller's attorneys reached an agreement with Fitzgerald that may confine prosecutors' questions solely to Miller's conversations with Libby. [emphasis added]

Read the WashPost story.

CITY PAGES BLOGS

Peter S. Scholtes interviews Peter R. Scholtes on Peter Sr.'s life as a priest on the South Side of Chicago in the 1960s and working with Dr. Martin Luther King, at Complicated Fun.

Lindsey Thomas takes on Spin, and develops her own Top 20 list of Rock & Roll innovators at This Is Pop.

THESE DAYS

On Wednesday, the cornerstone was laid on what will be the reconstruction of the distillery where the George Washington produced nearly 11,000 gallons of rye whiskey.

Nearly a year after Congress demanded action, the Pentagon has still failed to figure out a way to reimburse soldiers for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.

The Danish Air Force said Thursday it paid 31,175 kroner ($5,032) in compensation to a part-time Santa Claus whose reindeer died of heart failure when two fighter jets roared over his farm.

Rep. Jeb Bradley (R-NH) says he will return $15,000 in campaign funds from former House majority leader Tom DeLay's political action committee.

MINNESOTA BLOG OF THE DAY

Get your geek on with web developer Sam Buchanan at afongen.

[Minnesota-based blog directory]

TIME WASTERS

This trailer for The Shining will remind you it was the feel-good movie of the year back in 1980.

Donate $100 to Katrina victims through Brian Wilson's website and the Beach Boy legend will call you and thank you personally.

They're little birds who talk about obscure bands and make stupid jokes, better known as the Indietits!

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

"I don't think people are going to come down here to a comedy club, you know, when it's a two stab minimum."

-- Comedian Louie Anderson, on KQRS Wednesday morning, on the prospects of opening a comedy club in downtown Minneapolis [via KSTP.com]

"I think you're going to see a quantum leap in the number of products integrated into your television shows this year."

-- CBS television chairman Les Moonves, turning on the red light

"Anger is not a road map toward this city's future. When all is said and done, I believe the people of St. Paul, in their heart of hearts, care more about where we will all be four years from now than they do about rehashing a previous election."

-- St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly asking voters to kindly forget about his endorsement of George W. Bush in last year's presidential election [via the Strib]

There will be no more news stories written by weatherman Paul Douglas in the Star Tribune.

U.S. District Court Judge Paul Magnuson ruled this week that an arbitrator acted properly in determining that the Strib had violated its collective bargaining agreement with the Minnesota Newspaper Guild Typographical Union.

The dispute dates back to 2004 when the Minneapolis daily published five news articles by Douglas in the A and B sections of the paper. The WCCO weatherman has long penned a daily column for the Strib, but it's normally confined to the back page of the B section.

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