Dick Franson, the longer-than-long-shot DFL candidate for Senator, is at it again, throwing around faxed press releases like Zeus frying the peasants with lightning bolts of wisdom. First he took his Senatorial race competition to task by demanding they undergo drug tests. Brzap! Then, when we had the audacity to question his actions, he called us anti-veteran. Ka-zang!

Now, he's set his electric wit against DFL Education Foundation, an organization that apparently "failed" to invite him to their round table discussion of the involvement of the DFL in Vietnam War politics.

"Thanks for not inviting me to sit on the Round Table Discussions," he wrote in a faxed open letter to the group and one of their organizers, former Minneapolis mayor Don Fraser. "In 1968 I was a member of the DFL State Central Committee and Chairman of Democratic Committee organized to censure U.S. Senator Eugene McCarthy for being 'soft' on communism."

A brief history lesson: Eugene McCarthy had the distinction in 1968 as the only Democrat running for President on an anti-war platform.

So let's recap - Dick "Little Engine That Can't" Franson once led an organization to censure the only politician brave enough to speak out against the foolishness of the anti-Communist movement and the cluster-fuck that was the Vietnam War. Now he's throwing a hissy because he's not being properly recognized for his "accomplishments."

Sorry, Mr. Franson - this one fizzled on the ground.

MINNEAPOLIS -- City Pages is pleased to announce that Matt Snyders has been hired by the Star-Tribune to serve as the new Reader's Representative.

Starting next week, Snyders, a 23-year-old City Pages fellow, will take calls and letters from concerned readers and attempt to sympathize with their grievances.

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In a bold move to eliminate as many full-time positions as possible incubate a first-class health care reporting team, Strib editor Nancy Barnes announced today that Kate Parry, the paper's ombudsman for the last three years, will be taking over as health care editor.

And replacing Parry? Well, no one. At least not for now. According to the newsroom memo, the reader's rep job will, if it gets filled at all, likely be part-time.

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After 14 years at the helm of the Star Tribune's editorial page, Susan Albright is leaving the newspaper next month. The change was announced in a memo from publisher Chris Harte sent out to Strib staffers this afternoon. Managing editor Scott Gillespie will take over the helm of the editorial page on an interim basis.

Harte cited competing philosophies for the future of the opinion pages as part of the reason for Albright's departure. "We have a professional disagreement about the role of the editorial pages and how they should be edited," he writes in the memo. "The main shift I want to see is toward even more locally focused editorial pages."

In other words: no more unpleasantly hostile verbiage about the Bush administration's catastrophic war in Iraq and more reasoned argument about the Hopkins School District's curriculum. The move also undoubtedly means that the newspaper's historically left-leaning editorial voice will drift rightward in the coming months.

This week's City Pages features the 10 best and 10 worst moments at the Metrodome. Use this comments thread to debate our choices and provide some of your own.

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Dueling ads in senate campaign

Sen. Norm Coleman placed a full page ad in today's Star Tribune taking a potshot at challenger Al Franken for calling the senate resolution chastising Moveon.org "ridiculous." Over a washed out photo of Franken, the ad attacks the comedian for helping to raise money for the liberal advocacy group.

Today the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee released its own ad critiquing Coleman's voting record. Featuring a beaming photo of Minnesota's senior senator with President Bush, it notes that Coleman votes with the White House 90 percent of the time.

See the ads after the jump:

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Minnesota's most dysfunctional suburb has not disappointed this election season. The city council primary campaign featured eight candidates vying for four slots on the November ballot. Incumbent Will Rossbach and newcomer John Nephew easily outdistanced their opponents, each garnering support from roughly a third of voters. Rebecca Cave, a member-in-good-standing of the city's current ruling troika, and ally Delray "Rocky" Rokke secured the final two ballot spots. They'll battle it out for two council spots in November.

But the real fun has occurred away from the polls. On September 4, Robert Schmidt, chair of the Maplewood Voters Coalition, filed a complaint with the state's Office of Administrative Hearings charging that Cave violated election laws by distributing misleading campaign materials. Cave's lawn signs stated that she was endorsed by "Maplewood Fire"--even though the fire department doesn't actually endorse individual candidates.

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In a touching display of bipartisan unity and legislative elbow grease, senators Norm Coleman and Amy Klobuchar joined forces yesterday to help pass a resolution condemning the use of character-assailing puns in newspaper ads.

Our senators joined 70 others in voting to rebuke MoveOn.org for their placement of an anti-war ad in The New York Times questioning the factual accuracy of General David Petreaus’s past assessments of the war in Iraq.

But the main point of contention had to do with a pun present in the ad's title ("General Petraeus or General Betray Us?"), as Klobuchar explains:

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U of M administrators are no doubt breaking out the bubbly this afternoon.

Union negotiators decided today to end the more than two-week strike by clerical, technical and health care workers at the school, and to take the administration's offer to a vote of the membership. Union leadership is neither endorsing nor opposing the current offer.

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Eric Black has been doing his homework...as usual. His post on the investigation of U.S. Attorney Rachel Paulose provides a folly of a footnote to a story that ties Minnesota to the national scandal that led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales--but that's not what the investigation is about.

Of the investigation by the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, underway since June, Black writes:

"The conflicts enumerated in this matter are not explicitly political or ideological, except for one instance in which Paulose allegedly made false statements about a job candidate who had liberal associations.

"But the pattern of the matters under investigation by the special counsel may shed some light on the gray area between issue of 'management style' and issues of politics.

"When Paulose took over the office, she told several of the career officials there that she demanded total personal loyalty. At least one replied that loyalty was owed to the Constitution, not to her. Many of the allegations raise the possibility that Paulose crossed the line while seeking to punish personal disloyalty."

In the spirit of homework, here's an abridged timeline of the entire Paulose debacle. It begins with a choir and a color guard. Where it ends...well, stay tuned.

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