Hi Robin, it's me, Barack. Look, I'm tweeting a lame answer to your question.

​Barack Obama wants everyone to know he's on board with the whole Twitter thing, so his press folks staged a town hall yesterday for him to interact with questioners in the Twitterverse.

That sounded good to local scribe and activist Robin Marty. She navigated a regional facilitator (the Strib's Kara McGuire), who filtered a deluge of questions, and who then retweeted Marty's question with an #AskObama hashtag.

Marty's question defied the odds and got through to what amounted to a press conference, or a Twitter conference, at the White House. Here's the breakdown, starting when Marty posts this question:

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The Courage To Stand -- on Twitter.

​Tim Pawlenty didn't have the "Courage To Stand" against Mitt Romney and Obamneycare during the Republican debate, and apparently he knows it.

So instead of just waiting to let his humiliatingly weak moment on CNN blow over, like his campaign spokesman said he would do, some genius in his campaign decided that Pawlenty ought to keep the story alive by trying to be a tough guy while hiding behind his Twitter account.

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This man has better things to do than worry about a national disaster in his home state.

​Look, we know Tim Pawlenty has more important things to worry about than the death and destruction in North Minneapolis--what with his presidential campaign kicking off today and all--but would it kill him to tweet a little kindness?

So far, Pawlenty has not uttered a word on his Twitter account about the tornado that devestated his home state. Instead, he's too busy checking himself out in the mirror and trying to get his followers hyped up for his big Iowa speech.

Hey T-Paw, you know what would make you look really presidential? Going to North Minneapolis this morning to help with the tornado clean-up.
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​Everyone has an opinion about the killing of Osama bin Laden. In Minnesota, a lot of them used Twitter to luxuriate in sweet revenge for 9/11. Others found absurd humor in reactionary politics, or lamented that the state of the world hasn't changed very much in the past 24 hours.

We've collected some of the best below. Let us know if you've seen others.

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Are you being followed?

​The next time people bump into you downtown while they finger their iPhones, or sit slumped over a laptop at a free-wifi coffeehouse like so many oldsters at casino slot machines, there's a good reason. They're helping Minneapolis become the 4th most socially networked city in the country.

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Chris Kluwe over shares on Twitter.

​Vikings punter Chris Kluwe appreciates the hard work everyone's done to try and get TCF Bank Stadium ready for tonight's Vikings-Bears game. Really, he does.

But even so, he took to Twitter yesterday after practice to complain about the "trainwreck" of a frozen field being hard as concrete, unplayable, and liable to produce a concussion.

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Photo: Nic McPhee

Blizzard People

​The blizzard unleashed a deluge of snow, and you unleashed a torrent of comment on Twitter.

Sometimes it was to share shovel strategies, sometimes it was to bitch about about the snowplows. Sometimes it was to find humor in the mess.

Here's some of what flew across our radar.

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Photo: Animal Humane Society

Tucker the turtle is taking a trip.

​We're glad to hear that Tucker the Eastern Box Turtle has found a ride back to his old Kentucky home.

Winter's coming, and the poor little homeless reptile would probably feel out of sorts north of the Mason-Dixon line when the snow flies.

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Photo by Dewey Koshenina

​ 
When Baratunde Thurston took the stage in the Hilton ballroom at the Minnesota Interactive Marketing Association summit yesterday, he led with a Jucy Lucy joke. "I'm in the place where they put cheese inside a hamburger," he said. "Doesn't that offend like 90% of the world's religions?" It was the last conventional joke of his unconventional stand-up set.


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Which Vikings rock Twitter hardest? Read on.

​The NFL doesn't allow its players to use Twitter from the sidelines, but that doesn't stop some Minnesota Vikings from having a lot to say in 140 characters or less when games and practices are over.

And here's what we wanted to know: Which Vikings rock Twitter the hardest?

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