Minnesota Lawyer

Our presidential election campaign is picking up steam; money is being raised as never before, mostly to convince voters that the other party’s guy is a very poor choice to be president.

“Tell me something cheerful” is how Grover Norquist, the president of Americans for Tax Reform, has started most of the conversations I’ve had with him over the past 20 years. Not last week.

During a focus group in Denver last week, Jeffrey Penny laid out his “criteria” for giving President Barack Obama his vote this year as he did in 2008.

No one would blame Jeb Bush for feeling that time, or his party, has passed him by. He could have run for president 12 years ago but didn’t.

Now that the political tumult in Wisconsin has receded in the wake of Gov. Scott Walker’s seven-point win in the recall election, some lessons for Minnesota have emerged.

Two separate but parallel evolutions have just come to fruition which will re-shape American politics. Each reflects a “libertarian” shift in thinking.

What’s the matter with Massachusetts that would make Mitt Romney want to pretend he’d never been its governor? Yes, it presents some image problems for the conservative candidate Romney now wants to be.

America has hit a turning point, and there will be no turning back: For the first time in our history the number of births to racial/ethnic minority parents exceed the number of births to white parents.

Those of us outside government tend to think of everywhere else as the “real world,” but during a legislative session, no place is as real as the Capitol for those involved in lawmaking.

If the U.S. is growing at 3.5 percent a year while China is growing at 8.5 percent a year, enabling China’s economy to surpass the U.S. in a decade or so, does that mean the U.S. is in decline?