Minnesota Lawyer

In the classic 1981 comedy “Stripes,” the Bill Murray character tells his rowdy pals from Chicago not to worry about credentials as they prepared to enter a Soviet-bloc country, mistakenly promising that it would be just like “going into Wisconsin.”

I write this on a hot, beautiful July day just before the Fourth of July. I have returned to St Paul from the woods and lakes of northern Wisconsin where small towns were gearing up to celebrate the once “Glorious Fourth.” American flags were flying on lamp posts, hand-lettered signs were up for Fourth of July picnics and ball games, fireworks were for sale everywhere.

People have always been fascinated by the prospect of time travel, which is one reason the movie “Back to the Future” was so popular. The concept of being able to travel back in time to experience an event in history – or perhaps even change history – holds a great sense of intrigue.

But now (as then)—and it’s hard to find a kind way to say this—Oklahoma’s not exactly a modern model of a successful society or economy: The Sooner State is just plain backward in many respects.

Douglas Adams’ “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” begins with contractors arriving at Arthur Dent’s house in order to demolish it to make way for a bypass.

Last Friday my wife, Hoa, and I saw what I am calling the "Tea Party movie" - Ridley Scott's Robin Hood.

Houston talk-show host Michael Perry couldn’t contain himself. When a listener named Tony called in May 26 to defend a plan to build an Islamic center near New York City’s 9/11 ground zero, Perry exploded.

The 2010 legislative session wrapped up this week with a frenzied string of all-nighters, round-the-clock negotiating between the Democratic leaders of the Legislature and our GOP governor—even including a miniature special session.

The fight for freedom of expression takes many forms. But it occurs again and again, at different times, in different cultures, among very different people. And in the United States, the First Amendment makes the fight profoundly different from the struggles elsewhere.

Over the past decades, the entire U.S. has been gerrymandered against the interests of its people and for the advantage of party insiders. We have been carved up into antagonistic red- and blue-voting communities, and that has disempowered the people.