The House Taxes Committee was a model of bipartisan accord on Thursday morning. On the agenda was legislation carried by Chairman Greg Davids, R-Preston, to address changes in the federal tax code that require changes to the state's tax rules if the state is to remain in conformity.

Downey, a former government consultant, has become the face of Republicans' move to redesign and reform state operations, a position that has put him in the limelight as ire rises just across the border in Wisconsin over anti-union proposals. Whether he likes it or not, the legislation has dramatically raised his profile in St. Paul.

I called to get a statement on Egypt from Minnesota congresswoman and House Tea Party Caucus founder Michele Bachmann and was told by her press secretary that, in spite of numerous requests, she wouldn't be giving any interviews this week while she concentrates on district work.

A ferocious pushback by Education Minnesota cast the 70,000-member statewide teacher's union in the role of session bogeyman. The union and its head, Tom Dooher, fought the bill to a standstill in the end; it lost by a tight 68-65 margin in the House, and did not reach the floor in the Senate.

Ranging in age from 24 to 65, new class presents a varied face

Gov. Tim Pawlenty took legal action on Thursday and joined 20 other states in protesting President Barack Obama’s federal health care law.

When the 87th Minnesota Legislature convenes in January, it will seat 60 new members - the third-highest total of the past 40 years. Fifty-four of those new faces will be Republicans.

In many cases, DFLers simply got caught in an undertow in districts that are fundamentally split in their political allegiances; in some, like rural Senate District 16, they handed back control of districts no one had expected them to win in the first place; in others, it appears, they failed to take steps to protect incumbents who faced discernible pockets of Republican opposition.

Republicans pummeled DFLers in the suburbs and greater Minnesota on Tuesday night to take control of both chambers of the Legislature for the first time since the modern partisan era started in the early 1970s.

The last time around, Senate District 13 in western Minnesota played host to one of the most intense legislative races in recent history. Republicans, DFLers and several independent groups waged an expensive and pitched battle there in 2006 that culminated in the defeat of Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson, DFL-Willmar, by a razor-thin 553 votes.