Nearly six months after DFL Gov. Mark Dayton and the Republican-controlled 87th Minnesota Legislature were sworn into office and set to work concocting the 2012-13 biennial budget, the state has crept inexorably toward a government shutdown whose scale and consequences remained unclear in important respects even after a Wednesday order from Ramsey County District Court Judge Kathleen Gearin.

The ruling, which dropped nearly a week after petitions were heard in court and in the midst of budget talks on Wednesday, opted to continue funding for some state services in a shutdown, including nursing homes, correctional facilities and veteran homes. Gearin's ruling said the petition filed by Attorney General Lori Swanson was too broad, and sided mostly with the hard shutdown advocated by the governor.

When the throng of observers showed up at Ramsey County District Court on Thursday morning, filling the court of Judge Kathleen Gearin and spilling into the hallway outside the chamber’s open doors, most felt confident that Gearin would concoct some variation on the shutdown operations plan created by the courts in 2005 -- and that, by day’s end, they would know in general terms what gets funded in a shutdown and what does not.

With two weeks left until the end of the biennial budget cycle, the largest question facing the state is increasingly not whether the government will be forced to shut down July 1, but just how much will be shuttered when it does.

Former Democratic U.S. attorney will advise Dayton on legal matters related to a potential state government shutdown.

Martin has officially announced he is seeking the top post in the state's DFL Party.

The recount team for former Democratic U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton expressed confidence at a news conference Friday that the DFL gubernatorial candidate would hold a substantial lead over GOP nominee Tom Emmer after the canvasing process and a hand recount.

The morning after the election, Republican Party of Minnesota Chair Tony Sutton and Deputy Chair Michael Brodkorb gathered the bleary-eyed Capitol press - who had been sitting up into the early morning hours waiting for a verdict on the Minnesota gubernatorial election - and began sounding off on the prospect of an automatic recount.

A slate of prominent Minnesota Democrats gathered at a private home Tuesday evening to appeal to DFLers who are thinking about voting for Independence Party gubernatorial candidate Tom Horner in November instead of DFL nominee Mark Dayton. The event, hosted by top-drawer DFLers like House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak and former House Minority Leader Matt Entenza - all of them one-time 2010 candidates for governor themselves - was billed as question-and-answer session in a mass email sent out to Democrats.

Hours after Tuesday's DFL primary, the Minnesota GOP launched a TV ad attack calling DFLer Mark Dayton "erratic" and wondering out loud what frequency he was on.