Tim Pawlenty, Homebrew protector.

(via @baseballcrank & The Weekly Standard) This could actually have an effect on my eventual pick for the 2012 nomination:

Pawlenty signs “basement brewing” bill

ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – Brewers in Minnesota can now legally make their concoctions in their basements.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty signed a bill Thursday that makes it legal for beverages to be brewed in the basement of a building.

I’ve spent twenty years hanging with people who make their own beer, and I am a much better man for it.  Aside from everything else, it means that I never blighted my life drinking bad, mass-produced, beer-flavored water.  Ending the federal ban on homebrewing is the one of the few good things that Jimmy Carter ever did: that Governor Pawlenty has the good sense to make it easier for people to learn what is a quite useful and very marketable skill speaks well of him.