Tag: minnesota nice

Al Franken bravely goes after GOP *staffers*…

So much for ‘Minnesota Nice.’

…apparently, the negative fallout from going after actual Republican Senators was a bit much for the man, and of course he can’t just act like a mature federal legislator.  Al Franken, remember?

Anyway, via Drudge here’s the latest loss-of-control:

Franken invited [Sen. Bob] Corker to his office to discuss an op-ed that Corker penned in a Tennessee newspaper opposing an amendment Franken offered to a defense bill. The measure gave the employees of defense contractors who suffer rape or sexual assault at the workplace the right to sue in court.

The meeting quickly deteriorated when Franken began berating one of Corker’s aides, according to GOP aides familiar with the incident. Franken’s sally was so harsh that Corker told Franken to lay off his aide and direct the comments at him instead.

Franken’s tough approach came as a surprise because Corker scheduled the meeting to mend fences after Franken confronted him about the op-ed during an angry exchange on the Senate floor.

Franken also went out after another GOP staffer – female, of course – for the supposed crimes of Republican Senators. You almost have to feel bad for the decidedly junior Senator from Minnesota: after all, it’s been an entire year since the election, and he’s still just Al Franken.  And he’s starting to subconsciously grasp that putting the title ‘Senator’ in front of his name won’t change that.

Moe Lane

PS: In the unlikely chance that he ever reads this: make me respect you, Senator Smalley.

Crossposted to RedState.

Gov. Pawlenty Mousetraps the DFL.

Made it look pretty easy, too.

See, this is how you do it.

Governor Pawlenty has been stuck with a Democratic-controlled legislature that in more or less stereotypical fashion has been ignoring the fact that we’re in the middle of a very nasty recession; they’ve been trying to boost both taxes and spending, and Pawlenty kept telling them ‘no.’ So, the state legislature attempted to, as Kimberly Strassell put it, ‘run out the clock’ and put the governor in a position where he’d have to call a special session to get a spending bill that he wouldn’t be able to veto.

Alas for the Democrats: live by legislative maneuverings, die by them.

Upon receiving the last spending bill, [Pawlenty] announced that he would exercise the power of “unallotment,” which has been on the books since 1939 and which has been used four times. Under it, the governor is allowed to “unallot” (take away) any state spending for which there is no money to pay. Panicked, the DFL passed tax legislation to cover its blowout spending bills, 10 minutes before the session’s end. Too late. The governor said he’d veto the bill and would not be calling back the legislature to do any more mischief.

Mr. Pawlenty is now free to strip $2.7 billion from state spending to balance the budget. Tax hikes are dead.

(See also Hot Air.)

The Democrats are making the usual fake-populist sounds about blaming the governor for any cuts in spending – which would be a lot more impressive a threat if it wasn’t as inevitable as the sunrise – and the governor is remarkably and pleasantly uninterested in worrying about whether the Other Side is whining about him. What’s more important from Pawlenty’s point of view is that he now has the ability to not only halt spending in Minnesota, but reverse it. And he’s apparently willing to let the voters in Minnesota decide whether doing so was the right call.

Works for me. Good job, Governor Pawlenty.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.