News Day: Budget, ballots, bishops, Bill Holm and more

February 27, 2009
The Budget Obama’s ten-year budget plan lays it all out, including a record $1.75 trillion deficit this year and, for the first time, putting the war costs into the budget.

The Ballots The three-judge panel reversed itself on Thursday, allowing testimony from a Republican election judge despite the Coleman legal team’s violation of rules of civil procedure — and thereby eliminated one possible grounds for appeal of their eventual decision.

That decision, too, moved one step closer as the judges ordered that 1500 absentee ballot envelopes be opened — but not counted yet. Absentee ballots have two envelopes, and voters are supposed to put registration cards in the outside envelope, not in the inner, secrecy envelope containing the ballot. The 1500 ballots were rejected for lack of registration, and the inner, secrecy envelopes will now be opened to see if the registration cards are inside.

Coleman’s lawyers are expected to wrap up their case next week, after more than five weeks, and then it will be Franken’s turn to present evidence, which is expected to take a couple more weeks, according to MPR.

Bill Holm Minnesota essayist and poet Bill Holm died yesterday. MPR reports:

His friends and colleagues compare Holm to Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau for writing so devotedly about his home town of Minneota.

They also compare him to Mark Twain, because of his tendency to mix affection and humor with harsh political criticism.

MN Job Watch Minnesota unemployment jumped dramatically to 7.6% in January, reaching the highest level in 25 years and matching the national level, reported MN 2020.

Northwest Airlines mechanics gave up on getting union representation, Jackie Crosby reported in the Strib. Organizing, already difficult after an unsuccessful 2005 strike, became near-impossible with the merger of Northwest’s 1,000 mechanics with Delta’s non-union 5,700. Flight attendants and airport ground workers for the two airlines are still separate, with Northwest workers unionized, and Delta’s non-union.

Carstarphen out–now what? While Meria Carstarphen will serve out the remainder of the school year as SPPS superintendent, the board turned to the task of finding a new superintendent at a time when they face a $25 million deficit. A national search could cost up to $50,000. Possible local candidates include former finalists for the post — Kent Pekel, now at the U of M, and Bernadeia Johnson, now deputy superintendent in Minneapolis, as well as Valeria Silva, chief academic officer for SPPS, reported Emily Johns in the Strib.

Open house at the mosque A Minneapolis mosque associated by law enforcement officials with a handful of missing Somali young men, answered its critics with an open house, reports Art Hughes on KFAI. FBI director Robert Mueller this week repeated assertions that one young Somali-American man had been “radicalized” in Minneapolis, without giving any specifics or evidence. This week’s open house at the Abubakar As-Saddique Islamic Center was organized before Mueller’s comments but, “If there’s a positive side to the controversy, they say it generated discussion and made for the most well-attended and diverse open house ever.”

Let them eat cake“No more money for the unemployed” — that’s the message from the Republican governors of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas, Alaska and Idaho, according to the NYT. They are considering rejecting federal money for unemployment comp, because it would require expansion of benefits to many, including part-time workers.

Tale of two bishops Bishop Richard Williamson, whose anti-semitic and Holocaust denying stances caused an uproar after the pope lifted an old excommunication based on an unrelated matter, has apologized — sort of. His apology, however, stops far short of recanting anything, reports BBC, merely expressing his concern for “much distress caused” by his remarks. (Of course, neither Williamson nor the pope has expressed one bit of concern about the bishop’s views on women.)

Meanwhile, in Brazil, another bishop suspended a priest, apparently for defending the use of condoms as a matter of public health. Father Luiz Couto, reports BBC, has also spoken out against discrimination against homosexuals and has said he is opposed to church rules on priestly celibacy. Couto, an elected member of Congress for President Lula Inacio da Silva’s Worker’s Party, has also received death threats in the past for his opposition to death squads in his north eastern area of Brazil.