Polinaut: February 20, 2006 Archive

Hey, boss, how are ya?

Posted at 8:08 AM on February 20, 2006 by Bob Collins

I was halfway through this morning's Polinaut when the laptop froze up on me, taking one of the most hilarious and informative scripts with it. Nope, can't remember a thing I wrote except that it was brilliant, I tell you. Brilliant.

What's left is weekend table scraps.

So, how'd you like to be an AFSCME employee in Amy Klobuchar's office. AFSCME went ahead and endorsed the DFL Senate candidate yesterday, but not before the AFSCME members of her office -- or at least some of them -- came out on Saturday against the endorsement, delivering a series of reasons that have got the Republican bloggers giddy with content today. "How was your weekend?" probably isn't going to be a question asked around her office as the workweek starts.

Marko makes it official

Posted at 11:41 AM on February 20, 2006 by Bob Collins

Not much of a surprise but Sharon Marko "officially" jumped into the 2nd District race for Congress today against Coleen Rowley for the DFL endorsement. No big splash, her campaign slipped a press release under the door of the locked MPR Capitol bureau (hey, it's a holiday!)

Political editor Mike Mulcahy -- who is always working -- has a request in for an interview but Marko is doing interviews with newspapers in the district today. We'll see. has interviewed Marko. Listen in (RealPlayer required).

On Iraq, she endorsed the "Murtha strategy." She says the U.S. should fix the "Part D" program for prescription drugs, and said she hasn't paid much attention to Coleen Rowley. She said she'll honor the endorsement process.

BTW, the Marko Web site (www.markoforcongress.com) doesn't seem to work for me.

Speaking of Rowley there's a write-up of a leadership conference she took part in at Annapolis, which suggests she caused a stir.

A Democrat, Rowley became famous almost overnight after she blew the whistle on some FBI cover-ups. She spoke about the moral courage it takes to stand up and go against superiors if someone sees something wrong.

Ossola says that this viewpoint created some debate, especially on the military delegate side.

Though the speakers were briefed on the conference theme before they prepared and presented their speeches, the staff had no idea what they would actually say.

"What we were hoping for was to help the delegates better define who they're going to be as leaders," says Ossola. "We all got something from Coleen Rowley, whether we personally agreed with (what she said) or not."