I’ll leave it to others to make some kind of grand distinction between “terrorism” and “hate”. As though one comes at us only from “others” while the latter is homegrown. But following the first flow of information about Omar Mateen and his homicidal spree in Orlando, the description that fits best is that of the son — the spawn — of an intensely conservative, intolerant, controlling father. Father Mateen is strange old man who comes off as a strict paternalist, a man with righteous delusions of importance, maybe grandeur, far, far beyond his achievements in the world. All of which — guessing here — shaped his son the mass murderer into something universally familiar here in the USA, and in rural Yemen, in upscale Saudi Arabia, and everywhere else. Namely, a young man in his physical prime (mis)educated in the belief of his superiority and entitlement.
Always eager to play to a familiar, preexisting narrative, our commercial media and most of our politicians have leapt to emphasize Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS. As though that one statement, (made, we learn this morning, in a phone conversation with cops while hold up in the nightclub’s restroom) is sufficient evidence of a purposeful, dedicated allegiance to grand religious/cultural war. I’m sorry, but I doubt it.
The psychologically misshapened, of which Mateen seems a prime example given his parentage, his abuse of his ex-wife and fear of/anger toward gays, have always been a common feature on the human landscape. The facts of his broader ethnic heritage seem far less significant than the specific forces that raised him.
If you choose to blame the strains of religiously-rooted cultural conservatism that pretty obviously contorted Mateen, you have to apply the same lens to the likes of dozens of other mass murderers, men with Christian surnames, who have brought their perversion of vengeful justice to bear on black churches, Planned Parenthood clinics and federal office buildings over the years.
We may never know, but Mateen’s declaration of support for ISIS, seems much more like an afterthought, a desperate final grasp for grandiosity. A reach for an even more provocative, inflammatory ring as he realized death awaited him on the other side of a thin rest room wall.
The saner view and response to this tragedy will be to resist the knee jerk shrieks that, “ISIS is coming to slaughter us all” and therefore we as a nation must gear up for counter-jihad in Middle East and accept that unstable young men like Omar Mateen, molded by demonstrably deluded parents (usually controlling fathers) are a universal problem, (always have been), and that at its core a declaration of support for a rampaging army of similar young men isn’t appreciably different than Tim McVeigh’s allegiance to the white militia movement of Dylan Roof’s to the South’s confederate heritage.
The warped and insane routinely seek legitimacy with a higher cause.
So communications strategists typically identify a small number of messages or themes that they strive to repeat and stress above all the others. They’re often called “key messages,” or “frames.”
Governor Dayton has been very clear that early education investment is his Administration’s top priority. But you’d never know it by looking at the budget proposals coming out of the Minnesota Legislature so far this year.
Frankly, I don’t know how anything, much less anyone, can survive the next five and a half months. After spending most of last summer, fall and winter assuming/hoping Donald Trump would slither back under his gilded rock, we now have accept that he not only isn’t going away, but he’s going to be louder, cruder and more reckless than ever … because he’s convinced that’s what “his” Republican party wants.
South Dakota is feeling under-loved, again. A South Dakota state senator wrote a commentary in today’s Star Tribune complaining about the newspaper’s 
In fact, now that retirement is a decade or so away, it wouldn’t be the craziest thing in the world for my South Dakota-born wife and I to take our thousandaire fortune and retire closer to our South Dakota family and friends. After all, lots of old folks retire there to shield their income from taxes, since South Dakota has no income tax.
As a Sanders supporter, I concede there are many valid reasons to worry about him. But one of the biggest “go-to” criticisms used by Senator Hillary Clinton and her supporters strikes me as simplistic and overblown. More importantly, her focus on that issue makes me worry that she perhaps doesn’t truly understand what it takes to be an effective general election candidate and President.
Oh and then there was that super nonpartisan time when Governor Pawlenty, who was preparing to run against President Obama, enacted an executive order to 
Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has already given much to the Democratic Party. But even though his chances of being nominated remain slim, he still has a bit more he could give to his adopted party.
But food deserts definitely do happen, particularly in low-income and 
Now that state legislators are creating better public spaces for visitors in the 
#2. The iPhone Prayer. The reason legislators continually have their heads bowed is not because they are prayerful or otherwise contemplative. It’s because of smart phones.
DFL state legislators are an awfully unpopular bunch. According to an August 2015 Public Policy Polling (PPP) 
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are now pretty assured of winning their party’s nomination for president, both because they are far ahead and because it seems unlikely either will implode with their respective bases. They have both had fundamental vulnerabilities exposed, yet they both continue to have a sufficient amount of support to win their nominations.
When presidential candidate Bernie Sanders explains why Americans shouldn’t fear his “democratic socialism,” he usually