Ron Paul is coming to town, and you will have plenty of opportunities to engage him. The big event will be Monday night at the Minneapolis Convention Center at 7pm. I’ve been tapped to lead some Q & A, but the logistics won’t allow something as quaint as passing a mic around the audience (too many people expected). So, if you want your question asked, let me know at fightinwordsusa<at>gmail<dot>com and I’ll do my best to work it in.

Otherwise, if you want to ask the Congressman a question directly, the smaller events around town will allow for that. I’ll be moderating the one in Chanhassen on Saturday. More info is available here.

The almighty altar that Democrats worship at is under attack. Abortion.

And it could mean Amy Klobuchar's gravy train of donors is at risk. She is not taking this sitting down. 

Glitter strikes again. The Romneys handled it well, and Mitt Romney joked that it was confetti, celebrating his win in Florida...

Progressives have argued for years that voter fraud doesn’t exist, especially in Minnesota. The truth is that it exists. It’s that they refuse to look for it. Yesterday, a progressive named Adam argued in the comments that the PVC cards that got returned weren’t the result of voter fraud. He argued that they happened because of the biggest data entry problem in government history:

Perhaps the Big E understands that Atur Davis has never lived or worked in politics in Minnesota?

Also, errors in data entry in the SVRS are evidence of fraud? How?

Wouldn’t someone trying to commit fraud use an actual address? It’s not exactly hard to do, you know.

Think of what Adam said. First, he said that the data entry people were the most incompetent data entry people in government. Next, he admitted that SecState Ritchie’s system doesn’t have safeguards to catch typos. Third, he admitted that it isn’t difficult to commit fraud using a real address.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence.

Really.

A program that has been taking from the middle class and giving to the rich...

We should clone Senator Dave Thompson. At a recent meeting of the Southwest Metro Tea Party in Chanhassen, the freshman legislator joined Senator David Hann along with their House colleagues Representatives Mary Franson, Ernie Leidiger, and Doug Wardlow in previewing the Reform 2.0 initiatives proposed for this year’s legislative session. At one point, Thompson declared that he would not weigh his prospects for re-election in his decision to support employee freedom (also known as right-to-work). The line earned rousing applause, and for good reason. Thompson understands that he was not sent to St. Paul to advance his political career. He was sent to advocate for his constituents’ fundamental rights.

Unfortunately, if murmurs through the grapevine are true, there are a significant number of Republican legislators who are skittish about joining Thompson and Representative Steve Drazkowski in pursuit of employee freedom.  They worry about the effect it may have on their re-election campaigns. That concern misses a number of points, both principled and practical.

Today, Politico’s Jim VandeHei reports that economic indicators should have Barack Obama worried about his re-election prospects, not more sanguine.  VandeHei relies heavily on this week’s economic and deficit projections from the CBO, but perhaps not heavily enough:

A new CBO report grabbed lots of headlines for projecting the deficit will top $1 trillion this year — making Obama the first president ever to pile up $1 trillion or more every year in office. That’s not great politics. But it’s not even the worst news contained in the CBO report. The unemployment number is.

Last night, Jeri Taylor-Swade and Laurel Fee of Las Vegas gave us an update on the weekend's Nevada caucuses. Also, Andy Aplikowski was angry about dirty "kitchen sink" tactics in the Republican presidential race.

You can hear the Late Debate every Sunday to Thursday from 10pm to Midnight on 95.9FM in the North Metro. You can also subscribe to the podcast through iTunes.

The 2012 campaign season officially begins in Minnesota next Tuesday, February 7, at ground level with the grassroots of the political parties: the precinct caucuses.

I love senate district-level politics, but few people actually want to go to their precinct caucus. Judging by the plethora of YouTube videos on how to attend a precinct caucus for Democrat candidates going back for years, the Democrats and unions seem to be doing their best to get their folks out of the house every election cycle. That's because the caucuses are a prime opportunity to identify campaign volunteers, get their cell phone numbers and Twitter handles, and mobilize them for the long ground game to Election Day.

Plato once said that one of the penalties for not getting involved in politics is that you become governed by your inferiors; or as many have said, in a democracy, the people get the government they deserve. If you are a conservative or libertarian who sat out the 2008 presidential election because you couldn't bear to vote for John McCain, or the 2010 election because you couldn't stomach Tom Emmer, how is that working out for you?

I was out of town for Mitt Romney's appearance and missed his glitterbombing, but was present when Michele Bachmann got spangled at the RightOnline conference last year. Most disturbing to me again was how easy it was for the tossers to get such close access to elected officials and candidates. And again I'll ask: what if that wasn't glitter they were throwing — and where's the security?

In a Star Tribune editorial Thursday, the writer brings a possible security scenario that wouldn't bode well on future confetti-throwers:

My friend and unwitting mentor Mitch Berg has had an interesting go of it in recent days. He wrote a piece and a followup piece concerning how disgruntled Republicans might consider dealing with the likelihood that Mitt Romney, who is at best unsteadily conservative, might become the standard bearer for the Republican Party in this election cycle. The first article was later picked up on the big conservative website HotAir and has received, as of this writing, over 480 comments.

As is always the case with Mitch's work, the only real thing to do is read the pieces in their entirety, but I want to riff on one particular issue. In the second piece, Mitch talks about the etymology of the all-purpose epithet "RINO," with tongue somewhat in cheek:

The old saying "the truth will out" means that no secret can be kept forever. The question before us, however, is whether or not a secret can be kept long enough for someone to be elected President of the United States, and unfortunately we already know the answer. I am certain that had the truth of Barack Obama's agenda been widely known he would never have been elected. In particular, had we known about the ominous threats to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness contained in that abomination known as Obamacare , we surely would have elected somebody – ANYBODY – but Obama. Polls consistently show that a majority of Americans want Obamacare repealed and the overwhelming majority of Republicans want it repealed outright. So how can it possibly be that Republicans seem on the verge of selecting as their 2012 standard-bearer a candidate – Mitt Romney – that many suspect of not wanting outright repeal, and at best only willing to tinker around the edges of it?   I cannot imagine Mitt Romney being our nominee, if that were the truth and it became known.

Business is a slave to profit, but politicians are slaves to politics. Why compete in a free market when, as StarTribune reporter Eric Weiffering says in his excellent analysis of public ownership of pro sports stadiums, businesses can "privatize their gains while socializing losses ("Go long to measure the true cost of a stadium," StarTribune, January 29, 2012). Pro sports teams and their cronies in the government are literally laughing all the way to the bank. In too many public-private "partnerships," the private owners get the profit, the politicians get the photo op, and the taxpayers get a perpetual liability.

No one has summed up the irresistible lure of bread and circuses better than this oft-misquoted yet cogent mash-up: