There is no way to get around talking about the Tea Party today. Despite being a relatively small, fractious group with no established leadership and a platform that, because of the varied and contradictory makeup of the group, boils down to little more than a hatred of taxes, a suspicion of the federal government, and a clearinghouse of right-wing conspiracy theories, they exert undue influence on the news cycle — in part because they seem to have been embraced by some conservative politicians as representing the direction the GOP should move. In fact, Rep. Keith Ellison recently declared, "There is no doubt that the Republican Party and the Tea Party cause have been fused" (quote via the New York Times).

As Minnesota Independent's Paul Schmelzer discusses, Ellison's declaration is part of a DNC-spearheaded effort to use the Tea Party as a wedge issue. In some ways, this is just a continuation of what the Tea Party is doing on its own — they're so inherently wedgelike that they actually expelled a portion of their membership a few weeks ago over charges of racism. Ellison has something to say about that as well, quoted in Politico: "I think there have been some individuals associating themselves with the tea party that have expressed extreme racist views and I think the tea party as a movement should disavow those people," Ellison is quoted as saying. "If they don't disavow it, they're going to be associated with it."

In a very brief follow-up to Thursday's Glean story about Bachmann's conflict with Tea Party members in Missouri over her support of Rep. Roy Blunt, MN Democrats Exposed's Luke Hellier threw in his two cents via Twitter, and he was, well, blunt: "Dear Tea Partiers in Missouri, Shut up. Blunt is going to win. - Luke." City Pages was the first to notice this peevish tweet and decided to pair it with an image of Bachmann, colored green, waving claw-like hands at the camera like a movie sorceress. This is what happens if you earn the scorn of City Pages — they turn you into a character from the movie "Beastmaster." They certainly don't seem to have the same regard for her as Idaho's Raul Labrador, a congressional hopeful, who, as the AP reports, recently declared Bachmann a "visionary leader."

City Pages was considerably more restrained with its story about a meeting regarding Minneapolis's Project CeaseFire July 29. Not only are there no graphics inspired by 1980s fantasy films, but author Hart Van Denburg also offers up a fairly dry recitation of the charges brought up at the meeting. Those charges: racism. Moss charged that the work to be done by Project CeaseFire — specifically, discouraging gun violence — is already being done by community activists, who can't get access to the sort of funding that the mayor is putting into this new initiative ($2.2 million). "Black men, who have the responsibility to stand up for black children, can't get a dime," Van Denburg quotes community activst Spike Moss as saying, and then notes that he walked out of the meeting. The story also offers up videos of responses by various activists, including Moss, Al Flowers and Bill English, who was cautiously supportive of the project.

In another tale of political blowback, GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer is responding to recent complaints about Target backing his campaign. According to the AP, Emmer thinks the complaints about Target — which has specifically done outreach to the gay community but is financially supporting a candidate who opposed gay marriage — has gotten "personal." Actually, Emmer's point is even more complicated than that, so we'll offer his response before unpacking it: "The sad part to me is, I thought we were supposed to be able to exercise our rights of free speech ... We're supposed to celebrate the fact that we have different perspectives. And it doesn't seem like that's what this is about. This seems to be more personal and we've got to get over that."

We at Glean see three points here. First, there is a free speech argument. The second is a call to respect diversity. And the third is that this is all about personalities and not issues. It will be interesting to hear responses, but we at Glean suspect they will be as follows: Firstly, responding to Target's spending, and even boycotting the company, is also an expression of free speech; secondly, there is a certain irony in a candidate who wishes to enshrine intolerance for diversity into law complaining that he is the victim of a lack of respect for diversity; finally, Emmer has put forth precious few actual policy suggestions, and his campaign is run almost entirely on his life story, his family, his values, and his personally held viewpoints — it would be useful to know where he draws the lines at things become "personal" in a way that he thinks is inappropriate.

In the arts: Paul Schmelzer of Minnesota Independent details author Anne Rice's disillusionment with Christianity, and traces some of it to a punk band in Minnesota. Actually, let us backtrack a bit — the band in question is the conservative Christian "You Can Run But You Cannot Hide," and while they're sometimes identified as punk, if the music they make is punk rock, then this author is an eggplant. On her own website Ann Rice linked to the bandleader's recent comments about gays and lesbians (Specifically: "Muslims are calling for the executions of homosexuals in America. This just shows you they themselves are upholding the laws that are even in the Bible of the Judeo-Christian God, but they seem to be more moral than even the American Christians do, because these people are livid about enforcing their laws. They know homosexuality is an abomination.") With that, Rice basically washed her hands of Christianity (she had rediscovered Roman Catholicism in her adulthood), saying "Maybe commitment to Christ means not being a Christian."

In sports: We're now in the interminable time of year when Brett Favre hints he will return to the Vikings, then hints he won't, then has his PR agent yell at him, and so on. So there were Twitter rumors floating around that Favre's wife had renewed her membership to a local health club, which suggested maybe he was staying. The health club responded on Twitter, saying this information was not accurate, republished here on MinnPost. That's the sort of thing that might drive this writer off Twitter. Maybe being committed to social media means not following social media.