Minnesota for Marriage and Kurt Bills’ Facebook accounts hacked

Nefarious!  The Minnesota for Marriage folks and the Kurt Bills campaign say some — knave — hacked into their Facebook pages.

At MPR, Tom Scheck writes: “Andy Parrish, deputy campaign manager for the group Minnesota for Marriage, said someone also made unauthorized posts to the group’s Twitter account. He said on Facebook someone posted an Old Testament verse saying the penalty for homosexuality is death. Parrish said no one with authorized access to the Facebook page posted the verse. He said the post is out of bounds. ‘Minnesota for Marriage would never advocate for anybody being put to death,’ Parrish said. ‘We strongly believe that anybody is entitled to love whomever they want to love. We don’t have a position on that. We just have a position on whether marriage in Minnesota should be redefined.’ Parrish said he’s working with Facebook to see who hacked into his account. The alleged hacking comes a day after Minnesota for Marriage organized a protest outside of General Mills to criticize the company’s opposition to the amendment.

Meanwhile, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Kurt Bills’ campaign said its Facebook page was also hacked in the past 24 hours. The unauthorized posting said Bills opposes the marriage amendment. Bills’ campaign manager Mike Osskopp said Bills actually supports it.

Next door, Gov. Scott Walker says no matter what the Supreme Court decides Thursday on the health care law, he’ll wait until after the November elections to make his move. Scott Bauer of the AP writes: “Walker, an outspoken critic of the law, originally said in January that he would not begin setting up the state’s health insurance exchange required by the law until after the court ruled. Earlier this month, the Republican governor went even further, saying that if the law is upheld he will not do anything until after the election, hoping that the next president and Congress will repeal it. Only after those two fail would Wisconsin ‘figure out some alternative within the state,’ Walker said in a statement released by his office this week. Republican state lawmakers appear to be on board with that approach, even while Democrats and health care advocates say the state should be more bullish in moving forward with consumer protections and other reforms under the law.” I’m certain what they meant to say was, “more bullish in moving forward with job creator protections …”

Michael Brodkorb wants to settle. Or at least his lawyer wants to settle. At City Pages, Aaron Rupar writes: “On the same day his client was having an “unsanctioned” meeting with Senate Majority Leader Dave Senjem, Michael Brodkorb’s attorney, Phillip Villaume, sent Senjem a letter suggesting “that we sit down for early mediation on this matter in order to try and reach a global settlement.” Damn! Though it was costing taxpayers a lot of dough, we were looking forward to Villaume entering a courtroom and telling us about all the female legislative staffers who have boinked superiors yet kept their jobs. But a settlement would prevent that salacious information from ever seeing the light of day. In the June 25 letter, Villaume focuses on the allegation that Secretary of the Senate Cal Ludeman invaded Brodkorb’s privacy by telling reporters Brodkorb had applied for unemployment benefits and been denied. … Villaume then gives attorney Senate counsel Dayle Nolan and Senjem a July 16 deadline to notify him ‘if you do not want to mediate this matter within the next month or two.’ ” Let’s be honest for moment, shall we? What red-blooded American misanthrope and voyeur wants this one settled out of court?

General Mills, which recently announced its opposition to the GOP’s gay marriage amendment, had strong sales numbers for its most recent quarter. Tom Webb at the PiPress writes: “The maker of Cheerios, Yoplait yogurt and Hamburger Helper reported stronger results Wednesday, after several quarters where it struggled with rising input costs and soft demand in its core U.S. market. “We just went through — the industry and General Mills went through — a challenging year,” Powell said in an interview. ‘We had the highest inflation we had in over 30 years … that led to a little bit of sticker shock across the shelves.’ But the company expects cost pressures to moderate in the coming year. ‘And on top of that, we will have very high levels of new product innovation,’ Powell said, including in the yogurt category, which has been struggling in the past year or two amid the popularity of competitors’ Greek-style yogurt brands. For the fourth quarter, General Mills earnings inched up 2 percent, thanks to strength abroad and increased prices. Annual sales rose to $16.7 billion, up 12 percent.” Supporters of the marriage amendment this week, though, launched protests of the company’s stand.

A felon, yes. And a fugitive from justice, yes. But an arsonist? No. Bill Salisbury of the PiPress reports: “U.S. Senate candidate Jack Shepard is a convicted felon and a fugitive from justice, but he is not an arsonist. At least, that’s what Shepard says in a $10 million defamation suit he filed this week against the Huffington Post in U.S. District Court in St. Paul. A frequent candidate who lives in Rome and could be arrested on an old warrant if he returns to the United States, Shepard alleges the Huffington Post news website maliciously libeled him in a May 20, 2010, article under the headline ‘Support Jack Shepard, The Arsonist, For Congress’. ‘I am not an arsonist. I have not been convicted of such a crime’, Shepard says in his lawsuit. He is challenging Sen. Amy Klobuchar in the Aug. 14 Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party primary.” Saying “I am not an arsonist” has to be right up there with “I am not a crook/witch.”

Well, when everything else fails, vigilante justice becomes an option. Paul Walsh and Matt McKinney of the Strib write: “Investigators worked through the night and until dawn Wednesday in search of the gunman whose bullet pierced a north Minneapolis home and killed a 5-year-old boy as he slept on a living room couch. Nezzel Banks was fatally shot in the back about 8:35 a.m. Tuesday at the home in the 4500 block of Bryant Avenue N. in what police say involves a dispute among people at that residence and others in the neighborhood. In an interview Wednesday on WCCO Radio (830 AM), Police Chief Tim Dolan said his investigators served two warrants Tuesday night in connection with the killing and ‘didn’t stop until 5 in the morning, and they’ve got some good leads.’ But with each passing hour, Dolan added, ‘My fear is that people up there are going to figure out [who shot the boy] and take things into their own hands.’ ”

Will $500K buy loyalty? Thomas Lee of the Strib reports: “The board of Best Buy has decided to collectively pay the company’s four top executives $2 million in cash to cement their ties to the retailer, which remains without a permanent CEO and is bracing for a buyout offer from its recently departed founder and chairman, Richard Schulze. The Richfield-based consumer electronics giant said it will pay $500,000 in retention bonuses each to chief financial officer James Muehlbauer, international chief Shari Ballard, chief human resources officer Carol Surface and its U.S. president, Michael Vitteli, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.” Do I remember correctly that former PiPress publisher Parr Ridder received a retention bonus not all that long before taking his company computer and moving to the Strib?

Two teenage boys and a girl were in court to hear their punishment in that photo-sharing incident in Lakeville. Heron Marquez of the Strib says: “Three of four Lakeville students charged with taking inappropriate photos and video at Century Middle School have pleaded guilty, Dakota County Attorney James Backstrom said Wednesday.
A 14-year-old boy, a 13-year-old boy and a 14-year-old girl who were involved in the locker-room incident last month pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to interfere with privacy, a gross misdemeanor, on Tuesday in Dakota County juvenile court, Backstrom said. Judge Michael Sovis sentenced the teens to a stay of adjudication, meaning they will have no criminal record if they meet all other conditions of the court. Those conditions include probation for 180 days and 30 hours of community service. Each also must attend a victim empathy class and write a letter of apology. The judge also ordered that the students’ cell phones be forfeited or that all of the inappropriate images be removed from the phones.” Now that last part must rate as “cruel and unusual.”

What I love most about the Power Line boys are their hyper-legalistic flights of … ersatz constitutional logic(?). Paul Mirengoff posts on President Obama’s recent immigration moves: “Obama recently has pandered to Hispanic voters in the following ways: First, in violation of his constitutional duty to ‘take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed,’ Obama has announced that the U.S. government will refuse to enforce the immigration laws as they apply to an entire, massive class of illegal aliens (those who were brought here as children by their parents).
Second, Obama has made it clear that the U.S. government will not cooperate with the State of Arizona in the deportation of an even larger class that includes nearly all illegal aliens. When Arizona apprehends illegal aliens through entirely legal means, blessed by the Supreme Court, the U.S. government will not permit the State to arrest them … Thus, in all likelihood, they will neither be deported nor face other meaningful adverse consequences. Obama is essentially nullifying federal immigration law in Arizona. Third, Obama and his Attorney General have established a hotline to facilitate the harassment of state and local law enforcement officials in Alabama and Arizona who attempt to enforce the immigration laws. Thus under this regime, those who indisputably are in violation of the law – illegal immigrants brought here by their parents and virtually all illegal immigrants in Arizona – are in the clear, while law enforcement personnel go straight to the dock when illegal aliens complain about them. This is community organizing on steroids.” Thus and perhaps also thusly … it may also be time to take a break from the “on steroids” tic.