Those Catchy Democratic Slogans!

Since late last summer, indicators have been pointing towards deep public dissatisfaction with President Bush and the Republicans in Congress. The Democratic Party has responded with some very solid candidate recruitment for the 2006 midterm Congressional races and a great number of polls at the national and localized level seem to indicate the potential exists for the Democrats' first good election night in eight years coming to fruition. But if it does happen, it will not be the result of any rhetorical wordsmiths in their party's ranks.

Much of the Republicans' success in taking over both Houses of Congress in 1994 came from Newt Gingrich's brainchild, the "Contract with America". The Democrats are divided (surprise!) on whether a sweeping checklist of policy goals serves their collective interest or contradicts it, but they have outlined a few incredibly broad and benign priorities to pursue if they take over one of both Houses of Congress, including lowering the cost of student loans, raising the minimum wage, and "protecting Social Security". But if those talking points aren't cliched enough, the real howlers come from the Democratic leadership's catchprases for these packages. Initially, the attention-grabbing title for the Democratic policy platform was "Together, America Can Do Better". Amazingly, there were a few killjoy dissenters who found this masterstroke of marketing genius to be insufficient. Thankfully, they reinvented the poetic wheel again and settled upon "A New Direction for America". How inspirational!!!!!

After nine months of preparation, the best the Democratic Congressional leadership can do is "A New Direction for America". If you're anything like me, you just can't wait to head to the polls this fall and reward the socialist Shakespeares behind such quirky and clever advertising.

How did the Democratic Party become so hopelessly dysfunctional? The sad thing is that if the Democrats are lucky enough to win back Congress despite their hapless leadership, they'll be unlikely to choose better leaders within their ranks. As long as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are steering the ship, myself and every other member of the Democratic Party is guaranteed to hit more icebergs than we clear.

Minnesota Statewide Offices Could All Go Republican

The preliminary consensus is that this fall's elections will produce a favorable outcome for the Democratic Party. Early indicators suggest this is also likely to be true for the DFL in my home state of Minnesota. The party has an odds-on chance of holding its U.S. Senate seat despite a retiring incumbent, has an excellent chance of expanding its majority in the State Senate and winning back the State House, and even has a decent chance of winning back the Governor's mansion, although I'm skeptical about Hatch's prospects against Pawlenty. That leaves us with the three statewide offices also up this November, including the Secretary of State, Auditor, and Attorney General. Regretfully, I'm anticipating a GOP sweep of these offices in 2006 based on a number of criteria cutting against the DFL even in a perceived Democratic year.

The aforementioned races are typically not marquee contests and most voters seem to approach them knowing little about the respective candidates, and thus end up basing their vote on superficial criteria. It would seem that in a Democratic year, that would cut in the DFL's favor, but here are the reasons I'm doubtful this time.....

1) The power of incumbency. GOP Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer is a two-term incumbent while GOP Auditor Pat Anderson (formerly Awada) is a one-term incumbent. Both are intensely partisan and have a couple of mini-scandals surrounding their offices as a result, but very few voters will know of those scandals. The one thing they are likely to know is the name of the incumbent, particularly in the case of Kiffmeyer, and most will vote with the familiar name.

2) Surname ethnicity. I already cited superficial criteria being prime dealmakers and dealbreakers in these low-profile constitutional office elections. One of the most frequent of these superficial criteria is voters pulling the lever for candidates whose last name is closest to their own ethnic heritage. Regardless of party, the candidates who seem to do best have simple, Scandinavian last names. Candidates who perform weakest have strange or ethnically dubious last names. Suffice it to say I'd rather be running for Auditor or Attorney General under the surname Anderson or Johnson, as two of the GOP candidates are, rather than Ritchie or Entenza, as two of the DFL candidates are.

3) Favorable geography. Each of the three Republican candidates for these constitutional offices comes from a geographically valuable region. Kiffmeyer was raised in the small town of Pierz in central Minnesota and currently lives in the fast-growing St. Cloud exurb of Big Lake. In her previous two elections, she has reined in supersized margins in the entire St. Cloud/central Minnesota region and it has helped her win both times. Auditor Pat Anderson was formerly the Mayor of Eagan in the metro area's southern suburbs. She beat her DFL opponent by less than 15,000 votes in 2002 based almost entirely on her enormous strength in the southern suburbs, where other Republicans on the ballot scored more modest margins of victory that year. And Republican Attorney General candidate Jeff Johnson is a popular legislator from the second-ring suburb of Plymouth. His name recognition in the western suburbs could easily help him avoid the erosion of support that Republicans have faced there in some recent election cycles, thus improving his margin of victory.

By contrast, I'm not sure of the geographic origins of DFL Secretary of State candidate Mark Ritchie. Attorney General candidate Matt Entenza is a more familiar name being the leader of the minority party in the state House, but coming from the city of St. Paul doesn't exactly provide him with a foothold on swing voters. Entenza was born and raised in the southwestern Minnesota community of Worthington, which could be useful in peeling off a few Republican votes in a close election, but that's assuming there are even any townsfolk in the community who realize Entenza is a native son. The DFL Auditor candidate, Rebecca Otto, is the DFL's only example of a geographically useful candidate in these races, beckoning from a conservative corner of the northeastern metro area and having one term in the state House under her belt as a means of raising name ID. Otto may have the best chance of the three candidates at winning in November, particularly if the brewing scandal on the incumbent's watch ends up having legs.

4) The Green and Independence Parties. The rise of third and fourth parties have been the DFL's worst nightmare in recent years, particularly in these low-profile offices where the absence of candidate name recognition and a firm political party affiliation cause a sizable share of the electorate to experiment with alternative parties. Unfortunately for the DFL, it seems as though this experimentation has come almost entirely at their expense. Had the votes of the Green Party candidates for Secretary of State and Auditor in 2002 went DFL, Buck Humphrey and Carol Johnson would be the incumbents this year rather than Republicans Kiffmeyer and Anderson (Awada) who scored their narrow victories based on defections by far-left voters and center-left voters from the DFL. With all evidence pointing to an angry and cynical electorate this year, it seems even more likely that voters will exercise their "protest vote" in favor of the Greens or Independents in the fall, increasing the odds that the DFL candidates will come up empty.


It's easy to write off these races as irrelevant, but they're very significant in this hyperpartisan era. Secretaries of State all over the country are gaming the systems in their respective states to maximize the advantage for their own party, including here in Minnesota. Certain red-state Attorney Generals are feverishly pursuing the hospital records of their citizens to expose women who've had abortions and other medical procedures that they should be able to keep private. This heightened level of relevance for these races makes it all the more difficult to have to predict the far-right delegation of candidates being run by the Minnesota Republican Party as likely to prevail. But between Ritchie's huge name recognition deficit, Otto's likely struggles to win over Scandinavian-bred voters with her German surname and an opponent named Anderson, and Entenza's burgeoning conflict of interest muddying his Attorney General run against a stronger-than-usual Republican challenger, things are not looking good for the DFL delegation as of now.

Hosting a Large Company: An Asset for Your Town or a Gun to its Head?

The laws of economic development have changed to the laws of economic survival in the last couple decades. The jubilation of the talking heads constantly reminding us of robust statistical growth rates for our economy are oblivious to a number of trends that render the growth almost entirely meaningless. At or near the top of that list of trends is the extent to which diminishing public resources are required to finance private enterprise's expansion. A systematic process of "socialized risk and privatized profit" that took hold in the equally "prosperous" 1980's has become the natural order to the business world and its surrogates, and sadly, also the public officials and pitchfork-wielding taxpayers on the receiving end of a method of extortion so sinister and methodical that it would make Tony Soprano grimace.

This cynical extortionary process has become so widespread that it's becoming less clear whether hosting a large corporation in your community or state is really gonna be a long-term asset. The corporations are certainly counting on us believing that they are indispensible. That's why they threaten financial ruin on our communities and citizens as a less-than-subtle "I hope you see things my way....or else" threat every time they stick their hands out for a routine greasing courtesy of the public nickel. Professional sports team owners eager to accommodate their wealthiest customers with luxurious box seats courtesy of lunch bucket-carrying taxpayers are obviously the highest-profile extortionists regularly threatening to despoil their host communities of economic vitality if their demands are not met, but these team owners far from monopolize the market on shameless blackmail. Whether it be the meatpacking barons at Iowa Beef Processors (now absorbed by Tyson) or the aircraft manufacturing firm Boeing, host cities are engaged in routine bidding wars to see which town will be allowed to survive and which town will be turned into a miniature Detroit based upon who first cries uncle and meets the demands of the supersized wolf huffing and puffing and blowing their houses down.

The latest high-profile casualty is Newton, Iowa, which has been pleading with and throwing fists full of cash at the Maytag Corporation for the past few years with the growing realization that the company was in a world of financial hurt and likely to be absorbed by Whirlpool. The merger with Whirlpool happened this past spring, and just three short months later, the bigger-is-better conglomerate said arriva derci to Newton.....and as a parting shot, informed the many levels of state and local government just waiting to shower Whirlpool with cash for the privilege of their continued presence that there was NO LEVEL of "benefit package" that could have been offered to keep the company in Iowa. Lovely.

The saddest part of this trend is that there isn't a rainbow in sight. With every round of economic despair that befalls communities of every size across the country, there's a pointy-headed economist or intellectual informing us all that this is the "tip of the iceberg", usually following up that prognosis with empty and obvious platitudes about "the end of the paternalistic corporation that felt a duty to its employees" and, all too often, restrained jubilation about the supremacy of lawless free enterprise smacking down its inferiors, which in the minds of many is entirely worth the costs of the trail of economic corpses left behind.

Making matters worse, the bumpkins repeatedly being hoodwinked by the increasingly entrenched robber baron interests respond by rewarding the very people bestowing ruination upon them every time they march like pre-programmed automatons to the polls and vote for the furthest right and most unapologetically "pro-business" candidate on the ballot. There are a number of reasons why the peasants can't seem to resist charging the castles to demand more power for the aristocracy, but it should be painfully obvious that the current system not only isn't working, but will drain the very public budgets most needed to stave off the effects of economic crisis. We've been worshipping at the altar of Mammon for decades now and the results have been devastating even for many of the alleged "winners" of the economic survival game. I think it's time the Bible-thumpers to take the good book's advice and cease and desist in worshipping the false God of money. Maybe then the real God will have mercy on towns like Newton, Iowa.....because Mammon sure doesn't.

Democratic Primary Voters Choose Wisely in MT and VA

In a stunning reversal of their usual addiction to losing, Democratic voters seem to be making smarter choices in selecting their candidates recently. I don't know if it's a fluke or a sign of competent decision-making by voters in America's minority party, but last week's Montana primary and this week's Virginia primary yielded hopeful signs for the Democrats' prospects in winning two GOP-held Senate seats this fall.

Starting with Montana, the June 6 primary pitted State Auditor John Morrison, a bland and mushy centrist, against State Senate President Jon Tester, a downhome prairie populist who farms in one of Montana's most Republican State Senate districts. Morrison had long been the establishment candidate poised to take on scandal-plagued GOP incumbent Conrad Burns. He seemed like a passable candidate up until recently, likely to take down the unpopular Republican criminal he was poised to face in November, despite a complete lack of inspiration motivating his candidacy. But then a "sex scandal plus" emerged that put into question Morrison's ability to run as the pure candidate against the corrupt Burns. Given his statewide name ID advantage, it still seemed likely that Morrison would prevail in the primary, but out of nowhere, the more compelling and charismatic challenger Tester creamed Morrison by a margin of 60-36 in the primary. Barring the revelation of a scandal of his own, or a colossal campaign gaffe, Tester should be able to put Conrad Burns out of his misery and win the Montana Senate race by a reasonably comfortable margin for a strong GOP state. Had Morrison been the nominee, skeletons in his closet and all, that outcome would have been less certain.

Then just last night in Virginia, another former Republican who has "seen the light" beat back a challenge by an establishment Democrat. In this case, it was war hero former Reagan Navy Secretary James Webb, who walked away from the Republican Party after George Bush's election and has become a passionate anti-war critic. Webb is more conservative on social issues than the Democratic Party at large, but Virginia primary voters were willing to overlook that on the basis of Webb's gravitas and electability. There was nothing wrong with establishment candidate Harris Miller, other than the fact that he had very little chance of beating incumbent Republican and likely GOP Presidential candidate George Allen. Even Allen's strongest supporters confess that Allen has a dogfight on his hands up against the well respected and articulate Webb, particularly in military-friendly Virginia where Webb's credentials will command a great deal of respect from otherwise reliable Republicans. Single-handedly, the 53% of Virginia primary voters who opted for James Webb made it possible for the Democrats to win the elusive "sixth seat" they'll need if they hope to win the Senate in the fall. It's still a huge longshot, but with Virginia now on the table, it's at least possible.

For every bit of bad news that surfaces regarding the Democratic Party's prospects in 2006, it seems there's a corresponding piece of good news such as the Tester and Webb primary wins to counter it. While I still believe the Dems could be mauled over their idiotic embrace of the Bush and McCain sponsored immigration bill, the party is doing very well for itself with its selection of candidates to run in conservative states and districts.

MacGyver Season 6 Review

It happened again. Paramount released yet another barebones DVD package for MacGyver: The Complete Sixth Season. My hope is that Paramount springs for a few extras in the seventh and final season given that there are only 14 episodes in the final season. I'm not betting on it, however. Despite the typically lackluster treatment, it's comforting to have these priceless treasures available on DVD. Since I recorded episodes from the sixth season on ABC back in the 1990-91 season, the video cassettes are ancient and could buckle at any time, so it's a relief to have the full uncut episodes available en masse on DVD.

The penultimate season of MacGyver was admittedly the beginning of its creative nadir. The tone of the series grew from merely political to embarrassingly preachy on nearly half of this season's 21 episodes (officially, there were 22 episodes in season six, but one was held over until the seventh season). The array of stories and settings was still refreshingly diverse, almost to the point of resembling an anthology series, but the formula was noticeably losing its luster on more episodes than I'd like to admit. If there was a single "jump the shark" moment, it was the episode "MacGyver's Women", a dreadful and unnecessary second act to season five's Western dream sequence. While beautifully filmed, the script was laughably bad and spoke volumes about a writing and production staff that was growing tired and a premise that was growing stale.

Not to be a total downer, however, the sixth season of MacGyver had its share of true gems, and the quality of the season was still enough to warrant the additional season for the series, but just barely in retrospect. There's just something a little more battle-worn about a series that lasted SEVEN seasons as opposed to merely six, and it was a badge of honor to see MacGyver make it that far given the overwhelming obstacles it had to overcome every step of its journey. So despite its flaws, I choose to celebrate the greatness displayed in season six, and give the strongest recommendations to these episodes.....

"Tough Boys".....the season opened with a gritty, hip-hopped urban tale of a heavily-armored battallion of youth anti-drug vigilantes cleansing their neighborhood of crackhouses by way of fire bombs. The preachiness hit fever pitch at times, but the music was addictive, the primary characters well-drawn, and the plot smooth and flowing.

"Humanity".....a character-based episode featuring a Romanian soldier dedicated to the will of a fallen dictator taking MacGyver hostage after a failed terrorist attack in Bucharest, struggling between his sworn commitment to the cause and a desire to break free from an oppressive and bloodthirsty militaristic upbringing. The episode impresses me more upon further viewing and features one of the season's best scripts.

"Twenty Questions".....perhaps the series best (or worst, depending on your perspective) example of an "afterschool special gone terribly wrong", this features a pre-Blossom Mayim Bialik reprising her role as spoiled little rich girl Lisa Woodman, now an early teen hanging with a crowd of even worse spoiled rich kids who've taken to committing a string of burglaries, along with the even more unthinkable crime of drinking alcoholic beverages. Young Lisa gets taken in and MacGyver must save her from becoming a lifelong lush. Cheesy as it sounds, it a through-and-through guilty pleasure.

"The Wall"......the end of the Cold War posed some challenges to the MacGyver format, but it was dealt with well in this episode where unemployed former Stasi agents from East Germany are the antagonists in a plot to retrieve millions of dollars of gold stashed for decades in America as a means of laundering money. MacGyver's help reunifying an elderly German immigrant with his estranged granddaughter brings the plot to the surface. A cleverly weaved story that ends with the development of an unconvincing love story between MacGyver and the East German dame.

"Lesson in Evil"......my favorite episode of the season features incarcerated serial killer Dr. Zito engineering a bloody escape from his captors and promising MacGyver a "lesson in evil" that involves cryptic numerical clues, haunting manipulations of Greek mythology images, and an endless parade of plot twists and gallows humor from W. Morgan Sheppard, the outstanding actor who played Zito. Another Sheppard, John (perhaps a relative but I'm not sure), wrote the episode, among his finest work on the series.

"Harry's Will"......"B" actors from Marion Ross to Abe Vigoda to Rich Little to series executive producer Henry Winkler made appearances in this cornball salute to the classic film "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World". The MacGyver twist was that the treasure Mac was pursuing, a million-dollar diamond pendant, was left behind in the will of his grandfather who died in the fifth season finale. The episode was humorous and fun throughout, but suffered from a poorly-done closing scene with Rich Little that took away from the episode's overall entertainment value.

"Bitter Harvest"......one of three ecologically-themed episodes from season six, but easily the best, this episode features our hero stumbling upon a local warzone in California's Central Valley between the grape growers and the impoverished migrant workers picking the grapes in fields they suspected were marinating in illegal growth-enhancing pesticides. Variations on the "helping the migrant workers unionize" theme was a staple of 80's action TV, but the MacGyver treatment was by far the best, not settling for a caricaturized treatment of the numerous characters on both sides of the divide. The politics of company-town farm communities and their systematic abuse of cheap labor was articulated, in its relative subtlety, as well as any other hour of episodic television I've seen. Another episode that improves with repeated viewings.

"The Visitor"......a couple of con artists use high-tech special effects to convince some backwoods farm rubes (gotta love those Hollywood stereotypes of Middle American numbskulls) to book a flight with them to outer space unless MacGyver can same the family from their own naivete. Despite the overwhelmingly cheesy premise, the story works for a number of reasons and welcomes the addition of writer Brad Radnitz, who helped the series out with a desperately-needed burst of imagination in its final two seasons.

"The Wasteland".....a kick-ass quicksand-sinking scene opens this ecologically-themed episode, but it goes steadily downhill in quality through the course of the hour.

"Eye of Osiris".....one of the series' most ambitious episodes, MacGyver and a team of archaeologists search the Taurus Mountains of Turkey from the tomb of Alexander the Great and the legendary "eye of Osiris" rumored to be hidden there. While a couple scenes are embarrassingly derivative of "Raiders of the Lost Ark", the John Sheppard script is fiendishly clever throughout and the high-adventure production values positively stunning.

"Blind Faith".....Pete Thornton loses his sight, melodrama ensues. This was generally a weak episode, but I gotta give the writers props for keeping co-star Dana Elcar onboard despite the huge challenges of catering to an actor who was at that point nearly 90% blind. A lesser show wouldn't have risen to the occasion to accommodate the very worthy acting talents of Elcar.

"Faith, Hope, and Charity".....an extremely fun episode featuring a couple of old ladies running a bed-and-breakfast in the Minnesota wilderness, acting as grandmothers to a wounded MacGyver (he stepped in a poacher trap while tracking a gray wolf) while playing a sly game of cat-and-mouse with a trio of mob thugs tracking a million dollars worth of dirty loot. The shtick of the scrapping grannies grew a little tiresome by the episode's end, but the cleverness of MacGyver's off-the-cuff gauntlets for the baddies really makes this one a hoot. Another solid triple for writer Brad Radnitz.

"Strictly Business".....Murdoc finally re-appears late in the sixth season, recruited out of retirement by his vicious ex-employers and given another shot to destroy the one target who has always eluded him, which is of course MacGyver. The flaky "amnesia" theme is employed here, and unfortunately not very convincingly (how convicing can any amnesia plotline be?), but as always, the MacGyver vs. Murdoc chess match provides for an hour of top-notch entertainment in which is Murdoc is killed again....or is he?

Those were the best episodes of the season, and most of the episodes listed were in the first half of the season. The series' quality clearly declined, along with the ratings, in its second half. The season ended with the howler "Hind-Sight" which was essentially a pity party for Pete as he had his eye surgery, complete with annoying flashbacks of past episodes and a moronic someone's-coming-to-get-you subplot that was truly awful. Perhaps the series didn't deserve a seventh season after that season finale, but for better or for worse, it got one and you can expect my full review when Paramount releases it on DVD, hopefully before year's end.

MacGyver Marathon 17: The First on DVD

I'm nearly two weeks into the 17th annual MacGyver Marathon, the first where I'll be viewing the majority of episodes on DVD. Despite the fact that I've seen these shows multiple times already, this year's marathon is especially exciting since the DVD's contain anywhere from 30 seconds to three minutes worth of scenes that were deleted from the episodes I recorded from cable, which were edited to make room for more commercials. I haven't seen these deleted scenes in more than 20 years since they originally aired on ABC.

The verdict on the scenes: mixed. There's a reason why these scenes were chosen for deletion by the cable network. They are generally the weakest from the episode. A few have stood out as more impressive than others, but in general they suffer from the same bad acting and amateurish dialogue that plagued the series all too often in its first season. On the other hand, sometimes they add a key element to the continuity of the plot that helps put together pieces in regards to the rest of the episode. I expect that in seasons two, three, and four, the quality of the deleted scenes will likely improve. Either way, it's exciting to watch these eagerly anticipating the deleted scenes. In some cases, I remember the deleted scene from 20 years ago, but in most cases I do not, which really makes it fun.

Expect a review of MacGyver's sixth season on this board next week as it is scheduled for release on Tuesday, June 13.

Francine Busby: The First Casualty of McCain-Kennedy Immigration Policy

A special election was held last evening to fill the seat of convicted felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham in California's 50th Congressional District. This election in the Republican-leaning district in the wealthy suburbs of San Diego County was considered a bellwether of how extreme the anti-Republican tide has become. After all, Cunningham was the poster child of the Democrats' "culture of corruption" theme and is now serving a prison sentence for bribery, and his 2004 Democratic challenger, Francine Busby, came to the race with solid name recognition. The Republican primary winner, former Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray, was no slouch either though. The heavily-hyped could have went either way and polls showed the race to be tight.

The outcome last night: Republican Bilbray beat Busby by more than four percentage points. While the race was far from a landslide, Busby barely exceeded John Kerry's 2004 performance of 44% in the district (she got 45.4%), indicating the alleged momentum the Democrats claim to have going into the 2006 midterms may not live up to expectations. So what stole Busby's thunder in the final week of the campaign? One word....immigration. It's a smoldering hot issue, and one where George Bush, John McCain, and the majority of Congressional Democrats embrace an unpopular position, particularly in this district so close to the Mexican border. Francine Busby made it clear that she supported the fantastical McCain-Kennedy immigration plan and can most likely thank her morning-after tears on that decision.

I think most Americans are probably like me on immigration. We don't agree with the idea of deportation or "attrition" of the 12 million illegals here in America like the punitive House Republican bill supports, but we at least admire the fact that the House conservatives are playing it straight with us and seriously address an issue that is significantly impacting our communities, our schools, and our jobs. The Democrats, on the other hand, with their buddies George Bush and John McCain, are taking the public for fools with the premise that illegal immigration can be stymied through a "guest worker program". Nobody, including the program's supporters, can honestly expect the 115,000 guest workers foisted into the American job market EVERY MONTH will choose to go back to Mexico or their country of origin when their visa runs out, but that's what proponents of McCain-Kennedy would like us to believe. Similarly, nobody really believes that the visas issued to guest workers will be sufficient enough to employ every Mexican immigrant who wants to come into America, thus bringing to a screeching halt illegal border crossings and negating the need for real-world border enforcement. But again, Bush, McCain and Congressional Democrats would like us to believe that.

At this rate, the Democrats will be lucky to come out of the 2006 midterms with as many seats as they have right now. Marginal Democrats, particularly in the South, will succumb to defeat at the hands of hard-line anti-immigration opponents who successfully distance themselves from the still unpopular Democratic Party AND the newly unpopular George Bush. Francine Busby was the first casualty of McCain-Kennedy immigration policy. Expect many more in the months ahead.

Nostalgic Albert Lea

By request, I'm posting a recent list of now-defunct landmarks from my hometown of Albert Lea, Minnesota. In many ways, this list is an obituary of the fading business community in a once thriving town. Just last weekend, I took a walk through the 40-year-old Skyline Mall on the west side of town to see about seven or eight operational businesses compared to the more than two dozen empty storefronts. At this pace, the mall could be boarded up completely in a couple more years. But on a sunnier and more nostalgic note, here is my random list of 20 boyhood memories from Albert Lea, Minnesota......

1) The downtown Herberger's (in the current Brick Furniture building). It was a two-story department store with an escalator going upstairs and an elevator going down, which was pretty snazzy for 1980's Albert Lea. The downtown Herberger's location closed in 1987 when the store moved to its current drab location as a Northbridge Mall anchor. As a rule, malls have killed the character of old-school department stores. The Albert Lea Herberger's is a perfect example of that.

2) Wallace's department store on the corner of S. Broadway and W. Main Street downtown, up the hill from Snyder Drug. Another old-school department store with some real character. It closed at some point in the early 1990's, along with its sister store in Albert Lea's evil twin to the east, Austin.

3) Staying downtown, there was the short-lived Tiffany Too-Da ice cream parlor which stayed open roughly a year in 1985-86. I remember going for a banana split on a couple of occasions after my T-ball misadventures at Morin Park.

4) The old Casa Zamora Mexican restaurant which was located on South Broadway across the street from the now-defunct KFC.

5) The old Dog and Suds drive-up restaurant on E. Main St. where the current Casa Zamora has relocated to. I believe Dog and Suds closed in 1988 or 1989.

6) The greasy spoon QuikStop across the street from Godfather's Pizza. QuikStop was owned by a large Latino man with the surname Madrigal and stayed open into the mid-1980's.

7) Up until 1985, Hy-Vee was the only store off of the now heavily-developed I-90 freeway exit on the north side of town.

8) The Pamida on the far south side of town (corner of S. Broadway and Margaretha) was the only discount store in Albert Lea up until 1985 when Pamida built a second store near Hy-Vee next to the aforementioned I-90 corridor. I have fond memories of frequenting the south side Pamida and getting a gumball out of their penny gumball machine as well as the latest copy of TV Guide. The new north side Pamida was completely bereft of character but was in a more optimal location. The old Pamida closed a year later in 1986 with the construction of a new ShopKo store on the north side. Wal-Mart opened in the Skyline Mall the following year in 1987.

9) A Montgomery Wards store was the hub on the west side of the Skyline Mall (where the now defunct Wal-Mart now rots). Wards closed in 1983.

10) A fun little Ben Franklin store was located next to the old JCPenney's on the east side of the Skyline Mall. Also on the east wing of Skyline was the clothing store Stevenson's. Stevenson's closed in the mid-1980's, Ben Franklin in the early 1990's, and JCPenney's in the mid-1990's. Not a good 10-year stretch for the east wing of the Skyline Mall, but hey, at least the hardware store is still in business.

11) Crossing over to the north wing of the Skyline Mall sat an IGA store where employees went on strike in 1983 and closed a couple of years later. Just north of IGA near the north entrance/exit was the Boy Blue ice cream and snack shop which also closed in 1985. I fondly remember a few trips to Boy Blue on my way home from Friday night tae kwon do classes.

12) The Boyd and Jacks grocery store, which changed its name in 1983 to Nelson's County Market along Bridge Avenue. The site is now home to the Nelson's gas station and a strip mall which seems to do a pretty good business.

13) The Dairy Queen across the street from the Freeborn County Courthouse on South Broadway was the only Dairy Queen in town up until 1987 when another one was added in the Skyline Mall expansion. Today, I think there are officially 396 Dairy Queens in Albert Lea, one for every 46 residents in town, and all owned by Ron Kraus.

14) The now-vacant grocery store on South Broadway was a Red Owl up until the early 1980's, then became El's Fine Foods, and has switched owners a couple more times, the most recent being Buy 'N' Save. Now, like so many places on South Broadway, the store sits empty and sad.

15) A pizza parlor named Rocky Roccoco was located on W. Main St. in what is now the China Restaurant. I believe it opened in either 1986 or 1987 and stayed open a couple of years.

16) Borderline Pizza has two locations in Albert Lea, the original downtown which opened in 1985 and one in the expansion part of the Skyline near Dairy Queen in 1987. Both Borderline Pizzas closed in either the late 1980's or early 1990's.


17) Riverland College was called Albert Lea Technical Institute up until the late 1980's.

18) The Northpark department store was a classy old-school department store on Bridge Avenue that stayed open until just after the turn of the millennium.

19) Way down on South Broadway was the old Captain's Quarters seafood restaurant which went down 1984-ish after its owner was discovered to be earning more money peddling drugs than jumbo shrimp.

20) The Golden Parrot restaurant was an institution downtown when I was a boy, although my original assumption of where it was located (I believed it was in the Lea Center building) now appears to have been erroneous. My main memory of the Golden Parrot was riding with my dad to pick up food there on New Year's Eve 1984-85, when he got pulled over for expired license tabs. I believe the Parrot closed within a year or two after that.

Those are my main 20. I welcome any visitors who have additional memories of Old Albert Lea to pile on with comments.

May's GOP Asshat of the Month

Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert may have just earned the distinction as the longest-serving Republican House Speaker in American history, but that doesn't save him from the far less prestigious crown of Republican Asshat of the Month. For all of the Republicans' problems, particularly on the ethics front, the controversy regarding New Orleans Democrat William Jefferson was positively heaven-sent from the GOP standpoint. After months of embarrassments regarding the investigation and indictment of multiple Republican Congressmen, here was Jefferson, a Democrat caught on videotape taking $100,000 worth of bribes which was later discovered hidden away in the freezer in his home. Yet with this golden opportunity handed on a silver platter to Hastert and the GOP, Hastert manages to take the Jefferson scandal right out of the headlines by calling in question the legality of the search.

Ordinarily, I would applaud a politician standing on principle like this, particularly when said politician crosses party lines to stand up for a persecuted member of the opposition, but in this situation, Hastert's reasoning was flawed and his motives appear to be insincere. Hastert's grievance was based upon some archaic rule regarding the executive branch (in this case, the Attorney General's office) not having the authority to raid a federal legislator's office. I'm certainly not an expert on the laws regarding separation of powers in our Constitution, but those who are, both on the left and the right, are unanimous in the verdict that such a search may be unprecedented in modern times, but is certain to be upheld on constitutional grounds.

With the hard-nosed partisan times that we live in, red flags went up all over when Dennis Hastert thrust himself in the spotlight to condemn the search of a corrupt Democrat's office. Why would Denny Hastert be so worried about the prospect of state officials searching Congressional offices? In a twist worthy of "The Tell Tale Heart", it appears there may be a cardiovascular organ figuratively pulsating out of Hastert's own Congressional office. ABC News revealed two weeks ago that Hastert is himself the subject of an ongoing investigation by the FBI, "seeking to determine his role in an ongoing public corruption probe into members of Congress.......

"Federal officials say the information implicating Hastert was developed from convicted lobbyists who are now cooperating with the government. Part of the investigation involves a letter Hastert wrote three years ago, urging the Secretary of the Interior to block a casino on an Indian reservation that would have competed with other tribes. The other tribes were represented by convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff who reportedly has provided details of his dealings with Hastert as part of his plea agreement with the government. The letter was written shortly after a fund-raiser for Hastert at a restaurant owned by Abramoff. Abramoff and his clients contributed more than $26,000 at the time."

Dennis Hastert has always been a horrible politician. The only reason he's survived as long as he has is because he's been content to be Tom DeLay's sock puppet, comfortably below the radar of the public eye. With DeLay and the Machiavellian discipline he brought to the House GOP caucus now out of the picture, Hastert is apparently being forced to sink or swim on his own at the most inconvenient time for his party. Judging from his inept handling of the Jefferson office raid, it seems far more likely that the former wrestling coach will be sinking rather than swimming.