Capitol Hill bully

No, this chipper-looking guy is not your friendly local undertaker, he's Harry Reid, United States Senator from Nevada, and Majority Leader of the Senate.

Reid stumbled into the Majority Leader job when Tom Daschle of South Dakota was defeated a few years ago and it is generally agreed that he's in over his head. He's up for election next year (seeking his 5th term) and a recent poll showed him trailing both of the potential Republican opponents, one by a 49-38 margin, the other by a 45-40 spread.

The pressue must be betting to ol' Harry, because last week he violated one of the laws of public relations, which says "Never get in a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel."

As you can read here, Reid was at a Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce lunch last week, doing the politician's meet-and-greet with some local business folk. At one point he was introduced to a fellow who is the Director of Advertising for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. An advertising guy, remember, not someone who writes editorials or covers political stories. An advertising guy.

And how does Reid greet his hard-working, taxpaying constituent? "I hope you go out of business," he said.

Stay classy, Harry.

Death of a newspaper

This marks the final week of publication - as a daily newspaper - of the Red Wing Republican Eagle, and while it will survive as a twice-a-week publication, the news of its demise hit close to home.

Way back in 1857, the Red Wing Daily Republican began publishing. The growth of Red Wing later spawned a competitor, the Daily Eagle. The two papers ended their battle in 1940, merging to become the Daily Republican Eagle. It stayed that way until 1969, when the word "Daily" was dropped from its masthead, but there are still oldsters in town that call it the "D-R-E."

My call from the Republican Eagle came in the fall of 1980, and I was very excited to go to work there. There were a number of small-town dailies in Minnesota, but Red Wing had a reputation as one of the better ones. It was owned by two very good newspapermen, Arlin Albrecht and Phil Duff. Arlin had more of a head for business, but Phil was a newspaper guy through and through, and he had very high expectations of the paper, and the people who worked for it.

Phil believed the paper had an obligation to not just tell the stories of Red Wing, but to expose the 15,000 or so residents of the area to all different kinds of viewpoints. He insisted that the paper have two full editorial pages every day, with syndicated columnists from around the world. The paper leaned conservative editorially -and had "Republican" in the name - but the editorial and op-ed pages were very balanced. You could often find Cal Thomas and the New Republic's "TRB" column running side-by-side.

I was hired for two half-time jobs. Half the time I was the wire copy editor and a page designer, the other half of the time I wrote sports, helping out the full-time sports editor. After just a few months, they liked my work enough to create a second full-time sports position for me, and give me a weekly column as well. It was a genuine honor to have Phil Duff say he liked my writing. When one of my pieces won an AP award, Phil was the first one to tell me and congratulate me.

In 1980 the daily circulation was about 10,000, in a town of only about 15,000 people. We sold papers in smaller surrounding towns such as Cannon Falls, Goodhue, Zumbrota and Kenyon, plus a couple of Wisconsin communities just across the river, so of course we had to cover their sports teams as well. For nearly five years I trekked around the area to every football field, basketball gym and hockey rink to cover games, write features and meet the kinds of wonderful people you meet in small-town athletics.

As a daily paper, we could also get credentials for the Vikings, Twins, North Stars and Gophers, and because the sports editor was a fairly sedentary fellow who didn't like to leave town, I took advantage of the opportunities and learned a lot about covering big-time sports.

It was a great training ground for a young journalist, and it was a lively, vibrant newspaper that won a lot of awards, produced some great journalism and was deeply involved in the community. I left in 1985 to go to work in the Minnesota legislature, and it was shortly thereafter that the paper began its decline, though my departure had nothing to do with it.

First, Phil Duff retired. We didn't always see eye-to-eye politically - he became much more liberal as he aged - but Phil had a great curiosity about the world that was reflected in his writing. I remember driving Phil and my then-boss, Sen. Rudy Boschwitz, in about 1990 or 1991, talking about the ongoing collapse of the Soviet Union. We had a great discussion about whether the Soviets had collapsed from their own internal decay, or whether the collapse had been forced by Reagan and the U.S.' Cold War stances. When Phil retired, a great deal of the R-E's energy went with him, even though he wrote a column for some time before his death.

The paper had also moved its offices from an old building in the heart of downtown to a new plant on the outside of town, a move that largely isolated the staff from much of Red Wing.
Albrecht - demonstrating very shrewd business acumen - sold the R-E and his other papers to Forum Publishing, meaning the paper no longer had local ownership.

By the late '90s, - as the entire newspaper industry was trying to understand how to deal with the advent of the Internet - the quality of the publication was in serious decline. You could take any issue at random and pick out a handful of typos or grammatical errors. The low pay of small-town dailies contributed to a revolving door that robbed the paper of its institutional memory, and created a dearth of quality writing.

The handwriting has been on the wall for some time. A few years ago they dropped the Monday edition to cut costs. I remember the parent of a Red Wing high school hockey player saying - after a Saturday afternoon game - "That was a good game. I can't wait to read about it in Tuesday's paper." That reflected the way the paper had become irrelevant to most of Red Wing. There was a time when you could start a conversation by saying, "Did you see the story in the R-E....." and most people would nod their head. Today you are more likely to hear, "Really? You still get the paper?"

Even the paper's attempt at joining the Internet age was flawed. Its web site was slow, hard to navigate and remained so even after a recent update. Circulation has dropped to about 6,000, less than half of what it was about 30 years ago. Now they will publish only twice a week, and with only local content.

Red Wing is a wonderful city in so many ways, and one of the things that made it special was having an involved, vibrant daily newspaper. And while I understand that the Internet has dealt a mortal blow to much of the newspaper business - and deservedly so, in most cases - it tugs at my heart to see the R-E die. It gave me my first full-time paycheck, helped me become a better writer and will always have a special place in my heart.

The new Wild 3rd sweater

It wasn't supposed to be unveiled until Saturday at the State Fair, but pics of the new Minnesota Wild 3rd sweater leaked out today. My first impression is that I'm very underwhelmed.

I confess, I never liked our green sweater back in the early days when we had just the green and white. I've always been a huge fan of the red sweater, which was the original "3rd" sweater and then became our regular home sweater a couple years ago. I didn't mind that they dropped the original green version.

It looks a bit like the Western Conference sweaters from the NHL All-Star Game that was played at the X back in 2004. We should see it for six or seven home games this season. Perhaps it will grow on me, but for now, I'd rather stick with the red. Red is a much better color, and a number of NHL teams use red as a primary or secondary color. Outside of Dallas, I don't think a Stanley Cup has ever been won by a team wearing green as a primary color.

(Brent Burns is the model. Hope the concussions have healed, big guy.)




UPDATE: Here are a couple of the "concepts" that were being thrown around for the 3rd sweater. If they had to go green, I would have been much more excited about this one, with the diagonal lettering, but I really would have liked the white one (technically, the color is "Minnesota Wheat") with the round logo. I love our round logo, which made its debut along with the red 3rd sweater back in 2005.

What happened to the Baltimore Orioles? (Hint: Another bad lawyer.)

The Twins beat the Baltimore Orioles tonight, 2-1, which made me a little bit nostalgic for the years I spent in Washington, D.C., and it made me sad all over again for Orioles fans. A quick history lesson:

For the better part of 25 years - from 1960 to 1985 - the Baltimore Orioles were one of the finest franchises in baseball. Other teams wanted to play "The Oriole Way," which meant good pitching, great fielding, flawless execution of fundametals and winning. In 1960 the Orioles won 89 games, their first winning season in 15 years. Over the next 25 seasons, they had just three losing years. They won over 100 games five times, won 90 or more in 11 other seasons and captured seven division championships, six pennants and three World Series championships.

They were the team of Brooks Robinson, (left) the best 3rd baseman ever. They were the team of Frank Robinson and Boog Powell and Mark Belanger. They had the only pitching staff with four 20-game winners (Jim Palmer, Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar and Pat Dobson, 1971) and when their first generations of stars moved along, in came superstars like Eddie Murray and Cal Ripken (below). In addition to breaking Lou Gehrig's "ironman" record, Ripken may be the classiest person ever to wear a major-league uniform.

They played in front of fun, knowledgable fans. Baltimore in the '60s and '70s was a blue-collar, working man's town and the team reflected the city's personality. You worked hard, minded your own business, did things right and good things would happen. Their stadium - a neighborhood ballpark called Memorial Stadium and pictured below - symbolized the city, the team and their fans.

In the mid-80s, the Orioles became my "home team" when I moved to D.C. Over four seasons, I probably saw 50 or 60 games there, and I loved it. We'd drive up the freeway from D.C., get on some side streets, slip past Johns Hopkins University and start looking for on-street parking in the neighborhood. If I had to be away from the Minnesota Twins, I felt lucky to be able to watch a great franchise as a substitute.

In 1992, the Orioles moved out of Memorial Stadium and into Camden Yards, which was an instant hit. It was the first of the new generation of "retro" ballparks and it was very well done. But in 1993, things started to go awry, and like so many unfortunate things in life, it can be traced back to a lawyer.

Peter Angelos started as a union lawyer, then focused on class-action lawsuits, and made a boatload of money. Attacking businesses, he reportedly once made $100 million on a single case. And with these ill-gotten gains, he was able to buy the Orioles in 1993.

Most owners think they know something about baseball, but Angelos REALLY thought he was full of wisdom. He began micromanaging the front office, throwing big money at bad free agents, forcing poor trades and generally screwing things up.

Angelos' meddling set the club on the path to mediocrity, and the end of "The Oriole Way." The last winning season they had was 1997. In the last eight seasons, their BEST finish was 21 games out of first place. They have failed to win more than 70 games in their last three seasons, and attendance at Camden Yards - which peaked at 3.7 million in the 1990s - dropped to under two million last year.

In May of this year, a Sports Illustrated story named Angelos one of the five worst owners in baseball. His Orioles have become a punching bag for the Yankees and Red Sox, serving the same purpose in the Eastern Division as the Washington Generals served for the Harlem Globetrotters.

It's sad, because the decline of the Orioles matches the decline of Baltimore. The industries that employed the blue-collar workers have fled, and the town's biggest claim to fame is as the setting for the drug-ravaged, corruption-plagued inner city portrayed in the TV series The Wire.

I can't imagine what Brooksie and Boog and Eddie and Cal feel today when they think about the Orioles, but it can't be good. And every time I see the "O's" it makes me a little sad.

Welcome to the family!

Sam Roman Westphall, my first grandson, checked in just after 3:00 this morning, weight 9 pounds, 1 ounce, 20-1/2 inches long. No word on when the first skate fitting is scheduled. Here he is with proud grandpa, and his big sister.

Hypocrisy run amok

It might come as a surprise to some that there are indeed some liberals I admire. Hubert Humphrey, for example, was an unashamed liberal, but he conducted his political life with a sense of joy and optimism that was hard not to admire.

At the other end of the spectrum is Ted Kennedy. I realize we shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but I'm not sure that rule applies to the near-dead, so I'm going to take another swing. Ted has spent years being one of the most reprehensible humans on the planet. From the time he left Mary Jo Kopchne to drown in the back seat of his car in 1969, to the character assassination of Robert Bork in 1987, right on to the present day, he's been a bastion of hypocrisy and an enemy of decent society.

The "do as I say, not as I do" attitude is all over his life. He calls himself Roman Catholic, but advocates abortion on demand. He considers himself a champion of women's rights, but has been a serial user and abuser of women his entire life. He wants to send the American economy back to the stone age by mandating wind and solar power, but has waged a decade-long fight against wind generators off the cape of Nantucket.

His latest outrage comes in the form of a request to the Massachusetts legislature regarding the rules for replacing a vacant Senate seat. Each state may create its own process for replacing a senator who dies or leaves office, and most states allow the governor to appoint someone until the next election comes around.

In 2004, however, Ted and his Bay State democrats thought Senator John Kerry was going to be the next president of the United States. (That alone says a lot about their judgment.) But if Kerry had won, the law would have allowed Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney to appoint a replacement. Since Romney was a Republican, that outcome was unacceptable to Ted and his cronies, so the (overwhelmingly Democrat) Massachusetts legislature changed the law, prohibiting the governor from appointing an interim senator, and requiring that the seat be left vacant until a special election could be called "145 to 160 days after a vacancy occurs."

Now, with death around the corner and the Democrats holding 60 votes (the filibuster-proof number of seats) in the Senate, Ted's had a change of heart. He wrote a letter to the governor and legislature this week, expressing his concern that, in the event of a vacancy, it "concerns me deeply" that Massachusetts could go 145 days with only one senator.

He even is able to - with a straight face - write “I strongly support that law and the principle that the people should elect their Senator," while at the same time urging the repeal of a law that provides for just that.

It's typical of the entire Kennedy clan: There is no law or principle that can stand in the way of political expedience.

Regardless of who eventually fills this seat, the country will be better off without a Senator Kennedy.

Why elections matter

When President Obama nominated Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, the White House immediately went into spin mode, trying to obscure her long judicial record, which was exceedingly liberal. As an appellate judge, she had a long record of being soft on crime, always willing to give criminals the benefit of the doubt.

The White House insisted that she was a "law-and-order" judge, and even trotted out Joe "Pinnochio" Biden to tell a law enforcement group "she has your back."

Well, she cast her first vote yesterday, and we now know the White House was lying. A convicted hitman from Ohio, Jason Getsy, asked the Supreme Court to overturn his death sentence. In 1995 Getsy tried to kill - in a murder-for-hire plot - an Ohio man named Charles Serafino. Getsy shot Serafino seven times, and though Serafino lived, Getsy killed Serafino's mother in the attack.

Getsy's lawyers never denied that he had done the crime: Their defense focused only on getting Getsy life in prison, rather than lethal injection. Even Ohio's liberal governor, Ted Strickland, was repulsed by the crime, and refused to stop the execution.

So Getsy appealed to the Supremes, and Sotomayor voted to stop the execution. Fortunately, most of her colleagues disagreed, and the court voted 5-4 to deny his appeal.

The people of Ohio rid themselves of Jason Getsy at 11 a.m. today, via lethal injection. You can read the Chicago Tribune's account of the case here.

Unfortunately, the people of the United States will have to put up with Sotomayor for many more years. It's just another price we pay for putting a diversity hire in the White House.