Current Events and the Psychology of Politics
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Jul 27th, 2009

Summary: First in a two-part series examining the outlook for the 2010 U.S. House of Representatives election in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District. Part I surveys the political environment in which the contest will take place. Part II, to follow closer to the election, will take a look at the candidates. … One-year retrospective: On the 13th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Sunday, July 27, 2008, Aubrey Immelman posted a public service announcement to help raise funds for memorials in honor of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and observed a day of rest.


May 9th, 2009

Summary: Can U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) be defeated in the 2010 U.S. House of Representatives election in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District? Yes, but not by a Democrat in the general election. Rep. Bachmann is most vulnerable in the primary election against a more moderate Republican challenger. The trump card for Bachmann opponents is Minnesota’s open primary system. With no party registration in Minnesota, self-identified Democrats and Independents are able to vote in the Republican primary against Bachmann, joining forces with disaffected Republican voters. The fact that Bachmann did not receive a majority of the votes in either the primary (47.2%) or the general election (46.4%) in 2008 underscores her vulnerability.


Apr 28th, 2009

Summary: Staff Sgt. Aaron Larson, who as an 11-year-old boy in St. Joseph was bicycling with his best friend Jacob Wetterling when Jacob was kidnapped by a masked gunman on Sunday, Oct. 22, 1989, has returned home to Minnesota after a year-long deployment in Iraq.


Jan 7th, 2009

Summary: Like so many seemingly promising leads in the search for Jacob Wetterling’s abductor, the latest lead, too, appears to lead nowhere. Initial reporting on the strange case of Vernon Seitz from WTMJ television in Milwaukee, subsequent reporting from Twin Cities and Milwaukee media, and links to reports on the Jacob Wetterling and Joshua Guimond missing person cases in St. Joseph and Collegeville, Minnesota.


Dec 16th, 2008

Ottis Toole, a serial killer who died more than a decade ago is the person who decapitated the 6-year-old son of “America’s Most Wanted” host John Walsh in 1981, according to Florida police. The announcement brought to a close a case that has haunted the Walsh family for more than two decades, launched the television show about the nation’s most notorious criminals, and inspired changes in how authorities search for missing children.


Aug 10th, 2008

Summary: On Sunday, August 10, 2008, the 27th day of his campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman took a break from campaigning and featured a St. Cloud Times news report about the first leg of his 100-mile walking tour of the Sixth District from Freeport to St. Joseph, Minn.


Jul 26th, 2008

Summary: On the 12th day of his 2008 campaign against U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann for the Republican nomination as House of Representatives candidate in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District, Aubrey Immelman traveled to Minneapolis to tape an interview with Ken Avidor for The UpTake, focusing on his background, his reasons for running, and his core issues of national security, law enforcement/public safety, and border security/illegal immigration. In discussing national security, Immelman pointed to lost opportunities after 9/11, specifically “the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq, which turned a country that had been militarily contained and led by a dictator hostile to Iran and to Islamic fundamentalism … into a foreign policy nightmare that has consumed our domestic political agenda and squandered our finite resources for more than five years.” (Includes video of interview)