Summary: Now that they’re freshmen in a GOP-run House, the Tea Party movement’s candidates are running smack into the traditions, partisan divisions, and powerful competing interests that make it so hard to redirect the government. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on January 16, 2010, Aubrey Immelman reported that Spanish lawmaker Gaspar Llamazares was horrified to learn that the FBI used an online photograph of him to create an age-enhanced image showing what Osama bin Laden might look like today.

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Summary: The real problem with Michele Bachmann is not her self-centeredness, her unresponsiveness to the needs of her constituents, her meager legislative accomplishments, or even her voting record; it’s her delusion-like paranoia, her shameless conspiracy-peddling, and her incessant fear-mongering. Now it has been revealed that Bachmann’s contact with reality is even more tenuous than previously thought, with the discovery that Bachmann had asked the Minnesota Secretary of State to remove her name from the publicly available voter registration records under a legal provision designed to protect past or potential victims of domestic abuse. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 23, 2009, Aubrey Immelman, in a public service announcement, provided information about the upcoming 2009 St. Cloud-area Veterans Day Parade.

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Summary: The Center for Public Integrity reports that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) wrote behind-the-scenes letters requesting stimulus funds from the federal government. “Porkulus” Bachmann repeatedly badmouths “the failed Pelosi trillion-dollar stimulus,” yet slinks back when she thinks no one is watching to grovel for pork. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on October 19, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that the father of Army Spc. Stephan Mace, killed in action near Kamdesh, Afghanistan, when several hundred Taliban fighters armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked and nearly overran Combat Outpost Keating, said the U.S. was “fighting a war with too few people” and that the troops at Kamdesh were “sitting ducks.”

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Summary: U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann has been caught in a lie — saying she opposed the so-called Legacy Amendment, which raised Minnesota sales tax by 3/8ths of 1 percent, despite previously having pandered to outdoorsmen and conservationists by publicly endorsing the measure in appearances before the Game Fair in Anoka, Minn. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on September 15, 2009, Aubrey Immelman provided his weekly report of U.S. military deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; reported that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that a proper effort to counter the Taliban insurgency would probably require more forces; and noted that four mortar shells landed in the Green Zone as Vice President Joe Biden arrived in Iraq on an unannounced mission to help the country resolve its differences ahead of America’s military withdrawal.

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Summary: Dan Rassier, a teacher whom police call a “person of interest” in the Jacob Wetterling abduction, has been assigned to a different elementary school, provoking an outcry from some parents at his new school. “They’ve brought concerns about placing their children in a potentially dangerous situation,” said Sister Sharon Waldoch, principal of St. Boniface School in Cold Spring, Minn. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on August 28, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that Jaycee Lee Dugard, kidnapped in 1991 from a school bus stop at the age of 11, was found alive after being held captive by a convicted rapist in his backyard as a sex slave for nearly two decades and forced to bear two of his children.

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Summary: Tea Party groups in Missouri are furious that national tea party figurehead Rep. Michele Bachmann is endorsing Rep. Roy Blunt for U.S. Senate in Missouri. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 29, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that former U.S. Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Distinguished Professor in the Practice of National Governance at Georgetown University, had been selected to deliver the Third Annual Eugene McCarthy Lecture at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minn.

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Summary: “Rise of the New Right: A Hardball Documentary with Chris Matthews” — Part 5: The Rhetoric of the New Right. … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on July 11, 2009 Aubrey Immelman reported that violence had spiked in Iraq after U.S. combat troops withdrew from urban areas; that British military deaths in Afghanistan had surpassed their casualties in Iraq; and that the U.S. abandoned the Bush administration policy of destroying opium poppies in Afghanistan.

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Summary: The number of extremist groups in the United States exploded in 2009 as militias and other groups steeped in wild, anti-government conspiracy theories exploited populist anger across the country and infiltrated the mainstream, according to a report issued today by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). … One-year retrospective: One year ago today, on March 3, 2009, Aubrey Immelman reported that according to some economists, a Depression doesn’t have to be Great, with bread lines, rampant unemployment, and a wipeout in the stock market; the economy can sink into a milder depression — the kind spelled with a lowercase “d” — and it may be happening now.

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Comprehensive summary and documentation of U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s extremist rhetoric, incendiary demagoguery, and misrepresentation since her 2008 reelection to the United States House of Representatives in Minnesota’s 6th Congressional District.

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Summary: Politico reports that U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) was one of the House of Representatives’ biggest spenders on congressional office expenses in the first quarter of 2009. “While businesses across the country are cutting back, members of the House saw their own office budgets increase by an average of 7 percent between 2008 and 2009. [An] analysis of the first-quarter 2009 MRA reports shows Michele Bachmann spent more than $380,000 during the three-month period — more than $100,000 more than the average first-quarter spending.”

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