Scott Walker's fading campaign and Canadian wall
Good morning. Final day of August. Expect a slow-ish news week with the traditional Labor Day holiday coming up, marking the final weekend of summer. Many pols at the State Fair this week, however.
Lessard-Sams meets Tuesday and Wednesday to hear Legacy funding requests.
Nice piece by Adam Belz looking at entrepreneurial Somali women at Karmel Square and other venues. The mall is the scene of a rich paradox in Somali culture. The women who run the shops cover their heads, and many of them believe it is a man's responsibility to pay bills for the family. Yet they are aggressive businesspeople, cherish financial independence and preside over a microeconomy at the core of the Twin Cities' Somali community.
Scheck was up in Mille Lacs, where it's gotten bleak with walleye season over and fears of no ice fishing season either.
The conservative Weekly Standard on Gov. Scott Walker's fading campaign. On Monday, August 17, Walker said in a Fox News interview that his position on immigration is "very similar" to Donald Trump's. When asked by an MSNBC reporter later that day if he thinks birthright citizenship should be ended for the children of illegal immigrants, Walker replied, "yeah, absolutely, going forward." But by Friday, after a week of negative headlines and criticism from some donors, Walker declared of birthright citizenship on CNBC, "I'm not taking a position on it one way or the other." Two days later, ABC's George Stephanopoulos asked Walker if he supported the Fourteenth Amendment's provision that "all persons born or naturalized in the United States . . . are citizens of the United States." Walker replied: "Well, I said the law is there, we need to enforce the laws, including those that are in the Constitution." The satirical newspaper the Onion published a story the next day with the headline: "Out-of-Control Scott Walker Injured After Wildly Careening Between Stances on Immigration."
Now Walker's talking about a wall along the Canadian border. (John Candy's final movie, "Canadian Bacon," was about an American president helping his flagging approval ratings by starting a cold war with Canada.)
Denali will again be Denali. (Fyi….McKinley never actually went to Alaska.)