Congratulations to Reps. Marty Seifert & Tom Emmer for their strong showing at the Precinct Caucus Straw Polls this week. Statewide, they received 50% and 40% of the Straw Poll votes.

You can find the full results and look up results by BPOU or Congressional District here.

CD 6 Results were:

CD6's turnout was a close second for tops in the state. CD8 had just 20 more votes then us. Thanks to our volunteers for doing such a great job preparing for Caucus and a special thank you to all of the Minnesotans who showed up on Caucus night.

Here's Congresswoman Bachmann's response to the SOTU.

"President Obama finally got the message- stop spending! But he’s a day late and a dollar short. Freezing non-security discretionary funding now will freeze it at the highest funding levels we’ve ever seen. This “freeze” only applies to 12% of the budget, disregards massive new spending programs enacted in the last year and ignores mandatory funding, which is where most of the changes need to be made. The President spent more money in his first year in office than any other president in history, and simply stopping now does absolutely nothing to lower the amount of national debt that gets passed to you and me, our children and our grandchildren in the form of increased and new taxes.

"We’ve maxed out our debt limit, scared off our creditors and burdened future generations with unnecessary debt. And the President has yet to come clean on jobs numbers, utilize our entire energy resources, or lower the cost of health care in this country.

"The bottom line is that we cannot borrow, spend and bail our way back to a growing economy."

 

by Andy Aplikowski,
This post first appeared on True North

We all know that the Republican party has been a little less than conservative over recent years. The 2009 Tea Party movement was created in the vacuum of leadership against the full throttle liberalism of Democrats in Washington. The Tea Party is not a Republican movement, and is rumbling about a 3rd party, but…..

The truth is that a 3rd party movement would take a generation to build up to a majority in order to actually accomplish anything (read: undo the wrongs going on with government now and in recent past). Trust me, I really do know how hard it is to consider joining up with the current Republican Party folks.

But, most of us here at True North believe that your time is better spent working to drag the GOP (kicking and screaming if need be) back to its fiscal sanity and renew its devotion to limited government, personal liberties, and free markets. The beauty is that in Minnesota with our Precinct Caucus system, those who show up, actually do run the party.

Showing up in 2010 and making sure good conservative candidates get endorsed is the number 1 goal. In the Spring of 2010, Republican Legislative Districts (BPOUs) and Congressional Districts will be holding conventions to endorse candidates. Showing up at Caucuses and being elected a Delegate to the subsequent conventions will mean you get to have a thumbs up or down.

Being a Legislative District (BPOU) Delegate is critical to helping reform the party as it is a two year term or commitment. These same Delegates meet again next year to elect local party leadership as well as elect State Central Delegates, who in turn will elect the State Party Leadership next Summer.

Trust us, we understand that putting all your eggs in the Republican basket may be tough right now, but if we all work together, we can transfer the power in the GOP from the people who screwed it up and put it in our hands. And that is what the Tea Party movement is all about. Putting the power back in the people’s hands.

We can take the party back and use it to return America to its freedom based roots, but - and this is important - we can't have a conservative and liberty based Republican Party if there is a minority of conservatives and those with libertarian leanings who show up to endorse candidates and become Delegates.

The party IS run by those who show up, so do your part to help get it back on track. Show up February 2nd at your local Republican Caucus and become elected a Delegate! Take a Precinct Chair or officer position. You will no longer have to sit around wondering what to do, you will have the power and resources to organize the like minded people around you in order to get conservative candidates elected this November.

It is not going to be easy. It is going to take some work. But if we don't try to get back to living under (not around) the Constitution, we never will.

So please go here for some tips and advice on what Caucuses are and how you can get involved in saving the GOP, our State, and Nation.

True North Precinct Caucuses Info

Daniel Hannan, a member of British Parliament, has a great perspective on what exactly America is in the midst of, or rather a mistake it is repeating. It is based on the Massachusetts Senate Race.

The Republicans must prevent America repeating the mistakes of the 1930s

Unbelievably, the Republicans are in contention for Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat(hat-tip, Dan Hamilton). Scott Brown, an amiable state senator, has closed a 30 point deficit and is within striking distance of the Massachussetts Attorney General, Martha Coakley. Alright, the odds are still on a Democrat victory. Even so, the closeness of the polls, in a state which Obama took with 62 per cent just over a year ago is extraordinary. I can’t think what the British equivalent would be; the Tories winning Bolsover, perhaps.

Although I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for John McCain in 2008, I strongly supported Republican House and Senate candidates. Indeed, one of the GOP’s mistakes, in retrospect, was to throw everything into the presidential contest. Republican attacks on Barack Obama might have served very slightly to reduce the margin of his victory, but the party paid a terrible price in Congress.

Congress Can Stop the KSM Trial
If the president will not reverse himself, Congress should.

By Michele Bachmann & Andrew C. McCarthy

There is no justifying the Obama administration’s decision to grant a civilian trial to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other 9/11 plotters who carried out the deadliest act of war ever committed on U.S. soil. The president must not grant the worst of war criminals the same constitutional rights enjoyed by the nearly 3,000 U.S. citizens they massacred on 9/11. If he won’t reconsider, Congress must act.

Beginning in the Revolutionary War, it has been recognized throughout our history that wartime enemies are not mere criminal defendants. When they commit provable war crimes, they are tried by military commission, a process that permits them fewer rights than a civilian trial while shielding more national-defense information from disclosure to the enemy.

As the Obama administration concedes, we are a nation at war. After the 9/11 atrocities, Congress overwhelmingly authorized the use of military force. In 2006, at the urging of the Supreme Court, Congress put the military-commission system originally ordered by President Bush on firm legislative footing. The Obama administration not only acknowledges the validity of this system, Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that the bombers of the U.S.S. Cole (who murdered 17 members of our Navy in October 2000) will be tried in it, even though this attack is the subject of a pending civilian indictment.

Read the rest at National Review

Congresswoman Bachmann attended the Restoration Weekend and received no less then 3 standing ovations.

Bachmann gets standing ovations at conservative conference

GOP Rep. Michele Bachmann attended the Restoration Weekend conference in Palm Beach, Florida over the weekend. The event appeared to be a who's who of conservative activists and conservative leaders. Newt Gingrich, Phyllis Schlafly and Ann Coulter are just some of the names in attendance. But it appeared that Bachmann got the biggest ovation for saying Al Franken stole the election and she's the "left's number one target."

Conservative blogger Steven Rosenblum had this snapshot from Bachmann's appearance:

The best and most well received speech was given by the fantastic Representative Michele Bachmann of Minnesota. She made no secret of the fact she believes Al Franken stole the US Senate election from Norm Coleman. She spoke of being the left's number one target (maybe number 2 after Sarah Palin), speaking as a victim, but pointing to the fact that the left knows it's ideas are failing and that their arguments fall short, so they attack the messenger. Bachmann got 3 standing ovations from a receptive audience that obviously would like to see her lead the conservatives back into the leadership of the House GOP. After her rousing speech Rep. Bachmann was inundated by the crowd, looking for photo-ops and the chance to shake her hand and thank her for her efforts.

Bachmann is quickly becoming a leader in the battle for freedom, liberty, and free markets in America. 6th District residents are well served by her leadership and passion to defend the Constitution. And freedom loving Americans from across the nation are envious that their member of Congress is not named Bachmann.

The following is an Wall Street Journal Op Ed by Rep. Ron Paul & Sen. Jim Demint.

Americans Deserve a Transparent Fed
Trillion-dollar interventions in the economy merit scrutiny by taxpayers and their representatives.

By RON PAUL AND JIM DEMINT

For nearly a century the Federal Reserve has operated in the shadows, away from the prying eyes of Congress, journalists and the American people. Created in 1913, the Fed was given enormous responsibility to protect the value of our currency. Yet in the last 96 years the U.S. dollar has lost more than 95% of its purchasing power. The Fed's unprecedented actions over the past year in attempting to stabilize the financial system have now forced it into the spotlight, and caused millions of people around the country to question the opacity of the Fed's financial transactions.

While the Fed is more transparent now than it was 20 or 30 years ago, there is still a long way to go. If the Fed were fully transparent, organizations such as Bloomberg and Fox News wouldn't have to sue its board of governors to receive materials that should be available through Freedom of Information Act requests. These include information on which banks and companies received loans and for what amounts after the 2008 financial meltdown.

One puzzling assertion made by the Fed and its supporters is that the Federal Reserve has some sort of independence from the government and independence in undertaking monetary policy. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Federal Reserve is a government-created banking monopoly, and its top decision makers are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate. If they do not perform satisfactorily in the eyes of politicians, they will not be renominated.

The Fed has also, for the past three decades, been required to engage in monetary policy with the goal of maintaining stable prices and full employment. Since the natural trend over time is for prices to decrease, a mandate to maintain stable prices is a mandate to pursue an expansionary monetary policy and inflate the money supply to counteract the lower prices we would expect from increased productivity.

The Fed chairman is required to appear twice a year before Congress to explain the Fed's actions, and how the Fed is complying with its mandates of stable prices and full employment. However, the idea that this constitutes any sort of oversight is laughable.

Each congressman who questions the chairman receives only a few minutes in which to ask questions and receive answers. Having been on the receiving end of Alan Greenspan's notoriously obtuse "Greenspan-Speak" answers and Ben Bernanke's similarly convoluted statements, we can assure you that the process is completely ineffective at getting any real answers.

No matter how direct the questions are, Fed chairmen answer with a vagueness common to bureaucrats. The whole process is window dressing for public consumption, not any sort of attempt to exercise oversight or gain any real insight into the Fed's actions.

What is needed is a full audit of the Fed, something that has never happened. We need to know who the Fed is giving money to, what types of securities are being purchased and what backs those securities, how much money is being paid for those securities, etc.

While Rep. Mel Watt's (D., N.C.) efforts to audit the new lending facilities authorized to bail out private firms such as AIG is a step in the right direction, it is still just a first step. These facilities have the same effect on the money supply as securities purchased through open market operations. Why should securities placed on one line of the Fed's balance sheet be subject to audit while the exact same securities placed elsewhere on the balance sheet are not subject to audit? The loopholes need to be closed.

In coming weeks we plan to offer companion amendments to legislation already before the House and Senate that will open the Fed up to a complete audit. The amendments set a six-month time lag on the publication of previously unreleased audit data to address the Fed's concerns that actions undertaken in support of monetary policy would immediately be politicized. The transcripts and minutes of the Federal Open Market Committee meetings would continue to be made public at the Fed's discretion, with unpublicized details of meetings not subject to any additional scrutiny. Finally, the amendments make clear that the purpose of the audits is not to interfere with or dictate monetary policy.

As strong opponents of government intervention into the economy, we do not want to see Congress directly dictate monetary policy. But while the Fed is involved so heavily in monetary policy and its actions so heavily influence the future of our economy, it is necessary that it be fully transparent. Interventions into the economy on the order of trillions of dollars cannot continue to escape public scrutiny. American taxpayers deserve better.

Mr. Paul is a Republican congressman from Texas. Mr. DeMint is a Republican senator from South Carolina.

Copied from the WSJ online