A few website tweaks; the Publisher's on vacation in the Middle East

PIM Publisher Sarah Janecek is on an extended tour of the Middle East right now. We have heard very little from her lately, though she told us to let everyone know that "I had my first camel ride, the camel's name was 'Easy Does It,' which was not true of the camel." The full moon rose over the Great Pyramids near her hotel, and few of the political wrinkles of Minnesota will trouble her in the near future.

Due to the holiday weekend, no Weekly Report will be published this week.

PIM now has a regular gig posting a few daily political headlines from the Morning Report on MnSpeak.com. MnSpeak is a pretty nifty site focusing on stuff going on around the metro area, and it has lots of vocal regular posters; in all, a good place to check out what's getting big buzz.

It's been quite a while since we made any front page posts. However, five days a week we post PIM Morning Report batches here. We've been focusing on I-35W bridge and flooding news. Also we've got a new regular section, Big Brain Blogs & Think Tank Thoughts. Our Morning Report editor, Tracey Howell, doesn't have an infinite amount of time to go looking for blog material, since our focus is hard news. So drop her a line if you think something should go in the Morning Report.

We have just added three new political blogs to our massive Minnesota political blog directory. Drum roll please...

• Under institutional/think tank blogs, check out BehindTheMortgage.com by local mortgage guru Alex Stenback.
• Under conservative blogs, check out Carol Cooper's new SteamValveBlog.com.
• Under independent blogs, check out South Lake Minnetonka. We called it an 'indie' because it doesn't have a discernible partisan agenda.

If you've got a blog, consider adding PoliticsInMinnesota.com to your blogroll or sidebar: your readers will appreciate our blend of fresh news and links across the political spectrum! (And we like incoming links too!)

We have also just added a new Congressional Contact Information reference page. Here, you can get the office addresses, senior staff members, websites (both official government sites and campaign sites). It's nothing too complicated, but it should be helpful if you're looking to get ahold of your congressional delegates, or locate regional offices. The senior staff names may be slightly out of date; Members of Congress don't always share this information, and sometimes they don't even like to share their email addresses!

Here are a couple recent issues of the PIM Weekly Report: August 3rd's special bridge edition, and August 10. Our standard policy is to post them three weeks after our subscribers receive them, but we fell a bit behind.

More below the fold...

Some fun videos: There are a few funny political videos connected to local politics that readers might enjoy. MSNBC's Keith Olbermann presented a hilarious Dragnet-style reconstruction of Idaho Sen. Larry Craig's airport bathroom incident.

The 'RNC Welcoming Committee,' a local group of anarchists and anti-authoritarians, held a protest planning get-together dubbed pReNC over the weekend, which they promoted via a funny video (prompting stern hand-wringing from folks like Katherine Kersten):

The latest Minnesota Internet phenomena is certainly 'Chocolate Rain,' a politically astute song by U of M grad student Tay Zonday, released on YouTube. The video has earned an astounding 8.1 million viewers:

Please let us know if this sort of material is helpful and/or interesting to you, and if you've got a political blog for our directory, drop us a line via email or our online contact form.