Minnesota Burning

For those unfamiliar with the great state of Minnesota, aka Minnetopia and the People's Republic of Minnesota, it has a rather large scandinavian heritage and (therefore?) a lengthy tradition of socialism. Even now, in the city of Duluth, self-proclaimed socialist candidates are regularly elected (there are quite a bit of Finns up there though, so no surprise). Anyway, the state has recently been undergoing a noticeable change towards fiscal conservativism especially with the governorship of Tim Pawlenty, certainly not perfect but infinitely better than far too many of his predecessors. Even the Pioneer Press/ Pravda, one of the two major Twin Cities' newspapers, has started to reflect the change (The Star Tribune/ Red Star/ Star and Sickle is beyond hope). I almost choked on my coffee when I read the opinion page, of all places, and found an article from Jacob Sullum of Reason, "I have a beef with compulsory food ads." Also, in addition to the run of the mill leftist hack pieces, I found one that had the honesty to admit, albeit in the antepenultimate paragraph, that Medicare may not be perfect in all respects except for deficient funding.