An Open Letter to Ann Coulter | The World of Special Olympics

 

The following is a guest post in the form of an open letter from Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens to Ann Coulter after this tweet during last night’s Presidential debate.
Dear Ann Coulter,
Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow.  So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?
I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow.  I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you.  In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.
I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.
Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.
Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.
Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.
After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me.  You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.
I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.
Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.
No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.
Come join us someday at Special Olympics.  See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
A friend you haven’t made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia
An Open Letter to Ann Coulter | The World of Special Olympics

AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Racial attitudes have not improved in the four years since the United States elected its first black president, an Associated Press poll finds, as a slight majority of Americans now express prejudice toward blacks whether they recognize those feelings or not.

Those views could cost President Barack Obama votes as he tries for re-election, the survey found, though the effects are mitigated by some people's more favorable views of blacks.

Racial prejudice has increased slightly since 2008 whether those feelings were measured using questions that explicitly asked respondents about racist attitudes, or through an experimental test that measured implicit views toward race without asking questions about that topic directly.

In all, 51 percent of Americans now express explicit anti-black attitudes, compared with 48 percent in a similar 2008 survey. When measured by an implicit racial attitudes test, the number of Americans with anti-black sentiments jumped to 56 percent, up from 49 percent during the last presidential election. In both tests, the share of Americans expressing pro-black attitudes fell.

AP poll: Majority harbor prejudice against blacks - Yahoo! News

Despite advice, Bills' TV ad attacks Klobuchar on Petters

GOP Senate candidate Kurt Bills is operating on a fraction of Amy Klobuchar’s campaign budget, hence the choice of subject matter for his TV ad is kind of  a critical one. Tom Scheck at MPR writes: “The ad alleges DFL Sen. Amy Klobuchar did not pursue charges against convicted swindler Tom Petters because he gave her campaign contributions. Klobuchar's campaign said the allegations are false and are being pushed by a desperate candidate who is behind in the polls. The ad says Klobuchar decided against prosecuting Petters even though she had evidence of his crimes. … [Petters] trustee, Doug Kelley, said the allegations in Bills' ad are preposterous. ‘To base a serious ad on testimony which has been so thoroughly discredited is irresponsible,’ Kelley said. ‘I would expect a serious candidate for high office in this state to go out and be careful about allegations such as that.’ Kelley, who said he is a lifelong Republican, said Osskopp approached him earlier this year to see if he had anything the campaign could use against Klobuchar. Kelley said he told Osskopp he was barking up the wrong tree.” In other words … probably not the best choice of material.
On another ad front … Sasha Aslainian of MPR reports: “A new television ad from supporters of the proposed constitutional amendment on marriage claims that if marriage is redefined, children could be taught about same-sex marriage in school. … This fourth ad from Minnesota for Marriage, the main group working to pass the amendment, features a Massachusetts couple, David and Tonia Parker. Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004. Two years later, the Parkers sued their son's school after his teacher read a book to second graders that featured a prince marrying another prince. … Fact-checkers, including Minnesota Public Radio's Poligraph, have labeled the claims in the ad ‘misleading,’ since the Massachusetts school was using the book as part of diversity curriculum which pre-dates the legalization of same-sex marriage.” Do you detect a theme?
Even more cash is flowing at the two amendment issues. Rachel Stassen-Berger of the Strib says: “According to public records, two big donors have given Minnesota for Marriage, the main effort to pass the amendment to define marriage as only the union of one man and one woman, $550,000. Grace Church in Eden Prairie gave the group $50,000 and the Minnesota Family Council, which works in conjunction with Minnesota for Marriage, transferred over $500,000. … The campaign to defeat the voter ID amendment, called Our Vote Our Future, also [saw] a large influx of cash in the last few days. St. Paul's TakeAction Political Fund, which has been working closely with the anti-voter ID campaign, transferred over $23,000 on Thursday; America Votes, out of Washington, DC, ponied up $100,000 and the national arm of the AARP donated $12,000 on Tuesday.” The slide in enthusiasm for the voting amendment has been kind of amazing.


Despite advice, Bills' TV ad attacks Klobuchar on Petters | MinnPost

THE HATCHET: After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man...

THE HATCHET: After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man...:  After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man to go free once again People in New York Mills, Minn., know Danny Bettcher for all the w...

After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man to go free once again

 After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man to go free once again

People in New York Mills, Minn., know Danny Bettcher for all the wrong reasons. Many also know the number: He’s had 27 convictions for drinking and driving offenses, believed to be the most ever accrued in the state. By: Marino Eccher, The Forum of Fargo, N.D.

• Danny Bettcher

Danny Bettcher

NEW YORK MILLS, Minn. – People here know Danny Bettcher for all the wrong reasons.
Many also know the number: He’s had 27 convictions for drinking and driving offenses, believed to be the most ever accrued in the state.
The police who made the arrests remember him. The prosecutors who brought the charges remember him. The local activists trying to curb the behavior he embodies remember him.
On Friday, Bettcher becomes a free man for the first time in more than three years. It’s unclear what he plans to do next – through his attorney, he declined to be interviewed for this story.
But for many, he remains a symbol of the limitations of the state’s ability to keep chronic drunken drivers from getting behind the wheel again.
“He’ll get out, and he’ll just drive again,” said Judy Bradow, a Fergus Falls woman who participates in multiple anti-drunken-driving programs. “He just does his stay, and that’s it, and he’s out.”
Bettcher, 59, has done more than a few stays behind bars – three months here, six months there, the occasional year.
Many of his sentences, which date back to the 1980s, were limited by the fact that DWIs in Minnesota for years became felonies only if the driver injured or killed someone. To date, Bettcher does not appear to have done so.
The law changed in 2002 to make DWI a felony upon the fourth offense in 10 years, and Bettcher has twice been convicted of felony drunken driving since then, both times in Otter Tail County.
In May 2009, the incident leading to his current incarceration, a New York Mills police officer saw him blow through a stop sign on his motorcycle.
According to the police report, Bettcher was stumbling over during field sobriety tests and registered a blood-alcohol level more than twice the legal limit. Police said he had urinated in his pants before being pulled over.
Heather Brandborg, an assistant Otter Tail County Attorney who prosecuted that case, said she remembers him as a defendant who had failed out of treatment multiple times.
Courts cannot mandate prison treatment, Brandborg said. After his most recent arrest, Bettcher told the Minneapolis Star Tribune he hadn’t completed treatment in prison because he didn’t want to look weak.
She said it’s dismaying to see repeat offenders in the courtroom again and again.
Judy Bradow said she and other activists don’t understand why the system hasn’t been able to stop Bettcher from drinking and driving again.
“It just blows our minds why they can’t keep him completely off the streets forever,” she said.
But aside from further prison time, the law has few arrows left in its quiver for offenders like Bettcher.
He has already driven without a license and without insurance on multiple occasions. The state can impound his vehicle or order the installation of a device that requires a sober breath sample to start the engine, but many chronic offenders find something else to drive or other ways around the restrictions.
Lisa Borgen, a Moorhead judge, said sometimes the best a court can do is hand out a lengthy prison sentence – the toughest allowed for DWI is seven years – and hope for the best.
“The reality is once a person has been sentenced and they do the maximum sentence, there is nothing that we can do,” said Borgen, who said she could not discuss Bettcher specifically. “Once a person has done all the time, then they’re out there. You cannot keep people from driving and you cannot keep people from drinking.”
If that’s the route Bettcher goes, local authorities will be watching.
New York Mills Police Chief Jim Van Schaick said he hasn’t had much personal experience with Bettcher, but that “we’re aware of him.”
When told by The Forum that a chronic DWI offender was scheduled for release, Bruce Wangsness, a longtime New York Mills police officer, concluded unprompted it was Bettcher.
“Already?” said Wangsness, who otherwise declined to discuss the matter. “Holy mackerel!”
After serving time for his 27th DWI, Minnesota man to go free once again | Duluth News Tribune | Duluth, Minnesota

Charges: Mom admits she regularly gave daughter, 12, heroin

 
 

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Charges: Mom admits she regularly gave daughter, 12, heroin

• Article by: ABBY SIMONS , Star Tribune
• Updated: October 22, 2012 - 3:15 PM

Rebecca Rachelle Hill

Photo: Hennepin County jail,

A 12-year-old girl's hospitalization for heroin withdrawal led to multiple felony charges against her mother, who allegedly admitted to smoking the drug with her daughter three times a day.
Charges say Rebecca Rachelle Hill, 37, justified it by telling police that the girl likes to do the same things she does.
Hill, 37, is charged with felony child endangerment, second-degree drug sale and motor vehicle theft, along with giving a false name to police, a misdemeanor. The girl was with Hill on Oct. 14 when Hill was arrested for shoplifting at the Mall of America.
According to the charges filed in Hennepin County District Court, Hill and her daughter were caught stealing clothing at Macy's. Hill initially gave police a false name and said she was from California. When police confirmed that the name she gave did not exist, mother and daughter "began crying loudly and clinging to each other." Hill was later positively identified and the girl was released to her grandmother.
The next day, the girl's father called police and said his daughter told him that her mother had been supplying her with heroin and marijuana, and that the girl was "feeling terrible" and appeared to be in withdrawal. The girl was taken to the University of Minnesota Amplatz Children's Hospital, where she remained as of late last week. Medical records showed she had both the drugs in her system, and that she told doctors that for the past two or three weeks, her mother had given her heroin to smoke three times a day. They last used the drug Oct. 13, she said. She added that the two were homeless, staying "here and there" and occasionally sleeping in their stolen vehicle. The girl added that she was anxious, depressed and had been cutting herself.

Charges: Mom admits she regularly gave daughter, 12, heroin | StarTribune.com

Rep. Joe Walsh's abortion comment is stunning in its ignorance

Rep. Joe Walsh claimed Thursday that abortion is never necessary to save the life of a woman.

The medical ignorance of some politicians — particularly in regard to women’s reproductive health — continues to astonish me.
The latest example of such ignorance comes from Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Ill). Citing unnamed “advances in science and technology,” he told reporters Thursday night that abortion is never necessary to save the life of a woman.
That’s right. Never.
“There’s no such exception as life of the mother,” Walsh stated in a brief press conference after a televised debate with his pro-choice Democratic opponent Tammy Duckworth.
“Health of the mother has become a tool for abortions [at] any time, under any reason,” he added.

umn.edu

Dr. Carrie Terrell

The idea there is some kind of modern medical technology or procedure that has made full-term pregnancies suddenly perfectly safe for all women is news to Dr. Carrie Terrell, an ob-gyn and chief of staff at the University of Minnesota Medical Center.
“There are innumerable potential instances wherein a termination of pregnancy would be indicated to save a woman’s life,” she said in a phone interview Friday.
That list includes “but is not limited to,” she said, such serious conditions as:

• chorioamnionitis in pre-viable pre-term premature rupture of membranes (a bacteria-related inflammation of the fetal membranes),
• severe pre-eclampsia and other hypertensive (high blood pressure) disorders,
• certain forms of cardiomyopathy (a disease that weakens and enlarges the heart),
• various maternal cardiac and pulmonary anomalies,
• severe nephrosis,
• severe cancers,
• infections with sepsis, and
• multi-organ failure.

Terrell said that in her practice, she sees pregnant women with these kinds of conditions several times a year.
“Even in these cases, it is still the woman’s choice whether or not to proceed with termination,” she added.
Sometimes, said Terrell, women do decide to proceed with their pregnancies, despite the threat the pregnancy poses to their lives. And sometimes they die as a result.
Terrell said she has no idea what advances in technology Walsh was talking about.
“We’ve probably advanced with the number of conditions we can treat and keep women pregnant,” she said, “but there are still limitations to that.”
Statements such as those from Walsh are “frustrating and just kind of medically ridiculous,” Terrell added. “We just have to dismiss a lot of things that people say.”
And maybe start requiring that politicians take — and pass — a course in women's health.

Rep. Joe Walsh's abortion comment is stunning in its ignorance | MinnPost

St. Paul abuse suspect stalked ex with postcard, phone call from prison, new charges say

 

A man awaiting retrial on charges he beat and locked his girlfriend in a dog cage has gotten in trouble again for sending a postcard from prison, according to a criminal complaint filed in Ramsey County District Court.
In April 2011, Luke Brandon Scott, 31, was convicted of assaulting, terrorizing and imprisoning his girlfriend in a September 2010 incident at Scott's St. Paul home.
Scott allegedly beat, bit, scratched and threatened the 23-year-old woman with a knife and a BB gun after she told Scott she was breaking up with him. The woman also testified that during her eight-hour ordeal, Scott hit her with a riding crop and a wine bottle, threatened to hang her up in the basement and let her die a slow death, dragged her by the hair, forced her to mop up spilled beer with her hair and locked her in a large dog kennel "because that's where the (female dogs) go."
He was sentenced in June 2011 to 17-1/2 years in prison.
Scott's conviction was reversed by the state Court of Appeals in July 2012 because of an error in jury instructions. He remains in prison pending a retrial.
According to the new criminal complaint filed Thursday, Oct. 18, while in prison Scott violated an order for protection forbidding contact with the woman by calling the woman six times and sending her a postcard. The complaint charges Scott with stalking.

St. Paul abuse suspect stalked ex with postcard, phone call from prison, new charges say - TwinCities.com

Key To Photo ID Outcome: Continued Persuasion of Seniors, Minorities and Independents

 When proponents of the photo ID constitutional amendment burst onto the scene, they identified themselves as “reformers.”  As a result, many reform-minded Minnesotans initially accepted their reform claim at face value.  In June, a poll found the proposal was backed by nearly six-out-of-ten (58%) voters. But over the course of the summer and fall, Minnesotans began to scrutinize the “reformer” claim more closely.  Many discovered that the alleged “reformers” were trying to deceive them with what amounts to a really bad fake ID. As the non-partisan League of Women Voters and many others have pointed out, the voting “reformers” are actually voting restricters, intentionally seeking to suppress the votes of people least likely to have photo IDs – seniors, minorities, poor people and college students.  This message is finally starting to get out. Wry Wing Politics | Politics on wry.

Gay marriage: Ousted GOP insider Brodkorb says amendment more about votes than family values - TwinCities.com

Ousted Senate Republican insider Michael Brodkorb, who broke his almost 10-month-long silence this week, said GOP leaders put a gay marriage ban on the ballot this fall not to protect family values but to drive social conservatives to the polls.
The former chief spokesman for the Senate GOP was fired last December after he had an affair with the party's then-majority leader Amy Koch. Brodkorb has sued the state, Senate and others for discrimination and defamation, claiming he was treated differently than female staffers who had affairs with male legislators.


Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, said Brodkorb's assessment rings true.
Dibble, who is gay, said several GOP senators told him directly that their vote in favor of the amendment was for political reasons, not personal belief, and some even asked for his forgiveness.
"They have violated their own conscience for political reasons while claiming to be standing on principle," Dibble said.


Pollster Bill Morris, who chaired the state GOP party three decades ago, said to any political insider, it's no surprise that the gay marriage ban was put on the ballot to drive voter turnout.
"In many states, a constitutional amendment is put out there for precisely that reason. Both Democrats and Republicans do it. We're just not used to it here in Minnesota," Morris said.
 "I think the Senate is going to rue the day they put those amendments on," Morris said. "Because if they both go down, a lot of incumbent senators will go down with them."





Gay marriage: Ousted GOP insider Brodkorb says amendment more about votes than family values - TwinCities.com

"Space Dive" Success: Baumgartner Breaks Skydive Record, Sound Barrier

 I'm coming home," Felix Baumgartner radioed Sunday just before stepping off his 24-mile-high (39-kilometer-high) balloon capsule and into the history books.

He wasted no time getting there: In the process of logging the highest ever jump, Baumgartner reached unprecedented speeds of 833.9 miles (1,342 kilometers) an hour while free-falling in a pressurized suit, according to preliminary data. 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHtvDA0W34I&list=PLnuf8iyXggLF2b7bYQU5s2FqW1sLE1ywh&feature=player_embedded

Former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe - YouTube

Former Minnesota Secretary of State Joan Growe - YouTube

Michelle Bachmann's sister is Gay.

THERE are many people who are hurt by Michele Bachmann’s divisive brand of politics, but perhaps none in quite the way that Helen LaFave is.

The two women once shared confidences. They’re family. Some 40 years ago, Michele’s mother married Helen’s father, and when Michele was in college, the house she returned to in the summer was the one where Helen, then finishing high school, lived. Helen craved that time together.

“I remember laughing with her a lot,” she told me in an interview on Thursday in her home here. She remembers Michele’s charisma and confidence, too. “I looked up to Michele.”

As the years passed they saw much less of each other, but when their paths crossed, at large family gatherings, there were always hugs. Helen was at Michele’s wedding to Marcus Bachmann and got to know him. And Michele got to know Nia, the woman who has been Helen’s partner for almost 25 years.

Helen never had a conversation about her sexual orientation with Michele and knew that Michele’s evangelical Christianity was deeply felt. Still she couldn’t believe it when, about a decade ago, Michele began to use her position as a state senator in Minnesota to call out gays and lesbians as sick and evil and to push for an amendment to the Minnesota constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriage: precisely the kind of amendment that Minnesotans will vote on in a referendum on Election Day.

“It felt so divorced from having known me, from having known somebody who’s gay,” said Helen, a soft-spoken woman with a gentle air. “I was just stunned.”

And while she never doubted that Michele was being true to her private convictions, she couldn’t comprehend Michele’s need to make those convictions so public, to put them in the foreground of her political career, and to drive a wedge into their family.

She told Michele as much, in a letter dated Nov. 23, 2003. She sent copies to her four siblings, her father and one of Michele’s brothers, and kept one herself. In the letter she described her “hurt and disappointment that my stepsister is leading this charge.”

“You’ve taken aim at me,” Helen wrote to Michele. Referring to Nia, she added: “You’ve taken aim at my family.”

Michele, she said, never acknowledged the letter in any way.

Helen has spoken with journalists only a few times in the past and never at length. During the Republican presidential primaries this year, she got caller ID to screen all the entreaties from reporters looking for nasty quotes about Michele. She didn’t want to play that game or upset her family, which has been divided on same-sex marriage.

But the imminent referendum, which she described as Michele’s “very, very sad legacy,” compelled her “to speak out for fairness for those of us who are being judged and told our lives and relationships are somehow less,” she said.

I’m encountering her kind of newfound boldness more frequently than I expected and writing about same-sex marriage more than I anticipated, as surprising voices weigh in, like the professional football players who took up the cause last month.

Helen lives a quieter life than Michele. She’s 52 and works as a communications manager for a Minneapolis suburb. Nia, 55, is a physical therapist.

Bachmann Family Values - NYTimes.com

Review: Ryan lobbied for funds he now lambastes

 
 WASHINGTON — Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan is a fiscal conservative, champion of small government and critic of federal handouts. But as a congressman in Wisconsin, Ryan lobbied for tens of millions of dollars on behalf of his constituents for the kinds of largess he’s now campaigning against, an Associated Press review of 8,900 pages of correspondence between Ryan’s office and more than 70 executive branch agencies has found.For 12 years in the House, Ryan wrote to federal agencies supporting expansion of food stamps in his Wisconsin district. He supported city officials and everyday constituents who sought stimulus grants, federally guaranteed business loans, grants to invest in green technology and money under the health care law he opposes.

A closer look

Among the ways Ryan sought federal funds, as detailed in his correspondence:
• A Kenosha community center’s grant proposal under the Food Stamps Access Research program, to educate families about the nutritional benefits of food stamps. Ryan said in a 2002 letter the program would increase the enrollment of eligible individuals in the program by providing laptop computers to pre-screen applicants. Ryan’s budget proposed cutting food stamps by $134 billion over 10 years, although his spokesman said he “has always made clear we need a strong safety net.”
• Letters offering support or forwarding requests for projects funded by stimulus money. Ryan’s May 2009 letter to a regional Environmental Protection Agency office asked for its “full consideration” in awarding grant money to an organization under the National Clean Diesel Funding Assistance Program, which reduces diesel emissions.
Ryan also wrote to the EPA in 2009 on behalf of a small town trying to secure $550,000 in stimulus money for utility repairs. Ryan, whose staff requested meetings with the EPA about the matter, said the rescinding of the grant “would be economically devastating” to Sharon, Wis., since it already began spending the money. The EPA said project costs were incurred before October 2008, making the project ineligible for stimulus cash. Ryan has also voiced support for millions in EPA grant money to clean up abandoned building sites in Wisconsin towns.
• A 2002 Agriculture Department loan guarantee to develop a pork-packing and processing plant for farms in the region, including some in his district. The new factory appeared to be “state of the art” and worthy of funding, he said, adding: “It is my hope that the USDA will reach a favorable decision” on the application for a 60 percent federal loan guarantee toward a $19.7 million loan.
• A Kenosha health center’s request to use money under Obama’s new health care law to help meet health care needs of “thousands of new patients” who lack coverage. Ryan’s December 2010 letter to the Health and Human Services Department, first reported by the Nation magazine and also obtained by the AP, appears at odds with his pledge to repeal “Obamacare.”
• Support for a grant for the Historical Society in Milton, Wis., from the National Park Service for $271,000 in order to preserve a Civil War-era home. Ryan supported the plan in 2002, saying historical artifacts inside the former transfer point for slaves “have aged to a point where aggressive preservation and restoration is needed to save them.” Meanwhile, he’s supported recent cuts to the federal budget that would invariably affect national parks.

View Ryan’s correspondence: http://apne.ws/SJOyFI

The latest from Not Such a Dumb Jock, Chris Kluwe (of the Vikings)

The latest from Not Such a Dumb Jock, Chris Kluwe (of the Vikings), in the PiPress: “After my comments on Twitter about the debate (I called it a waste of time since the system itself is flawed and neither candidate seems interested in fixing it) several people wrote to me asking what solutions I would offer. Not being one to back down from sharing my thoughts, here they are!
Campaign Finance Reform
1) Repeal Citizens United. Corporations are not “people,” the people that compose corporations are “people.” People already have the opportunity to donate money. The day a corporation serves in the military or is tried in court for murder (and receives the same penalties and judgements as everyone else) is the day I’ll argue corporations are “people.”
2) Create a common pool of money from all donations submitted that is then divided equally amongst all candidates. Place a ceiling on how much can be drawn for each stage of the political race; any extra goes towards paying down the debt. Politics is not about which side has the richest backers to influence votes through advertisements, it’s about discussing issues and their solutions. . . .
3) Full disclosure of financial documents and work history. Currently you have to show more financials to buy a car than to run for office. If I can run a background check on a nanny to watch my kids I damn well better be able to learn the pertinent information about someone who will be crafting policies that affect them.” Not bad. Not bad at all.

Karlstad evacuated as 2,000 acres burn in northwest Minnesota

The Minnesota Inter Agency Fire Center said Tuesday afternoon that the city of Karlstad is being evacuated, prompted by the flames coming to within a mile of town.
The evacuation is being led by the Marshall County Sheriff’s Office.

Residents were ordered to leave their homes Tuesday afternoon because a fire known as the Highway 27 fire had moved to within a mile of the city limits. That fire had covered 500 acres Tuesday morning. Two outbuildings were destroyed.

Interagency Fire Center spokeswoman Jean Goad saidat midafternoon Tuesday there were “multiple starts of new fires in northwest Minnesota” through the day. At Hallock, a temperature of 73 degrees was accompanied by an extremely dry relative humidity of 19 percent and winds gusting to 43 miles per hour.
 

Two National Guard helicopters might join the fight against a spreading northern Minnesota wildfire, though winds that are driving the wildfire might keep them on the ground. 

 

The fire, in a mixture of woods, peat and grasslands north of Red Lake, covered about 2,250 acres Tuesday afternoon, about twice the size it was Sunday, and only about 10 percent contained, according to fire officials.

Karlstad evacuated as 2,000 acres burn in northwest Minnesota | StarTribune.com