December 17, 2008 - MPR’s Elizabeth Stawicki reports on arguments to the Supreme Court regarding ejected absantee ballots. An attorney for Norm Coleman's re-election campaign told Minnesota Supreme Court justices that the idea the estimated 1600 rejected absentee ballots in the Senate recount fit neatly into a category is an illusion. The court heard arguments on the campaign's petition to stop counties from adding wrongly rejected absentee ballots to their recount totals; or at least set uniform rules as to how counties should open and count those ballots.
December 26, 2008 - Tom Horner, MPR's Republican political analyst; and Todd Rapp, MPR's DFL political analyst, review the big political events of the year and preview 2009. Topics include Barack Obama’s election win of the U.S. presidency, economic challenges, and Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race recount.
January 1, 2009 - At the start of the new year, Midday presents some of 2008's most entertaining speeches. In this speech, author and humorist Garrison Keillor talked about poetry, writing and his own relationship with the library at the "Talk of the Stacks" series in November at the Hennepin County Library in downtown Minneapolis.
January 8, 2009 - MPR’s Tom Crann interviews R.T. Rybak, Mayor of Minneapolis about President-elect Obama economic speech. In his speech today, President-elect Obama also recognized the budget problems local governments are facing these days. Here in Minnesota, the Governor and the legislature are working to close a 4.8-billion-dollar budget shortfall. And, that has meant less aid money for cities and counties. The president-elect tried to offer local leaders some words of hope.
January 19, 2009 - MPR listeners and special guests discuss what it means on this MLK Day as Barack Obama, the the nation's first Black U.S. president, is to be inaugurated in the coming day.
February 12, 2009 - Interview excerpt with Penumbra Theatre’s Lou Bellamy on the organization’s budget cuts and plan to postpone its final production of the current season until the 2009-2010 season, while preserving its important programs.
February 12, 2009 - The Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul, the largest professional African American theater in the country, announced its trimming budget by almost a quarter and pushing a major production into next year as a result of the economic downturn.
February 13, 2009 - In what it calls a proactive move, St Paul's Penumbra Theatre has trimmed it's 3.8-million-dollar budget by almost a quarter.
February 13, 2009 - The Penumbra Theatre in St. Paul announced it is trimming its budget by almost a quarter and pushing a major production into next year.
March 10, 2009 - Penumbra's artistic director Lou Bellamy and actors join Midmorning to talk about Lorraine Hansberry's play, A Raisin in the Sun.