The Metrodome's Ripped Roof
The winter storm that hit the Upper Midwest this weekend and dumped 17.1 inches of snow on the Twin Cities was reportedly the nastiest storm to hit these parts since 1991. While the wind howled and the temperatures plummeted on Saturday, The UpTake provided live, looking-out-the-window coverage and blogging, and even video of a near accident on I-94 near the Mississippi River. Yesterday morning we awoke to the news that the Metrodome roof had deflated and partly caved in. With the roads still nearly impassible, our star videographer Craig Stellmacher caught a cab there and provided some of the first live video footage outside and inside the Vikings football stadium, including a press conference during which it was announced that tonight’s Vikings-New York Giants game would be moved to Detroit. Global climate change, and how it makes weather more extreme, is apparently bad news for football too!
Elsewhere in the Twin Cities this frigid weekend, activists from the Women Against Military Madness “Tackle Torture at The Top” group huddled in orange jump suits in front of the Minneapolis Federal Court House on Friday to commemorate Human Rights Day. And Bill Sorem writes that fortunes aren’t getting any warmer for victims of the FBI’s Sept. 24 raids on local peace activists. Three of the original targets have been issued new subpoenas to appear before a Grand Jury in Chicago around Jan. 25. Those targeted lost cell phones, computers and personal documents including email contacts, pictures and family memorabilia (including a box from one person’s recently deceased grandfather). And Bruce Nestor of The National Lawyers Guild said that in today’s legal climate the nightmare is going to get worse.
In Washington, President Obama used his weekly online address to explain that his middle-class tax cut compromise (unpopular with many liberals) is not a game of chess. And if you haven’t yet seen former President Bill Clinton hold court with the press during a spontaneous news conference on Friday, watch it here. You’ll get a kick out of it, and perhaps ask yourself, who’s really president.
Today at 5:30 we’ll be at a WikiLeaks support rally at Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office to capture tape and then play it back later on The UpTake.
