The Longfellow man who was severely injured last October when a manhole cover blew off the sidewalk near his home, says the city has done little to prevent another accident from happening.

“The sewer is blowing more now than ever before,” Peter Kadlec told Ryan North in the Longfellow-Nokomis Messenger.

Three Minneapolis high school plays have been selected as part of the Hennepin Theatre Trust’s Spotlight Musical Theater program.

The three plays—Southwest High’s production of Hair, DeLaSalle’s Fiddler on the Roof, and Inter-District Downtown School’s The Wiz—are among 24 performances from around the metro area that will vie for Spotlight Awards during a June showcase. The awards will be given for acting, choreography, music, and overall production, reports Anna Pratt in the Southwest Journal.

Chris Stewart, who on Tuesday won election to the Minneapolis School Board, yesterday admitted that he and some friends created a replica Tammy Lee for Congress Web site laden with racial epithets to lampoon Fifth District Congressman Martin Sabo’s support for Lee, the Independence Party candidate.

The Tammy Lee congressional campaign has traced what it calls a “racist, hate Web site” designed to parody Lee’s site to new Minneapolis School Board member Chris Stewart.

The site, which was taken down yesterday after Lee campaign staff discovered its origins, uses racist language to lampoon Rep. Martin Sabo’s endorsement of Lee, who finished third in yesterday’s Fifth District congressional race. “Tammy Lee is the Best Choice to Replace Congressman Martin Sabo,” the site reads. “After all, she's white - just like us, and that means we can trust her. We should all agree that a Negro should never replace a great statesman like Martin Sabo.”

Nine days prior to his presumptive endorsement at the Independence Party’s June 24 state convention, gubernatorial candidate Peter Hutchinson and his campaign staff organized a coming out party at Metro State University in St. Paul for what he called “Team Minnesota.” There, in the modest student union on the bluffs overlooking downtown St. Paul, Hutchinson introduced his running mate, Dr. Maureen Reed, as well as his choices for attorney general, secretary of state, and auditor.

An attempt to dictate what style of music a Dinkytown restaurant can play sparked a lively debate on free speech at Friday’s City Council meeting.

Third Ward Council Member Diane Hofstede sought to amend a liquor license agreement between the city and the Loring Pasta Bar that would stipulate that any live music played at the bar on Mondays and Tuesdays would be the same style as that which is performed there the rest of the week. But that struck 10th Ward Council Member Ralph Remington, who represents dozens of bars in the Uptown area, as unreasonable.

None of the state’s congressional races has featured the pyrotechnics that have characterized the 5th Congressional race. DFL endorsee Keith Ellison survived a brutal primary challenge from his own party, during which he had to defend his earlier connections with the Nation of Islam, and explain a series of embarrassing revelations ranging from unpaid parking tickets to tardy tax filings. Then, a day after his surprisingly easy September primary victory, he faced another round of negative campaigning from Republican Alan Fine.

Video footage showed Wayne Reyes, who was shot and killed by police Saturday night after a brief car chase in South Minneapolis, threatened officers with a sawed-off shotgun, according to a statement released by police Tuesday

Police shot and killed a 42-year-old Minneapolis man Saturday night after he had stabbed his girlfriend and fled the scene.

The victim, who was not identified pending a Medical Examiner’s investigation, allegedly stabbed his 40-year-old girlfriend at her home on the 4500 block of Snelling Avenue in South Minneapolis. When squad cars arrived at the scene, the suspect fled in his pickup.

The proposed University of Minnesota football stadium will occupy a 40-acre site in the heart of Stadium Village when it’s completed in 2009. But to hear university officials who presented a complicated plan for rerouting traffic around the site at City Hall on Tuesday it’s barely a blip on the landscape.