In an email, a reader mentioned in passing that Republican Minnesota Attorney General candidate Doug Wardlow had once been a blogger. Intrigued, we went looking for evidence, but we didn't have to work at all for the story.

The tale is hiding in plain sight at the MN Political Roundtable, a progressive blog, under the general headline Doug Warlow?[sic] Attorney General? A Very Bad Choice, online since September 3, 2018. Perhaps that unfortunate typo in the headline is what kept us from finding it before.

Update October 25: The ever-excellent Hannah Jones has more at the City Pages in Doug Wardlow, is this your extremely conservative blog from 2004?. [end update]

Even more interesting: blogger Dave Mindeman is recycling a post from 2010, presumably from the MNpact blog, which he so diligently kept until August of this year.

Mindeman writes:

But there is one other sad commentary about Doug Wardlow. As an officer of the court, he is sadly lacking in ethical values. I’m going to take you back to 2010 and reissue a blog post I put together on the background of Wardlow. He once clerked for the Minnesota Supreme Court and I was given information about a blog he was posting to while clerking for the court. His post were partisan Republican and even referred to electoral races in which he trashed Democratic candidates. This is an ethical violation of court procedure. No partisan writing or public pronouncement are allowed. Wardlow tried to hide his posting by supposedly making his blog anonymous – but people that worked with him were disturbed enough that they outed this devious methodology. The following is that 2010 Post in its entirety...

Here are some not-so-hot-off-the-press tidbits from yesteryear:

Doug Wardlow is the GOP District 38B candidate for the State House. He has an impressive resume. Here is part of his LinkedIn profile: Law Clerk

Minnesota Supreme Court

(Judiciary Industry)

August 2004-July 2005 (1 year)

Law clerk to the Hon. Justice G. Barry Anderson It’s only part of an impressive history. Graduated Cum Laude from Georgetown Univ Law Center. CALI award for best examination in Constitutional Law and Jursprudence. Currently works for Parker Rosen. But let’s get back to ethics….and a blog called The Rostra. (The Rostra blog can still be accessed but some posts are missing as well as the Bush/Cheney ’04 ad at the end). The Rostra blog was dedicated to conservative commentary and political philosophy. Its main blogger used the pseudonym of Marius, who’s background is stated in the About Me section: Marius holds a degree in government and political theory from Georgetown University and a J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. He resides in Minnesota. I have copies of blog posts from The Rostra which have dates of February 14, 2005 to March 3rd, 2005. Some of these posts are philosophical but some are very political. As you can see, those dates coincide with the time that Doug Wardlow was a judicial law clerk with the Minnesota Supreme Court, and I have people who tell me that Marius IS Doug Wardlow. ...

The progressive blogger looked at several posts from Wardlow. Go read them in Doug Warlow?[sic] Attorney General? A Very Bad Choice.

We've been strolling through posts archived in the Internet Way Back Machine--and there's much to ponder in Wardlow's style (we're reminded of proto-hipster God-fearing conservative philosophy majors at Hamline in the late 1970s, though they would not have embraced the artwork).

In CNN Sovereignty, for instance, we marvel at the prescience of Wardlow equating opposition to the re-election of George W. Bush to stability in Iraq:

The media's all too obvious agenda to minimalize the political effects of our successes in Iraq makes one wonder what they desire more -- American victory in Iraq and a stable democracy for a long-oppressed people[link added], or electoral defeat for George Bush.

Also in 2004, Good News for the President in Minnesota:

According to a MPR/Mason-Dixon poll released today, 64% of Minnesotans believe the President was right to fight the war in Iraq. While these Minnesotans are split roughly evenly as to whether or not the Administration has been doing 'generally the right thing' in handling the aftermath of the war, nearly two-thirds of the state's population nevertheless think it was important to rid the region of Saddam and liberate the country. What's more, 48% of Minnesotans believe that Iraq will be better off because of the war, while only 11% believe Iraq will be worse off. . . .

Well, that was prophetic. As is his conclusion in 2004's Fear of the Islamist Threat:

And they fight us in vain -- a new Iraq is emerging, an Iraq with a new, bright future. We must stay the course, even though we are disturbed and frightened by the extent of the evil now revealed to us. But as we listen to politicians playing on our fears and lamenting our 'provocation' of the opposition, we must not forget that is far better to face your enemy openly than to proceed in ignorant bliss.

In McCain-Feingold: The End of Political Free Speech, and the Erosion of the Rule of Law, we see how fond Wardlow is of the notion that money equals free speech. Not a fond of big money in politics? Wardlow might not be your guy:

But this is where we are. Money is not speech, said the Supreme Court in McConnell, and therefore it may be regulated. But, as Justice Scalia pointed out, how is saying that money is not speech any different from saying that paper is not speech, and then passing an act that all paper must bear a stamp indicating that tax has been payed? How is saying that money is not speech any different from saying that book binding and publishing is not speech, and then regulating who may and may not bind and publish books? There is no difference.

There's this view of voter turnout in Single Day Elections:

Proponents of plans to do away with our traditional election day, such as those who support Oregon's move to mail-based voting, believe that calling all voters to precincts over the course of a single day is outdated and unnecessary. Their goal is generally to increase turnout and make voting easier. Higher turnout is not necessarily a virtue if it is sparked not by voter education and real civic concern on the part of those casting ballots, but rather by the goading of voter turnout advocates combined with easy access to balloting. If people are too lazy to show up at the polls over the course of twelve hours, it says something about the intensity of their support for their chosen candidate.

Take that, early voters--and rural Minnesota townships that conduct mail-in balloting. Minnesotans have embraced early voting in 2018; we'd not call that laziness, but enthusiastic good citizenship.

We anticipate more attention to Wardlow the blogger as the election approaches; perhaps someone will find the link in the Way Back Machine to his post about torture. Heckova guy.

Screengrab: The Rostra's banner.

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