After nine hours of actual debate. . .thirteen hours if you count the four-hour recess that kicked this entire thing off. . .the Minnesota Senate passed the bill for a new Minnesota Vikings' stadium in the early hours of Wednesday morning in St. Paul.

There were a bunch of different amendments to this bill, including seeing user fees being added to the bill. . .and re-voted on. . .and re-voted on again, when it was subsequently removed. The requirement for a referendum in the city of Minneapolis was added (we think) to the bill, only to be removed a couple of hours later. In the end, however, the bill passed with 38 "yes" votes (four more than the "magic" number of 34) and 28 "no" votes, with one member abstaining.

The passage means that the bill has to go into a conference committee, where members of both the House of Representatives and the Senate will hammer out the differences between the two versions of the bill so that a final bill can be voted on by both houses of the Legislature again.

We're halfway home on this thing, ladies and gentlemen. We'll have more on this tomorrow. . .I need to be to work at about 5 AM Central time, so it's about time for me to turn in. Go ahead and party it up here, and make sure the last person out turns out the lights.