Here are my observations and opinions from my select news of the day.

WERE YOU WATCHING?  Did you hear how Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz cleverly deflected the attention from his mishandling of the protests at his Sunday press conference by naming Attorney General Keith Ellison to take the lead in prosecutions related to the death of George Floyd? 

Missing was the guv brushing his hands together … there, it’s out of my hands.

Keith Ellison, our attorney general of Minnesota, needs to lead this case,” Walz said, adding that he made the decision after talking to the Floyd family.  “They wanted the system to work for them.  They wanted to believe that there was trust, and they wanted to believe that the facts would be heard and justice would be served.”

Calling in an outside prosecutor is extremely rare.  They didn’t have the trust in Hennepin County prosecutor Michael Freeman.  Civil rights activists win.

Isn’t that wonderful.  The Floyd’s get to choose their own prosecutor.

Members of the Minneapolis City Council also supported Walz’s appointment of Ellison, referring to a working group on reducing police-involved deadly force incidents he had earlier formed.  Obviously, that working group was a waste of time.

So now justice for Floyd is in the hands of Ellison.

It’s important to look at Ellison’s record.  What has he done to ease the relationship between law enforcement and minorities?

After getting his law degree at the University of Minnesota Law School, he worked for three years with a local law firm as a litigator specializing in civil rights, employment and criminal defense law.

Ellison became the executive director of the nonprofit Legal Rights Center in Minneapolis, specializing in the defense of indigent clients.

In 2002 he was elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives, and served on the Local Government & Metropolitan Affairs Committee.  Reelected in 2004, he served on the Civil Law & Elections Committee and the Public Safety & Finance Committee.

It was his opportunity to help make a difference for Minnesota’s minorities, but he had his own troubles, failing to pay all or part of his income taxes in five separate years between 1992 and 2000, forcing the state and IRS to put liens on his home.

No matter.  He won election in 2006 to the U.S. House of Representatives with 56 percent of the vote; the first black to represent Minnesota.  He pledged to focus on “relief and justice for the middle class.”

In 2016, Ellison was endorsed by then Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to be the next chairman of the Democrat National Committee.  Obama loyalists were uneasy with him and Obama’s former labor secretary Tom Perez won the job. While Perez offered a co-chair position for him, Ellison decided not to seek reelection to Congress.

Instead, he sought the Minnesota attorney general position, and won by more than 100,000 votes in November 2018 despite fighting charges of domestic abuse of a girl-friend.  He became the first Muslim and first black to be elected to a statewide office in Minnesota.

So, after three decades of service, private and public, what has Ellison brought to the state and Minneapolis to warrant his trust?  Why does Minneapolis still suffer from police enforcement issues?

Incidentally, Ellison’s son, Jeremiah, a member of the Minneapolis city council, declared his support for ANTIFA @jeremiah4north on Sunday.

THEN THERE’S JOHN HARRINGTON, the black Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Public Safety since January 2019.

Appointed by Governor Walz, he has 43 years of law enforcement experience, including 15 years as chief of the St. Paul Police Department and chief of the Metro Transit Police, Minneapolis-St. Paul.

Between law enforcement positions, Harrington served as president and CEO of Ujamaa Place, a St. Paul nonprofit organization that serves black men, who are economically disadvantaged and have experienced repeated cycles of failure.

MINNEAPOLIS’ CHIEF OF POLICE is Medaria Arradondo, a fifth-generation Minnesota resident, who joined the department in 1989 as a patrol officer and worked his way up through the ranks until being named chief in 2017.  A Mexican, Arradondo is the first person of color to serve as the chief.

As a minority with 30 years of service, what has he done to mitigate police brutality?

The citizens of Minneapolis should be taking a hard look at their elected officials who were unprepared for what has transpired.  Namely, the committee that was supposed to provide oversight of policies related to programs promoting civil rights and equity, and another committee proving oversight of public safety and emergency management.

How is an officer with 19 complaints against him permitted to continue as a member of the Minneapolis Police Department?

THE FLOYD FAMILY not only went “prosecutor shopping,” they went “medical examiner” shopping, too, not satisfied with the findings of the autopsy performed by the county ME.  They hired the noted forensics expert Dr. Michael Baden to do an independent autopsy.  It appears that has set up an ME vs ME quarrel over death by traumatic asphyxia.

MEANWHILE, the media continues to call for President Trump to address the nation, saying that he hasn’t been empathetic.  During his speech Sunday at the Kennedy Space Center he expressed his sympathy to the Floyd family, supported peaceful protestors and his disgust of rioters and looters.

THE ARIZONA REPUBLIC’S lightweight editorial columnist Elvia Diaz writes, “Local and national leaders have miserably failed African-Americans and they’re still failing to hear them now.”

She knows that’s not true, but she has an anti-Trump agenda.

President Trump’s creation of a robust economy lowered minority unemployment to record lows, while wages went up.  And he has vowed to restore the nation’s economy for all post Covid-19.

He worked with minorities to pass the criminal justice reform legislation.  Collaborating with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), he has funded opportunity zones.  And, he provided $35 million in funding to black colleges and universities.

Yet, the leftist Diaz continues to spew her fake news (lies) saying, “political leaders must begin meaningful justice system reform and create better opportunities for the poor, many of whom happen to be minorities.”

Diaz refers to Trump’s “lack of empathy,” knowing that he commuted the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a black woman who had served more than 20 years for a first-time offense.

This disgraceful journalist, Elvia Diaz, is a member of the Arizona Republic’s editorial board.  What does that tell you about the integrity of the paper?

May God continue to bless the United States of America.