St. Paul, Minn. — Both of Minnesota’s U.S. Senators will take part in confirmation hearings that begin Monday over President Obama’s second Supreme Court nominee.

Democrats Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar, who serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee, both supported Obama’s first nominee, Sonia Sotomayor.

Both have also made positive comments about the president’s latest nominee, Elena Kagan.

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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) – U.S. Sen. Al Franken says he plans to ask Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan how she would approach legal issues raised by Comcast Corp.’s proposed purchase of NBC Universal.

Franken sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee that will start hearings on Kagan’s confirmation on Monday.

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Sen. Al Franken introduced legislation Tuesday to ensure that the children of undocumented workers caught up in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are not left abandoned. In a press release about the bill, Franken and fellow sponsor Sen. Herb Kohl of Wisconsin, offered several stories from Minnesota raids where children were left to fend for themselves — at times for a week or more — after their parents were arrested.

“One second-grader in Worthington came home that night to find his two-year old brother alone and his mother and father missing,” the senators wrote. “For the next week, the second-grader stayed home to care for his brother while his grandmother traveled to Worthington to meet them.”

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The Duluth International Airport is getting $5 million for improvements, including construction of the new terminal building.

The Department of Transportation funding was announced today by Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and Rep. James Oberstar, all D-Minn.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has become a safe haven for the rich and powerful as part of a careful conservative campaign, and a dead end for regular folks with grievances, Sen. Al Franken said on the Senate floor yesterday (video after the jump).

He invoked the case of Jamie Leigh Jones, a contractor with KBR who was drugged, gang raped by male colleagues in Iraq, mocked and then locked in a shipping container, to make his point.

Jones couldn’t take her case to court because her contract forced her to settle all grievances through arbitration rather than the legal system. That contract was made possible by the Supreme Court’s 2001 decision in Circuit City v. Adams, Franken said.

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U.S. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn) said officials from the northern Minnesota City of Roseau have agreed to his request to lend their disaster-relief expertise – developed after the 2002 Roseau flood – to help Wadena recover from last week’s tornado. The Senator said it is an example of how volunteers from dozens of Minnesota communities have come to Wadena’s aid.

On Monday, Sen. Franken’s office made the request of Roseau Mayor Jeff Pelowski, who led his city through several years of flood recovery efforts after rising waters from the Roseau River damaged homes, downtown businesses, public infrastructure, and farms in and around the Roseau area. Pelowski agreed to Sen. Franken’s request and sent two key city officials with extensive disaster recovery experience to Wadena Tuesday, including Roseau’s Community Development Coordinator, who also served as the city’s Flood Recovery Director, and the City Superintendent.

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Al Franken today introduced a bill aimed at helping the children of those swept up in immigration raids to avoid falling through the cracks as their parents face possible deportation.

The bill would require the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency to create guidelines for dealing with children who have been separated from their parents and consider the children’s best interests in proceeding. Franken emphasized that immigration laws must be followed but enforcement has consequences for the children of illegal immigrants that also need to be addressed.

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Yesterday was the last day to file comments on the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger, and a number of individuals and companies weighed in.

Among those filing comments in opposition to the deal were Senator Al Franken (D-MN), and satellite companies DirecTV and DISH Network.

All three made access to content on the internet a key point of their arguments.

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Sens. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Mark Begich (D-Alaska) introduced the Local Jobs for America Act (S. 3500), last week, a companion to legislation that was introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives (H.R. 4812) earlier this year.

Both the House and Senate bills call for much-needed assistance to cities and towns as they seek to protect essential services and avoid additional layoffs of municipal workers — a harsh reality many local governments are now facing as they enter the 2011 fiscal cycle.

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Sen. Al Franken spoke out Thursday against what he sees as an increasingly corporatist and conservative Supreme Court at a speech to the American Constitution Society. Franken told the group of progressive-leaning lawyers that in the wake of Citizens United and through the efforts of conservative groups like the Federalist Society, the high court has left out the average American in favor of corporations.

“I mean, I don’t speak Latin. But unless stare decisis means ‘overturn stuff,’ then maybe it’s time for conservatives to stop calling other people ‘dangerous radicals,’” he said.

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