As our economy continues to recover, manufacturers across Minnesota are facing a surprising challenge.

Over the past year, the national spotlight has focused on the deeply tragic stories of young people who were so severely bullied based on their real or perceived sexual orientation that they took the desperate step of ending their own lives.

Just six months after President Obama signed health reform into law, Minnesotans are already beginning to reap its benefits.

Last December, when thousands of Hmong in Thailand were forcibly repatriated to Laos, some Minnesotans may not have fully understood why I took the actions of these two foreign governments so seriously.

This year, we're commemorating the 100th anniversary of the St. Paul Rotary Club - and it's an honor to help you celebrate a century of service and civic participation.

"Today, a blog can load as fast as the Wall Street Journal — and, if the blog is good, it can get more traffic than any media conglomerate."

It was a bad day for democracy when, in January, the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United that corporations had the same free speech rights as human beings.

The Senate must show compassion toward those still out of work and support spending programs that will help us emerge from this downturn.

On my fifth day in office, after I was sworn in, I found myself taking part in the confirmation hearings for now-Justice Sonia Sotomayor. And now almost exactly one year into my term I will be taking part in the confirmation hearings for Solicitor General Elena Kagan.

Video and full transcript after the jump.

Thank you all for being here tonight, and for the good work you do to defend the Constitution and the American values it represents.

It is an honor to address this convention.

Speakers at past ACS gatherings have included Supreme Court Justices, Attorneys General, other cabinet secretaries, federal judges, and distinguished legal scholars.

So tonight I guess we’ll finally get an answer to the question: “What do Stephen Breyer, Laurence Tribe, and Al Franken have in common?”

Last week, the Senate passed an amendment I authored that ends the conflict of interest in Wall Street’s credit rating agency system. This problem was a key reason for our economic collapse and fixing it will go a long way toward ensuring it never happens again. Credit rating agencies are supposed to be independent, non-biased companies that evaluate the risk of complex investments so that investors can make informed decisions. Unfortunately, in recent years, credit rating agencies have faced a conflict of interest between making money and maintaining their independence.

I thought I’d start by telling you how I got here. 

Not here today.  Today I took 94. 

But here to Minnesota.  When I was four years old, my dad moved our family from New Jersey to Albert Lea to open a small business - a quilting factory. Quilting is the material that’s used for the lining of winter coats. My dad had never had a career as such – he didn’t graduate from high school. But my grandfather – my mom’s dad – had a quilting factory out East and wanted to open one in the Midwest, and we ended up in Albert Lea, where my dad started this company called Mid-Continent Quilting.

All of the benefits I’ve mentioned so far are available within the first year, but there are even more to come.

In the years ahead, we’ll begin to tackle one of the most flawed elements of the current system: Medicare reimbursement. Our current system punishes high-quality Minnesota providers, like the Mayo Clinic, by paying them less because they provide efficient, lower-cost care. The new law includes something I fought for with my colleagues Senator Klobuchar and Congresswoman McCollum to reward value – not volume – in Medicare.  This is good for Minnesota and will help slow costs nationwide.

There was a major legislative accomplishment in Washington last week, and it’s getting less attention than it deserves because it isn’t national health care reform. Last week, we made it less expensive for working families to send their kids to college.  By cutting out the middleman from the student lending system, we were able to increase funding for Pell Grants and make it easier for college graduates to repay their loans.  And, not only are these measures fully paid for, they’ll also reduce the deficit.

From Sen. Franken's Op-Ed in the St. Cloud Times (full text below):

I want to talk about jobs.

Lately, it seems that everyone says they want to talk about jobs, and that we'll get around to tackling jobs next week, or the week after. But I'd like to kick off the discussion right now.

Senator Franken delivered remarks to the Innocence Project on November 14th. The innocence Project was founded to assist prisoners who could be proven innocent through DNA testing. To date, 245 people in the United States have been exonerated by DNA testing, including 17 who served time on death row. These people served an average of 13 years in prison before exoneration and release.

Speaking of the need for net neutrality, Sen. Franken delivered the keynote address to the Future of Music Conference on Monday.