IN: Timothy James Pawlenty (; born November 27, 1960) is an American businessman and politician who is president and CEO of Financial Services Roundtable, a Washington, D.C.-based industry advocacy group. He was a Republican politician who served as the 39th Governor of Minnesota (2003-2011). He previously served in the Minnesota House of Representatives (1993-2003), where he was majority leader for two terms.

Since the Minnesota Constitution prohibits state-run gambling outside of Native territory, Pawlenty proposed negotiating with Minnesota's 11 tribes over profit-sharing of their casinos. Legislators also pushed a proposal to turn Canterbury Park horse track into a racino. The plan was poorly received by Northern Tribes who would operate part of the racino, citing reluctance to compete with other tribes. Tribes with casinos opposed the expanded gambling and some legislators objected on moral grounds that the state shouldn't exploit problem gamblers. Politicians in heavy tribal areas feared losing campaign-finance sources if they supported the plan. Delays by the Legislature ended with the bill being pulled from committee. Tribes had spent millions lobbying legislatures in 2004.  Pawlenty worked throughout 2006 to fund a Minnesota Twins baseball stadium in Minneapolis. The resulting Minnesota Twins-Hennepin County ballpark bill called for an increased county sales tax which passed the state legislature and was symbolically signed in at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. The majority of Hennepin County commissioners did not feel a referendum was necessary to approve the sales tax because of the delay it would cause. Pawlenty and the Legislature agreed, citing 10 years already of the project's debate, and exempted the county from state law requiring one in the bill.  In June 2006, Pawlenty signed a $999.9-million public works bill that included funding for additional work on the Northstar Commuter rail line (a change in position from reservations about the idea he initially expressed), an expanded Faribault prison, a bioscience building at the University of Minnesota, and science facilities at Minnesota State University in Mankato. The bill also funded a $26-million expansion of the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management.  In 2011, Pawlenty shut down an Islamic finance program, that was part of a larger program to increase home ownership in Minnesota, and his spokesperson said that the program accommodated the Muslim ban on interest. Adam Sorensen from TIME questioned whether this was a case of double standards, pointing out New York's kosher food regulations, Blue Laws that prohibit alcohol sales on Sundays, and Pawlenty's own creation of "The Governor's Council On Faith-Based And Community Initiatives".

Did it pass?

OUT: Tribes with casinos opposed the expanded gambling and some legislators objected


IN: Saint Isidore of Seville (; Latin: Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 - 4 April 636), a scholar and, for over three decades, Archbishop of Seville, is widely regarded as the last of the Fathers of the Church, as the 19th-century historian Montalembert put it in an oft-quoted phrase, "The last scholar of the ancient world." At a time of disintegration of classical culture, and aristocratic violence and illiteracy, he was involved in the conversion of the Arian Visigothic kings to Catholicism, both assisting his brother Leander of Seville, and continuing after his brother's death. He was influential in the inner circle of Sisebut, Visigothic king of Hispania. Like Leander, he played a prominent role in the Councils of Toledo and Seville.

Isidore was the first Christian writer to try to compile a summa of universal knowledge, in his most important work, the Etymologiae (taking its title from the method he uncritically used in the transcription of his era's knowledge). It is also known by classicists as the Origines (the standard abbreviation being Orig). This encyclopedia -- the first such Christian epitome--formed a huge compilation of 448 chapters in 20 volumes.  In it, as Isidore entered his own terse digest of Roman handbooks, miscellanies and compendia, he continued the trend towards abridgements and summaries that had characterised Roman learning in Late Antiquity. In the process, many fragments of classical learning are preserved which otherwise would have been hopelessly lost; "in fact, in the majority of his works, including the Origines, he contributes little more than the mortar which connects excerpts from other authors, as if he was aware of his deficiencies and had more confidence in the stilus maiorum than his own" his translator Katherine Nell MacFarlane remarks;  Some of these fragments were lost in the first place because Isidore's work was so highly regarded--Braulio called it quecunque fere sciri debentur, "practically everything that it is necessary to know"-- that it superseded the use of many individual works of the classics themselves, which were not recopied and have therefore been lost: "all secular knowledge that was of use to the Christian scholar had been winnowed out and contained in one handy volume; the scholar need search no further".  The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent centuries of the Middle Ages. It was the most popular compendium in medieval libraries. It was printed in at least ten editions between 1470 and 1530, showing Isidore's continued popularity in the Renaissance. Until the 12th century brought translations from Arabic sources, Isidore transmitted what western Europeans remembered of the works of Aristotle and other Greeks, although he understood only a limited amount of Greek. The Etymologiae was much copied, particularly into medieval bestiaries.

Are there any other interesting aspects about this article?

OUT:
The fame of this work imparted a new impetus to encyclopedic writing, which bore abundant fruit in the subsequent