I’d met Rowley in 2006, at her campaign fundraiser at my parents’ house. At the time, she seemed fierce and friendly, with a somewhat prim persona akin to her plaid-skirted appearance on the cover of TIME four years before. Now, a comfortably rumpled Rowley sidled into a courtroom seat with the more relaxed bearing of a street-level activist and occasional blogger. She had a stack of “Defend the RNC8!” postcards to pass out, and a lot to say.

Rowley recently submitted data requests about law enforcement during the 2008 Republican National Convention to the FBI (via the Freedom of Information Act) and to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s and St. Paul Police departments (through the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act). She expects to learn whether the surveillance and policing of 60 to 70 political organizations in St. Paul last September to protest the Republican National Convention (RNC)– as well as the surveillance of another 80 or so legal aids, independent media and artistic performance groups — was overly broad.

If it wasn’t, Rowley said that news will come as a relief to people like those she knows in CODEPINK who say they were pulled over repeatedly around the time of the RNC. But if the wide net she’s cast does snare examples of extra-constitutional overreaching, they’ll go into a book she’s working on with author William John Cox.

Rowley regaled me and Minnesota Public Radio’s Laura Yuen, who sat nearby, with stories about her early days as an FBI agent in the early 1980s. Hoover had died almost a decade (and several reform efforts) earlier, but his ghost still hovered over the Bureau. It was Rowley’s job to respond to the very sort of data requests she now has pending about the RNC. As we watched the defense attorneys from the National Lawyers Guild kibitz at the front of the courtroom, Rowley recalled that as an FBI agent she sat among stacks of files on the Guild’s members — a throwback to Hoover’s conviction that the Guild was a communist organization.

Back then, every new lead meant a new file, Rowley said. If folksinger Burl Ives threw a party, the next day everyone in attendance had an FBI file. She suspects that won’t be the case with the 150 groups about whom she’s requested records.

Rowley said she was always proud that the FBI fought public corruption as its top priority (it’s now the agency’s fourth priority, according to an FBI spokesman I talked to separately). I asked her about reports that the FBI is looking into allegations that businessman Nasser Kazeminy funneled money to U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman through a business he controls in Texas and Coleman’s wife’s employer in Minnesota. Does the FBI really open different levels of cases with some (like the Coleman cash question, reportedly) termed mere inquiries while others are full-fledged investigations? Rowley, who retired in 2004, said that in her day two levels of investigations did exist but the lesser was rarely used, and in any case the difference between them was nominal at best — you either had a case worth pursuing or you didn’t.

Rowley spoke in an elevated whisper — this being a courtroom, although the judge never appeared — that later put me in mind of the lower, hoarser whisper that actor Hal Holbrooke used in the “All the President’s Men” film to portray of Mark “Deep Throat” Felt, who had been Hoover’s second-in-command at the FBI. Felt died Thursday, having revealed himself as Deep Throat but taking with him any key to the internal contradictions of a man who helped engineer both the illegal surveillance on dissidents and the downfall of a president who put such dirty tricks to his own political ends. Next time I see her, I’ll ask how Rowley — who put her own livelihood at risk to root out wrongdoing within the FBI — how she felt about Felt.

The postcard Rowley was handing out this week.

At a Friday afternoon press conference, Pawlenty unveiled his unallotment decisions, announcing that cuts will come from local government, human services and higher education. Here’s the rundown of cutbacks: $66 million in local aid to cities, $44 million local aid to counties, a $73 million reduction in human services spending, $40 million reduction in appropriations to the University of Minnesota and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities, a $40 million reduction in state agency spending (10 percent of operating budgets), $4 million in unspent funds from the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency Fund, a $2.2 million voluntary reduction of the Legislature’s unspent funds, $1.5 million reduction in the 21st Century Minerals Account and a $700,000 reduction in the Minnesota Investment Fund.

An additional $155 million will come from the state’s reserve.

“Unlike the federal government, we can’t deficit-spend,” he said. “We can’t print Monopoly money in the basement to fix the deficit… Families across Minnesota are tightening their belts, and businesses are tightening their belts, and they expect government to do the same. We intend to make sure that happens.”

Cities and counties will bear the burden of the budget cuts.

Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller released a statement on the cuts, “We thought that across-the-board cuts would be a fair solution. The governor’s cuts fall harder on cities and counties across the state and could hurt police and fire protection. We look forward to working with the governor to find the best possible solution to fixing this historic deficit.”

Mayor Chris Coleman talked about St. Paul’s reaction to the cuts. “It is clear in today’s announcement that the Governor has come to at least a partial realization that the success of cities and our ability to provide basic services is the backbone of our economy and our quality of life in Minnesota,” he said. “I appreciate that the Governor took the time to meet with us on this issue. These cuts are painful, and force Saint Paul to make more tough choices among the services we provide. We will do what we’ve always done. We will rise to this challenge and overcome it. We are also eager to return to the table with the Governor and the Legislature to be a part of the solution for the State’s budget crisis.”

In human services, Pawlenty outlined cuts of $28 million to the Medical Education Research Costs, and a $10 million reduction in payments to hospitals for patients on Medical Assistance, specifically add-on services.

A number of unspent grants in human services will be eliminated:

• $17 million - Consolidated Chemical Dependency Treatment Fund Balance
• $2 million - New Mental Health Grants
• $6 million - Mental Health Grants (to be shifted to the next fiscal year)
• $98,000 - Community Service/Service Development (CSSD) Grants
• $2.717 million - Growth in Medical Assistance (MA) waiver programs
• $250,000 - Housing Grants
• $6 million - Adoption Assistance/Relative Custody Assistance
• $491,000 - Patient incentive grants
• $200,000 - Outreach bonus payments

The new charges are conspiracy to riot in the second degree (without the terrorism enhancement); conspiracy to damage property in furtherance of terrorism; and conspiracy to damage property (without terrorism enhancement). The eight were arrested before the Sept. 1 start of the RNC.

Something else seems to have been discussed in Rosas’ chambers, but the parties weren’t talking about it afterward. Attorneys for the defendants and Janet Hafner, a spokeswoman for Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner, said the judge asked them not to disclose details to the press. That request — which was not a formal gag order — was apparently breached almost immediately when defense attorneys discovered that Gaertner’s office had issued a statement, prompting the RNC8 attorneys to rush back to the judge’s chambers en masse. The result was that Gaertner’s office pulled back its release, which reads in part:

Contrary to the assertions of some individuals supporting them, the defendants are not being singled out for prosecution for political reasons, or to silence the free speech we all cherish. Plain and simple, they face these charges because they broke laws that apply to them, and to all others, equally. …The evidence shows that these defendants, rather than being victims of oppression, planned to deprive others both inside and outside the convention hall of their free speech rights through acts of violence.

The RNC8 Support Committee released its own statement, mostly prepared before Wednesday’s court date, asserting that the newly added felony counts amounted to “prosecutorial games meant to cloud public perception and to ensnare the 8 in a web of overlapping charges. … [T]he Prosecutor’s office is attempting to obtain a court order to keep the RNC 8 from sharing information about their case.” Gaertner’s retracted press release, the statement said, engaged in “defaming our character in an attempt to taint the jury pool.”

More than 50 people were in the courtroom, including the eight defendants (who stuffed themselves onto a single bench in the gallery), at least two of their fathers, 14 lawyers, three deputies, several reporters and one baby. Victor the bomb-sniffing dog searched the courtroom as people arrived, prompting one defense attorney to voice a tongue-in-cheek protest: “I find that offensive — as if we wouldn’t tell our clients to leave their bombs at home.”

The hearing came on the heels of a series of activity in support of RNC protesters facing charges, including Vernon Rodriguez of California, who was charged with a felony and whose trial was postponed by four weeks on Monday, according to a courtroom clerk. An announced effort to flood Gaertner’s office with phone calls demanding she drop charges didn’t amount to a noticeable uptick in call volume, according to the main desk receptionist at Gaertner’s office. But some in the courtroom today were still discussing a protest against St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman at a downtown restaurant; that protest succeeded in generating at least several minutes of excitement. (Gaertner has announced her candidacy for governor, and Coleman is considering a run for that office.)

Whatever went on behind closed doors, the mood was light enough that one of the eight young defendants performed a handstand and a backflip while waiting for the attorneys to return from the judge’s chambers.

Minnesota’s ongoing statewide U.S. Senate recount means that political lawn sign season is into extra innings also — even amid snowdrifts and minus-30-degree windchills. You see signs from the Senate race still out in yards around the Twin Cities. Mostly I see Al Franken signs, but presumably there are Norm Coleman signs to be found as well, in the right neighborhoods. It’s a tradition with this Senate seat — people left signs up for the late U.S. Sen. Paul Wellstone years after his death shortly before the 2002 election.

When I pulled over to take a picture of this lawn sign today in St. Paul, a man in insulated coveralls was shoveling the driveway. Would he mind my tromping through his fresh snow for a photo of his yard sign?

“You’re not the first one to ask,” he said. “It’s not a campaign sign, by the way. Campaign signs are supposed to be removed 10 days after the election. This sign is informational.”

Details after the jump, including the names of those whose trials start this week.

CRASS tells the Minnesota Independent that trials start this week for Vernon Rodrigues (felony); Shannon Alsup, Ashley Majer, Lisa Mirkovich, Loren Yglecias (gross misdemeanors); and Jared Collins, Leif Johnson, Thomas Kamen and Andrew Wilson (misdemeanors).

The protest against Coleman is set for 4:30 p.m. today at Mancini’s Steak House, 531 W. Seventh St., St. Paul.

The call-in to Gaertner’s office is set for  9 a.m.–5 p.m. Tuesday and 8 a.m.–1 p.m. Wednesday. That effort leads up to the next court date for the eight people arrested before the convention began who are known as the RNC8: Luce Guillen Givins, Max Specktor, Nathanael Secor, Eryn Trimmer, Monica Bicking, Erik Oseland, Robert Czernik and Garrett Fitzgerald.

CRASS describes itself as “non-hierarchical coalition of RNC arrestees and community allies” that includes Coldsnap Legal Collective, Friends of the RNC 8, the National Lawyers Guild - Minnesota, Communities United Against Police Brutality, Anti-War Committee, Twin Cities Indymedia, and Veterans for Peace.

On Friday, Joe Robinson received the first RNC protester felony sentence – a $100 fine and 100 hours of community service — from Ramsey County District Court Judge Salvador Rosas, who is assigned to hear the RNC8 case on Wednesday.

So there is a circumstantial link between the payments and the house costs, a potential motive for Kazeminy to steer a sum like that to the Colemans, as two lawsuits allege and the FBI is now looking into. (The Republican senator has denied the charge and welcomed the investigation.) But it’s not yet a “gotcha” — as Lyden admits in a blog post. Like MnIndy, Fox 9 had been sniffing around Colemans’ remodeling project in relation to the Texas charges since before Election Day. Video, transcript and property tax record after the jump.

Another interesting tidbit: The Colemans paid a campaign donor $33,000 for design services on the project.

Here’s the Colemans’ property tax statement.

Here’s a link to the Fox 9 video report.

Here’s video released by the Minnesota DFL Party showing Fox 9 reporter Lyden trying to ask Coleman about the remodeling and Texas lawsuits after a press conference in Monticello, Minn.

And here’s a transcript of the Fox 9 report, which the Al Franken for Senate distributed by e-mail without comment this morning.

JEFF PASSOLT: Tonight, a federal investigation into an extreme home makeover. The home belongs to Senator Norm Coleman and his wife.

ROBYN ROBINSON: The timing and the cost of their home renovation raises new questions about an allegation a wealthy businessmen tried funneling money to the senator. Fox 9 investigator Tom Lyden has been digging deep into this and he joins us now with what he’s found.

TOM LYDEN: The FBI is now reportedly investigating these allegations that Edina businessman Nasser Kazeminy tried to funnel $75,000 to the U.S. Senator through the Senator’s wife, Laurie. But we couldn’t help wondering why a U.S. Senator, who makes about $180,000 a year, actually need the money? That’s what the Fox 9 investigators began looking about a month ago, and it lead us right to the Senator’s doorstep.

[BEGIN VIDEO]

LYDEN: Norm Coleman’s home in Saint Paul’s Crocus Hill neighborhood is not lavish, but it’s a lot nicer than it used to be, thanks in part to contractor Jim Taylor, who helped remodel the senator’s home two years ago.

JIM TAYLOR: Actually put a second floor master bedroom bathroom - the bedroom was there, we just added the bedroom with a closet and a kitchen remodeling, turned into half the house remodeled by the time we painted and we finished the floors and did the landscape work.

LYDEN: The remodeled kitchen was even the backdrop for some of the senator’s campaign commercials.

LAURIE COLEMAN: Hey Norm, will you take out the trash?

NORM COLEMAN: I got it, honey.

LYDEN: The Fox 9 investigators learned the woman in charge of the project was Sherry Wilsey, an interior designer and along with her husband Roger longtime friends of the Colemans’ and financial contributors to the Senator’s campaigns.

The Wilseys’ even hosted a fundraiser for Senator Coleman during the Republican National Convention at their Summit Avenue mention just a few blocks from the Colemans’.

TAYLOR: She’s a designer, and she got us in contact with Norm. Pretty much we were done by the end of the year; there were a few things that lingered on into the spring.

LYDEN: The spring of 2007. That’s when, according to two lawsuits, Edina businessman Nasser Kazeminy began a series of three $25,000 payments to Coleman from Deep Marine Technology, a company he controlled in Texas, to Hays Company, a Minnesota insurance company where Laurie Coleman works.

Senator Coleman is not a party to the lawsuits, but he’s denied any wrongdoing, claiming it’s all politics.

NORM COLEMAN: The allegations regarding me and my wife in this suit are false and defamatory.

DAVID SCHULTZ: There’s no question about the fact that it doesn’t look good.

LYDEN: But government ethics professor David Schultz says tough questions are fair game when serious financial allegations are made which involve a U.S. Senator.

SCHULTZ: It speaks to, first in terms of credibility, in terms of what Norm Coleman has to say in terms of responding to allegations. Second, it speaks to also sort of the whole sense of motive, motive in terms of why he might at this point going, trying to get money through his wife from an individual in Texas.

LYDEN: We tried to talk to Senator Coleman about the home renovation project three weeks ago when he visited the Monticello nuclear plant. You would have thought we were radioactive.

Senator Coleman never did agree to sit for an interview, but his campaign did agree to share billing records of the remodeling project. Originally projected to cost $328,000, four months later it was up to $414,000, overbudget by $86,000.

[OVERLAY: ESTIMATE, OCT. '06
$326,000

ESTIMATE, FEB. 28, '07
$414,000

OVER BUDGET
$86,000]

LYDEN: Similar to the amount, and at the same time, the lawsuit alleges Kazeminy was trying to get money to Coleman.

According to the lawsuits, in March of 2007, Kazeminy said “U.S. Senators don’t make [s--t]” and he was going to try to find a way to get money to U.S. Senator Norm Coleman.

SCHULTZ: On the one level, it could just be a coincidence. On the other level, it could be that one of the reasons why he’s getting this money from elsewhere is to try to basically make up for his - to be able to pay off a loan, to be able to pay off a line of credit.

LYDEN: Records provided by the campaign showed Coleman paid his friend Wilsey, the general contractor, in full for the renovation, $414,000. And he did it in part by refinancing his home in March 2007, for $775,000. The Senator acknowledges that, like a lot of people in America, he now owes more on his home than it’s actually worth.

That isn’t a crime. What we know is this: the senator had costly and overbudget renovations to his home at the same time a contributor was allegedly trying to funnel him money. We don’t know if the Colemans’ really needed the money, or if the Kazeminy allegations are even true.

REPORTER: Why won’t the senator answer the question?

LYDEN: But on at least two occasions now, the senator has walked away from reporters claiming their motives are political. And yet the questions aren’t going away. [END VIDEO]

LYDEN: Couple of footnotes - the interior designer and general contractor, Sherry Wilsey, was paid $33,000 for her work. That’s important because, as a friend and a Coleman contributor, if she wasn’t paid for her services that would be a gift and would have to be reported to the Senate Ethics Committee.

Also want to clarify something Jeff said, the FBI investigation concerns the Kazeminy allegations and not the home renovations - at this point.

Yesterday Thune told MnIndy that he suspected Costello was behind a purported plan to recall him from office. “I don’t want to accuse him,” Thune said. “But I’m pretty good at adding two and two.” Supporters of the city council member are holding a fundraiser Thursday night in response to the effort to oust him from office.

But Costello insists that he has no involvement with a recall campaign, nor has he heard of any such effort. “He can’t add two plus two because I have nothing to do with any recall,” Costello says. “I think he’s just trying to scam some money from his supporters.”

So it’s no surprise that some residents might be interested in booting the liberal Democrat from office. Rumors of a recall petition have been circulating since shortly after the RNC. And on Thursday evening Thune’s supporters will hold a fundraiser for the city council member, despite any re-election contest being two three years away.

“Because of my strong advocacy of free speech during the Republican National Convention and authorship of St. Paul’s smoking ban, a number of individuals have initiated procedures to recall me from office in a special election,” Thune wrote in an email to supporters recently. “Because signatures can be gathered citywide, this is a very real threat — one we can’t ignore.”

But what evidence is there that any such threat exists? According to St. Paul City Clerk Shari Moore, the city received a couple of inquiries shortly after the RNC about the possibility of recalling Thune from office. “I haven’t heard anything since then,” Moore says. “I haven’t heard if there’s a petition out there anywhere.”

Thune is similarly uncertain about the actual existence of a recall movement. “We’re just doing like a peremptory rally and fundraiser,” he says. “If anything we’d love to sort of squelch this thing before it starts.”

Speculation about who might be spearheading such a drive has focused on Mike Costello, owner of Costello’s Bar & Grill and a longtime Thune antagonist. The pair most recently tussled over an off-color email the city council member sent to Costello during the RNC. The bar owner feigned shock at the crude language and called on Thune to resign. “I don’t want to accuse him,” says Thune. “But I’m pretty good at adding two and two.”

(A message left for Costello at his bar was not immediately returned.)

So what would it take to recall Thune from office — if such a campaign actually exists? Under the city’s charter, resident signatures equivalent to 20 percent of the electorate in the last municipal contest would need to be collected. In the 2006 mayoral election, 59,509 people cast ballots. So 11,902 residents would need to sign a petition in order for it move forward. If the city council then certified the petition drive as meeting this threshold, a special election would then be called within 60 days to determine Thune’s fate. The odds of this happening? Exceedingly slim.

(This wouldn’t be the only recall drive in recent St. Paul political history. Anyone remember the Duddingston brothers and the “Recall Randy” movement?)

Which means 2011 will likely be the next chance for Thune’s foes to boot him from office. But the city council member maintains that he hasn’t yet decided whether to run for re-election. “I always take things a year at a time,” Thune says.

Update: Thune antagonist denies any role in recall campaign

“My vote was counted,” Guerra said, triumphantly. “They got it November 3. It makes me feel a whole lot better. I thought I would have to live with never knowing. It’s an important election.”

Guerra’s experience has left her husband, Chris Farley, of the opinion that it’s “onerous” to require that out-of-state absentee ballots carry the signature of a registered Minnesota voter as witness, or the signature and seal of a notary public.

[M]y wife spent part of the afternoon on the Saturday before the election trying to get a notary. She told me she went to a local bank (where you can always find a notary). They asked if she was a customer. Nope, she was not. So they told her they would not notarize anything at any price. … After she called to tell me this, I remembered that my mother, who also lives in Utica, NY, is a notary public … Phew! Finding a notary public is a somewhat obscure skill. I bet the vast majority of young voters, who’ve never needed to have anything notarized in their lives, have no clue where to go for this service. It’s pretty obvious that this requirement suppresses absentee voter participation.

Only 12 other states have witness/notary requirements on par with Minnesota’s. A few others require a second signature if the voter has received assistance in completing the ballots, but most have no such requirement at all.

“It’s just weird considering Minnesota’s otherwise liberal voting laws,” comments Farley.

City Pages’ Ben Palosaari notices the striking similarity between today’s editions of the Minneapolis and St. Paul papers, from identical headlines and photograph on each paper’s lead story to much of the rest of the pages’ offerings: dueling pieces on Denny Hecker’s woes, the new James Bond flick and the latest on the Coleman/Franken recount. Take a look: