Bellwetherman? In an email Thursday about its campaign opposing the governor’s bonding bill vetoes, the Alliance for a Better Minnesota used a bizarre example as proof of an ailing economy’s effect on working Minnesotans: the firing of weatherman Paul Douglas (whose salary is estimated variously at between $250k and $500k). “Many families across Minnesota have already experienced Minnesota’s failing economy,” the email began. “But the news has gotten worse in recent weeks, first CBS announced that WCCO fired Paul Douglas. If the much popular weather man is losing his job, there must be storms ahead for Minnesota’s economy.” Dylan got it right: don’t need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows.

Who gets Twit? UC-Berkeley J-school student James Karl Buck knows the power of Twitter: jailed in Egypt after photographing a protest, he was freed in one day after his one-word tweet alerted friends who contacted the U.S. embassy and an Egyptian lawyer. Hillary Clinton, it seems, doesn’t get it so well: she is  followed by 3,051 people (well shy of Barack Obama’s Twitter-leading 24,000), but follows no one herself, a move that BusinessWeek calls not only “bad PR” but a possible lost opportunity in data collection.

Reporting military suicides: Editor & Publisher’s Greg Mitchell has long been tracking the alarming spike in non-combat military deaths in Iraq, noting that local papers consistently break news that many deaths the Pentagon reports as “non-combat-related” are really suicides. Today he points out work by the Pioneer Press’ John Brewer who reported that 22-year-old St. Paul resident Jacob J. Fairbanks died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound six months into his second tour in Iraq.