Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MANKATO: She’s in. State House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher made it official on the family farm: She wants to be governor. [Mankato Free Press]

MINNEAPOLIS: Email effusiveness could cost city big. Council members are supposed to remain quasi-judicial when they hear zoning appeals, but a real judge ruled that emails prove Lisa Goodman did not, in the case of a development she despised. [City Pages; Star Tribune; Downtown Journal]

RAMSEY COUNTY: Nun crossed line. Now she’s on trial for trespassing, but Sister Elizabeth A. McKenzie had a higher calling: to get an antiwar message to delegates at the 2008 Republican National Convention. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

BEMIDJI: “A bake sale to get a math book.” That’s the way it is for schools across Minnesota due to delays in state payments imposed by Gov. Pawlenty. [Bemidji Pioneer]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: U.S. Constitution-signing commemorated. But law-school profs must not have compared notes when they chose topics for today’s topical but also water-related lectures: “Protecting the Great Lakes Against Thirsty Southerners” and “Torturing the Constitution” (about waterboarding). [Associated Press]

SIDE LAKE: Big pot bust in the Big Woods. A million-dollar crop could mean a million-dollar fine and 30 years in prison for farmer Thorsten Otterness, whose green acres were spotted from the air by the multi-agency Boundary Waters Drug Task Force. (And unlike their metro counterparts, the task force members didn’t keep the plane for themselves.) [Duluth News Tribune]

John Dugan (Photo: Harry Connolly)

… [C]urrent market disruptions have clouded the accomplishments that CRA has generated, many of which we recognized last year during its 30th anniversary. There are even some who suggest that CRA is responsible for the binge of irresponsible subprime lending that ignited the credit crisis we now face. Let me squarely respond to this suggestion: I categorically disagree. While not perfect, CRA has made a positive contribution to community revitalization across the country and has generally encouraged sound community development lending, investment, and service initiatives by regulated banking organizations. CRA is not the culprit behind the subprime mortgage lending abuses, or the broader credit quality issues in the marketplace. Indeed, the lenders most prominently associated with subprime mortgage lending abuses and high rates of foreclosure are lenders not subject to CRA.

Dugan, a 2005 Bush appointee, also served the Department of Treasury under the first President Bush, and was Republican general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. His remarks (full transcript) came during the Economic Community Partners annual meeting in Baltimore.