Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

MINNEAPOLIS: Ex-zombie vowed to kill RNC-protest snitch, say Texas officials. But it seems the woman — a former resident of Minneapolis, where in 2006 she was arrested along with six other Zombie Dance partiers — did not actually threaten to eat FBI informant Brandon Darby. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

ST. PAUL: Inspection skipped on circus bleachers. It may seem like 2006 was a long time ago, even in zombie years, but that’s the last time city inspectors took a look at the Circus Juventus bleachers that collapsed Sunday. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

FRIDLEY: Defense contractor BAE Systems delivers 314 pink slips. For people laid off from the Future Combat Systems project, that’s got to especially sting, coming on the same day President Obama told the VFW, “If a project doesn’t support our troops, we will not fund it. If a system doesn’t perform, we will terminate it.” [Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal; Stars and Stripes]

WORTHINGTON: “Don’t sleep in the subway, darling.” The subway Petula Clark was singing about in her 1967 hit was the kind of pedestrian tunnel that Worthington officials are proposing to go under Minnesota 60 — a state highway that is also getting a roundabout nearby. Very Euro. [Worthington Daily Globe]

DULUTH: Tribe calls casino contract bad, won’t pay city. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will stop funding major street repairs from its take at downtown’s Fond-du-Luth Casino. (Insert your own broken-treaty gag here.) [Duluth News Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Plank road to be history — again. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board — which is now seeking its own taxing authority via a voter referendum — will pay more than $400,000 to repave in concrete a block-long, wood-plank road it built as an historic replica only six years ago. [Downtown Journal]

The murders have come on the heels of a widely criticized report by the Department of Homeland Security, which described potential violence from people with extreme anti-abortion, anti-immigrant and white supremacist ideologies. Was the report accurate? And is the labeling of entire political groups and ideologies — such as the DHS report and the profiling of RNC protesters — an effective counterterrorism activity?

“There have been a lot of mistakes and problems with the way the so-called war on terror has been run domestically since 911,” former FBI agent Coleen Rowley said in an interview with the Minnesota Independent.

Rowley said the DHS report on right-wing extremism was wrong, but not for the objections that Republicans have raised.

“The reports contain almost no specificity but instead, make generalizations and stereotyped comments about large political or interest groups,” she said. “It’s true that individual loners or duos may be inspired by the extremist ideology stemming from any group, to include the ‘pro-life’ groups, but you need specific facts identifying the individual instead of stereotyped characterizations about the group.”

In a press briefing Thursday, Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano said the recent murders didn’t vindicate the report and said it was problematic.

“I don’t look at those murders as anything other than terrible crimes and tragedies,” Napolitano said, according to Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman. “I do think, as I’ve said before, that the so-called right-wing extremist report was not a well-produced product,” she said. “It could and should have been done better. We’ve already taken steps within the department to improve that situation.”

Rowley said the overly broad efforts such as the extremist report exacerbate the difficulties in identifying those loners or small cells of extremists.

“When looking for a needle in the haystack, massive ‘intelligence’ collection about the members of the groups only adds hay to the haystack and also chills exercise of First Amendment rights,” she said. “Members of the larger, mainstream group, if not alienated by being smeared, will be in the best position to identify the ‘true terrorist.’”

Indeed that was the case with the recent shootings In Arizona committed by members of an off-shoot of the anti-illegal immigration movement, the Minutemen. Shawna Fordes has been arrested in the murders and anti-illegal immigration groups say that they had forwarded information about Fordes to law enforcement after kicking her out of the Minuteman organization.

Rowley said that alienating these groups could prevent them from going to law enforcement when a troublemaker is identified.

Minnesota saw its share of generalized profiling at the Republican National Convention in September 2008.

“The worst recent example of this overbroad targeting, as well as surveillance and infiltration, would be that directed against the RNC Welcoming Committee and other peace/social justice protesters,” she said.

Eight members of the Welcoming Committee were charged with “furtherance of terrorism” under the Minnesota Patriot Act because of damage to property of over $1,000. Rowley said that this new definition of terrorism is wrong.

“‘Acts dangerous to human life’ is supposed to be the definition of domestic terrorism not just ‘property damage,’” she said. “The use of the looser definition in the ‘Minnesota Patriot Act’ which includes mere ‘property damage’ of $1,000 or more contributed to the misdirection of resources by law enforcement and intelligence agencies in the lead-up to the RNC.”

Attorney Jordan Kushner, who represented members of the RNC8, said charges were politically motivated. The terrorism charges were dropped, but not before having a chilling effect at the RNC protests.

“The fact that they were filed in the first place and pursued for a period of about eight months does show how much ‘terrorism’ is a political label,” he said.

According to the Pioneer Press, at around 1:30 p.m. someone described as “homeless” walked through an emergency exit and defecated in several rooms.

If DHS can’t secure its own home base in broad daylight, then we are in a shitload of trouble.