Elsewhere in Minnesota news this morning …

WINONA: Locals aim to reinstate reciprocity. Gov. Pawlenty put the kibosh on a long-standing tax arrangement for residents of Minnesota who work in Wisconsin (and vice versa).  [Winona Daily News]

EAGAN: State senate candidate mourns T-Paw’s cancellation. David Carlson says Pawlenty will go to Atlanta instead of his Oct. 8 fundraiser. [Facebook]

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Green revolutionary to be remembered. At another campus venue on Oct. 8, the U of M will honor alumnus and Nobel Prize winner Normon Borlaug. [Associated Press]

ALBERT LEA: No first lady. When Michele Obama can’t visit, she lets you know by … sending a postcard? [Albert Lea Tribune]

MINNEAPOLIS: Lutheran splinter group rethinking last month’s gay-clergy vote. What happens in Minneapolis gets reconsidered in Indianapolis. [Associated Press]

PIPESTONE: Monument vandals nabbed. Text messages like “backyard in trash can everything is there!!” led cops to objects stolen from the Keepers of the Sacred Tradition building. [Worthington Daily Globe]

A Minneapolis 'End the Fed' rally on April 25, 2009 (Photo: Chris Steller, Minnesota Independent)

An “End the Fed” group that will rally this afternoon outside the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank hasn’t felt a backlash since Wednesday’s arrest of James von Brunn in the fatal shooting of a guard at the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. Von Brunn, who mixed anti-Semitism with antipathy for the Federal Reserve, served six years in prison for his 1981 attempt to take Federal Reserve board members captive.

Conservative Web outlets with whom von Brunn consorted quickly moved to dissociate themselves from the 88-year-old white supremacist after Tuesday’s shooting.

But von Brunn’s anti-Fed crimes and comments haven’t affected the local End the Fed group, according to spokeswoman Melissa Hill, although she noted that the Holocaust Museum shooting was only two days ago. “It’ll be interesting to see at the rally,” Hill told the Minnesota Independent this morning.

“I’m hoping it doesn’t become a big issue because that guy was a hardcore Nazi,” Hill said. “At our meetings, no one’s come out with that crap. If they did, they’d be kicked out.”

Hill explained that among End the Fed groups across the country, Minnesota’s is far from von Brunn’s rightwing extremism. The Minnesota group “leans towards the left, because of our location,” she said.

Today’s rally is the third the group has held at the plaza in front of the Federal Reserve’s headquarters on the downtown Minneapolis riverfront. They seek to draw attention to the Fed’s role in the current economic crisis, the country’s monetary policy and the federal bailout of the financial industry — and ultimately to get the laws creating the Fed repealed.

They’re also urging passage of a bill in Congress to audit the Federal Reserve Bank. Since the group’s last rally in April, the bill, authored by End the Fed hero Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, has 220 co-sponsors – enough votes to ensure passage. Supporters in Minnesota include all House members except Democratic Reps. Keith Ellison, Betty McCollum and Jim Oberstar. Two Democrats, Reps. Tim Walz and Collin Peterson, have joined the state’s Republicans in backing the bill.

Hill isn’t holding out much hope that the rally will change the holdouts’ minds. But she said the bill has gained the support of a number of Democrats, including (yesterday) Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio.

The rally starts at 3 p.m., with a speech at 5 p.m. by former U.S. Rep. Bob Barr’s partner on the 2008 Libertarian Party presidential ticket, small-government author and talk show host Wayne Allyn Root.

But event organizer Melissa Hill told the Minnesota Independent the action is all on the ground today, with speeches and chants in the plaza in front of the Fed as well as a raucous parade around the bank’s riverfront headquarters.

Jordan Jelinek of Bloomington (in the foreground at left), a Tea Party protest veteran, said today’s gathering shared a message with the April 15 events: “Power to the people.”

Carrying a sign reading “Abolish the Federal Reserve System,” Jelinek said he “never really thought of myself as a protester until the socialist agenda of both Bush and Obama.” Government should leave people alone so they can engage in free trade, he said.

Government’s lack of control over the Federal Reserve was the main gripe of protester Matthew Caldwell of St. Louis Park. As an instution, the Fed, he said, is “not even quasi” governmental.

Like Jelinek and others at the rally, Caldwell supports a bill by U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (HR 1207) to require an audit of the Fed. (Jelinek said the bill now has 82 co-signers including Minnesota Republicans Erik Paulsen and Michele Bachmann. He didn’t mention Democrats Keith Ellison and Collin Peterson, who opencongress.org also lists as co-signers — in error, it turns out, in Ellison’s case.

Caldwell missed the Nov. 22 End the Fed protest but attended an April 15 Tea Party, where he said Fox News’ hype had attracted followers of “Glenn Back, Sean Hannity, Fox News” who “co-opted”  the event.

Caldwell (pictured below) calls himself a “paleo-conservative” but said he distrusts the “left-right paradigm” that thrives on polarizing issues that distract attention from real issues.

Indeed, the first protest held at the Minneapolis Federal Reserve (video) in response to government bailouts of the financial industry was a more left-leaning affair contrasting concern for Wall Street institutions with a lack of concern for Main Street.

End the Fed is associated with Ron Paul but it’s an independent and non-partisan group, Hill said, noting that she had spread the word about today’s event via alternative outlets such as Indymedia.

She also said she has pushed for a future national End the Fed protest to be on a weekday, which she thought would help draw a crowd and more attention.

UPDATE: It apparently was here for today’s End the Fed rally at the Federal Reserve Bank. The sky advert was last seen in these parts at the tail end of the Republican National Convention. The timing and location made a certain amount of sense. But on a Saturday two-and-a-half weeks after the election, with a U.S. Senate recount in progress? What does Ron Paul have to do with that? Why here? Why now? Is this any better a use of fuel than Detroit’s Big Three auto execs each jetting into D.C. on private planes? Or does it simply signal that with the recount the Twin Cities have again achieved a critical mass of TV news crews?