Pawlenty finally came clean late last month about the presidential ambitions behind his Johnny Appleseed-like nation-traipsing.

MPR vows to keep the map updated and, even with its crack news team monitoring T-Paw’s every move, asks for help with any gubernatorial sojourns they might have missed.

Here’s the current MPR map (green for official travel on state business, red for personal travel):

Will Minge recuse himself from a case shot through with St. Olaf associations? “It’s academic,” Minge told the Minnesota Independent, after consulting his calendar: He’ll be on vacation that day (really a work-related trip to speak at another educational institution), so a fill-in judge will have to be found.

Before checking his schedule and thereby sparing all concerned more Ole angst, Minge told MnIndy he hadn’t yet heard that his panel had been assigned the case. But the college connection would likely make him think about recusing, he said: “I’d look at that very seriously.”

Minge’s assignment to the Current/WCAL case was dumb luck. Court of appeals judges aren’t vetted for possible conflicts before they are randomly assigned cases on panels determined by drawing names from a hat, said court spokesman Kyle Christopherson.

SaveWCAL contends that WCAL, the nation’s first listener-supported station and one not affiliated with MPR, was a charitable trust under law, obligating the station’s owner, St. Olaf, to get a court’s okay before selling it. Oral arguments in the SaveWCAL’s appeal are set for Oct. 27, with a ruling due by early next year.

Minge, a DFLer who left the U.S. House after losing his race for a fifth term in 2001, was appointed to the Court of Appeals by Gov. Jesse Ventura in 2002. He is the second Ole with congressional credentials to largely sidestep college-related controversy this year. In May, St. Olaf students planning to protest the views of commencement speaker U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen (Class of 1987) opted for a silent demonstration.

Pawlenty introduced a question about what the United States should do about Iran with his view that “it’s inevitable that that situation is going to come to a head.” Powell said recent political turmoil has revealed “fissures,” as people press their desire for “liberalized government.”

Regarding Iran’s nuclear program, Powell said the United States had two choices: Take out nukes militarily, or warn them, Cold War style, that any nuclear aggression on their part would bring greater retribution against them.

One area of shared interest wasn’t touched on in Pawlenty’s talk with Powell: the future of the Republican Party.

Also left unmentioned: Powell’s views on the recent arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, and President Obama’s nationally-televised response in which he referenced racial profiling.

Only last week, the NAACP centenary brought Powell together with Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, whose “nation of cowards” speech in February marked the Administration’s other rhetorical milestone on race.

(Idle question: Would Minnesota DFL Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller have broached that timely issue of race with Powell, given the equal time from WCCO that he has asked for?)

Here’s the video of Pawlenty on Fox on Thursday, responding to Obama on health care:

[Via Political Animal]

What’s in the Q?

Kupchella to tackle healthcare reform: Rick Kupchella has two new projects in the works after leaving KARE 11 two weeks ago. One’s a new-media project, but details haven’t been revealed yet. This is the other: the i.e. network, a PR effort targeting healthcare reform. According to the network’s site, they’re partnering with Target and “some of America’s most progressive corporate entities” to create The ALLIANCE for a Healthy Twin Cities to promote lower cost, higher quality healthcare through a focus on wellness. But it might not be as “progressive” as you’d think: partnering with Kupchella is Tom Mason, formerly chief of staff for Norm Coleman, senior communications adviser to Tim Pawlenty and communications director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Once dubbed a “rising star” of the GOP, he also published Twin Cities Business Monthly for five years.

Saberi’s plea: As Fargo-born journalist Roxana Saberi calls for the release of her former cellmate in Iran, Iranian aid worker Silva Harotonian, protesters for democracy in that country are reportedly dealing with the government’s news blackout by making an underground newspaper. Here’s the translation of one.

LATimes gives props to local Twitterer: The Los Angeles Times included a local — Secrets of the City’s Max Sparber — in its list of funny tweets in response to South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford’s news conference yesterday, in which he revealed he’d been unfaithful to his wife. “None of us are in a position to judge Sanford until we too have had sex with a woman in Argentina,” Sparber wrote. “Now who is up for a road trip?”

Hubbard honored: Hubbard Broadcasting, owner of KSTP radio and TV as well as other broadcast stations, is receiving the Historic Site in Journalism Award from the Society of Professional Journalists tomorrow. The family-owned company has been in business since 1942.

SaveWCAL asserts that St. Olaf College’s $10.5 million sale of the former WCAL-FM wasn’t legal. The argument: For more than 80 years, the station was a charitable trust, meaning the college needed approval from its listener-members and a court to close such a deal. 

Northfield’s dirty laundry got aired this way in the WSJ: 

“St. Olaf has looted the assets they were charged with protecting,” St. Olaf alumna Ruth Sylte, the president of SaveWCAL, says. “Donors everywhere should be worried.”

Steven Blodgett, a St. Olaf administrator, says opponents are “harassing the college” with their court fight. “Everybody wants to just move on,” he says.

Like Coleman, SaveWCAL filed a notice of appeal at the beginning of the week. Unlike Coleman, the group took the next step today, filing its actual appeal brief at the state Court of Appeals. St. Olaf and MPR have 30 days to file their responses.

“We will never know who won,” Norm Coleman said Wednesday. That’s after seven Minnesota judges — three on Monday and four in January — concluded that Al Franken won Minnesota’s 2008 election for U.S. Senate. His was a “close victory,” the Democrat conceded on Monday. But Coleman — now down by 312 votes — isn’t buying it. “Our system isn’t geared for this kind of closeness.”

Still, some precision is possible in politics, as Gawker.com suggested Wednesday with its two-word description of Gov. Tim Pawlenty: “Amiable prick.”

The first word describes Pawlenty’s friendly demeanor — as displayed, for example, during his appearances on MSNBC’s “The Rachel Maddow Show,” where he unveiled his controversial intention to mull over a future state Supreme Court ruling on Coleman’s lawsuit before he signs an election certificate.  

The second captures the other side of T-Paw’s essence, on exhibit most recently during his appearance Monday on Minnesota Public Radio’s “Midday” program. He fairly spit out the word “welfare” before offering this grousing aside: ”By the way, Minnesota’s in danger, I believe, of becoming one big social service agency.”

More imminent is the danger that Minnesota will become one big election-contest courtroom, as Coleman takes his complaints about the election to the state’s high court.

Coleman made his “we will never know” statement to the St. Paul Pioneer Press editorial board, writes reporter Rachel Stassen-Berger (in an article that runs separately from the newspaper’s editorial, which also appears this morning).  

Coleman also told the PiPress board that the question for his legal team is not whether to file a petition for an appeal to the state Supreme Court. Rather, he said, it’s “the scope of the appeal. Do we file on every point or do we appeal on some points?”

On that point Coleman will almost certainly get sage advice from lawyer Ben Ginsberg (a veteran of the 2000 Bush v. Gore case), who asserts that a winner is impossible to determine unless the state accedes to Coleman’s Constitutional argument that its election system failed to treat voters in different counties equally.

“You cannot know who won this election without coming to grips with the equal protection issue,” Ginsberg warned.

RELATED:
Coleman: Media ‘could have waited’ until after Nov. 4 to ask about money-funneling
Times to Coleman: Drop Dead
Klobuchar was off by all of 42 minutes in forecasting a new Minnesota Senator
Dissing ‘judicial fast food,’ Coleman slights the hand that feeds him
Poll: 63 percent of Minnesota voters want Coleman to concede
Coleman recount committee took in nearly $1 million in first quarter of 2009
Coleman legal bills pile up
Recusals in Coleman case could whittle state high court below quorum
The morning after: Coleman’s legal prospects look grim
Franken: ‘I will be certified’
Coleman: ‘I’m a winner’

“I also would want to look at what the courts did with the case in terms of leaving issues for potential appeal, the strength of those issues, how directly and effectively they addressed them,” Pawlenty told a Minnesota Public Radio call-in audience today “I’m not saying that I’m going to, or not going to, issue the certificate at that point. I just want to make sure I have all the facts in front of me before I made a decision like that.”

It’s the second time in a week that Pawlenty, a Republican and a trained attorney, said he plans to cast himself in the role of judicial critic once the courts issue final rulings on Coleman’s legal challenge to Franken’s recount win.

On April 8, Pawlenty told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that before he signed an election certificate, he would want to “see what the case would look like at that point, in terms of how harshly or strongly the issues have been decided or dealt with by the Minnesota Supreme Court.”

When Maddow asked whether he’d sign the certificate — which the state Supreme Court has said is his duty once the state courts are through with the case — Pawlenty replied: “It’s premature to say that, based on a number of factors. … We just need more information as to evaluating this case.”

Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie has promised to provide the second required signature on an election certificate after the state Supreme Court takes action on an expected appeal from the election-contest court. “I assume we are both going to follow the order of the Minnesota Supreme Court” that a certificate should be issued “at the end of the state court process,” Ritchie said.

A decision is expected at any time from the three judges who presided over a seven-week trial of Coleman’s challenge to Franken 225-vote recount win. Last week, Franken’s margin increased to 312 after the judges allowed 351 previously uncounted absentee ballots. An appeal must be filed within 10 days of the election-contest court’s order.

Pawlenty said it could be “June or later” before the state courts complete the Coleman-Franken case.

Pawlenty, who reportedly ran a close second to Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin for Sen. John McCain’s vice-presidential pick last year, also replied to a question from MPR “Midday” host Gary Eichten today about whether he wants to be president. Pawlenty claimed not to have given it “any serious thought” and also wouldn’t say if he’ll run for a third term in 2010.

It was only two weeks ago that Obama reached out to Pawlenty in a weekly address that focused on the flooding along the Minnesota-North Dakota border.

Here’s the video of Pawlenty delivering the Republican response to Obama’s weekly address:

Here’s are two short audio clips of the Pawlentys on WCCO-AM radio. The second clip includes their guest, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. (Reports suggest the governor didn’t show as much interest in war crimes and other allegations against Kissinger as he did in former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman’s legal options on Wednesday’s “The Rachel Maddow Show.”)

If Minnesota’s First Lady sounds particularly aghast at the violation of protocol a presidential bow would represent, it may be due to extenuating circumstances. “Governors’ spouses are the closest thing to royalty in state government,” said a Dec. 4, 2002 Stateline.org report that took note that then-First Lady-elect Mary Pawlenty was about to join the ranks of two other governors’ wives who also wore judges’ robes. During her 13 years on the bench, the First Lady presumably grew accustomed to all in her presence rising whenever she entered a courtroom.

She may abhor bows by heads-of-state, but Mary Pawlenty does allow herself a little bow now and then, such as the one she gave the governor as she said “I adore you” in front of the gathered luminaries at his 2007 inaugural ball. (See this TPT video clip.)

Thursday’s statement by Norm Coleman attorney Joe Friedberg has generated plenty of interest at local blogs and national news sites alike, mainly for his opinion that it’s “probably correct” that Al Franken will come out on top when the three-judge panel hearing Coleman’s Senate election contest rules. USA Today responded by asking, ““When can we call him ‘Sen. Franken?’” And while local media have run matter-of-fact heads for the story — like MinnPost: “Norm’s lawyer: We’ll lose” — one outlet launched its story with a bold proclamation, only to replace it with a blander version within the hour.

Minnesota Public Radio’s headline, “Coleman attorney concedes defeat in recount trial” (seen above on Google News), was quickly replaced this morning with the decidedly less dramatic “Coleman attorney eyes appeal.”

Having gotten to the news a bit late (MN Publius seems to be the first local outlet to link to Hotline On Call’s transcript of the KFAN interview with Friedberg), perhaps MPR was working on a better second-day angle? Or did the campaign contact the station? I asked reporter Elizabeth Stawicki, who only said that “online” writes the headlines. She did not respond to my request for a contact in MPR’s online news division.

Update: Dave Orrick of the Pioneer Press reports that Friedberg made a “clarification” of his statement early Friday afternoon:

He didn’t deny any of what he said on the radio, but emphasized he believes Coleman’s legal strategy has merit.

“I believe that our position of enfranchising thousands of Minnesotans who had not had their ballots counted was, and remains, the proper way to proceed,” Friedberg’s statement reads, in part. It continues, “I feel confident that if the court proceeds with wisdom and with decisions based on the facts, and on the law, that we will succeed in our case.”

• WCCO’s Pat Kessler raised the “who’s a journalist question” Monday night, noting that the access battle is a bipartisan issue. He interviews The UpTake’s Jason Barnett and Minnesota Democrats Exposed’s Michael Brodkorb about their disappointment that the DFL majority seems opposed to “more transparency, more bloggers in, more access to the process,” as Brodkorb put it.

• WCCO’s Esme Murphy strikes the same chord, then posts the Society of Professional Journalists’ statement on yesterday’s proceedings:

“It’s our understanding the first three of the proposed rules are already tossed out, which is a good thing since they triggered the strongest response. However, SPJ is concerned about the rules that continue to try to narrow the definition of what a journalist is and who should be allowed to document the workings of state government.

The Minnesota Legislature does the people’s work during committee meetings and formal House and Senate floor sessions. Minnesota SPJ understands the difficulty in maintaining decorum and a productive environment in such open, public forums. However, this is precisely the job legislators were elected to do. Public scrutiny comes with the office. SPJ takes the position that transparency is the only way elected representatives can maintain credibility with their constituents. As such, the best approach is one that adheres to the most noble aspects of the First Amendment that recognizes the need for openness and accountability from government.

It’s difficult to understand why the proposed rules place conditions on what should be a simple process of access. SPJ prefers to define ‘journalist’ in the broadest of terms and we believe it’s time for the legislature to do the same. The public loses whenever elected officials choose to exclude people who wish to document what happens in a public meeting, working on public policy in a public space. If there is an issue of decorum, safety or logistical space, elected leaders have appropriate methods in place. Rather than create additional rules that imply a person’s credentials will be issued based on where a person works or how long a person will be reporting at the Capitol, SPJ would encourage legislative leaders to lessen the rules to allow more people to report in new and innovative ways to reach more of the public. The Legislature should establish equitable rules for all media, with no bias awarded anyone based on medium, method or viewpoint. If this proposal reflects the Legislature’s attempt to do that, they have missed the mark.”

• TPT’s Mary Lahammer expresssed “great outrage” over the House rules that limit “where, when and what [the media] could record in a public building involving publically elected people.” She writes, “True the media landscape is changing and that makes a lot of us fearful too, but fear never leads to good decision making.”

• MPR’s Bob Collins writes of the “big chill at the Capitol,” noting that there’s “virtually no reasonable case to be made that inviting a few bloggers in to inspect the workings of elected officials would cause an undue burden on the lawmakers who, for the record, asked for the job.”