Elsewhere in Minnesota headlines this morning …

ST. PAUL: McCollum’s health-care forum “civil.” Case in point: The guy in the photo holding a “Socialism” placard with President Obama’s face in scary Joker facepaint appears to be sitting quietly with his hand in his lap next to a woman with a “Standing Together for Health Insurance Reform” sign in hers. [St. Paul Pioneer Press]

STATEWIDE: My stronghold is stronger than your stronghold. Entrenched DFLers in the state House are more entrenched than their Republican counterparts. [Smart Politics]

FORT SNELLING: Franken joins Klobuchar, Pawlenty at sendoff for Afghanistan-bound reservists. The state’s new senator recited some rules for phoning home, including not asking about “your car, finances or boat” before asking how the family is. [Minnesota Public Radio]

MINNEAPOLIS: Protest shines light on “wage theft.” Working through breaks, losing tips, and doing unpaid overtime: It’s not just for immigrants anymore. [Workday Minnesota]

NORTH METRO: Northstar Commuter Rail rolls out Nov. 16. Perfect timing for commuters who dislike iffy November driving conditions, or for anyone with a grandmother in Big Lake to visit for Thanksgiving. [Finance and Commerce]

ST. CLOUD: Just build a pool. We don’t need no stinkin’ spendy aqauatics center, writes a St. Cloud grandmother (whose grandkids could visit via the new train if it didn’t terminate at Big Lake). [St. Cloud Times]

In an email to supporters on Wednesday, he wrote:

Republican leaders are pouring money into our communities to air a TV ad filled with misleading and downright false information. These commercials are designed to scare people with the hope they will derail our efforts to fix our broken health care system.

Republican leaders think if they yell loud enough, we will become distracted, lose focus, and they will disrupt the health care debate.

Using the phrase “our grassroots organization” three times — clearly a counterpoint to charges that town hall protesters are part of a rightwing astroturf campaign — he states that what’s needed is “a constructive message” [emphasis his] and “an honest and productive discussion.” He urges supporters to send letters to the editor — and money to him — to help him counter GOP messages he implies are in service to special interest groups like the health insurance industry.

He links to a Media Matters post that fact-checks the “Reforma” ads and finds that through them the Republican National Committee “drastically distorts information about health care reform.“

The Republican Party of Minnesota and the Republican National Committee released a pair of ads on Tuesday attacking Reps. Tim Walz and Collin Peterson on health care reform. The spots spoof the ubiquitous television ads for prescription medications using a fake drug, “Reforma.” They’re not new, having been around since July, but this is the first time the ads are airing in Minnesota.

“Reforma, the Obama-Pelosi prescription for the government takeover of health care,” the ads say. “Recommended by more lobbyists than any other health reform.”

The ads then ask constituents of Walz and Peterson to urge them to oppose the health care reform bill currently being debated in Congress (which will be easy for Peterson, a Blue Dog Democrat who has already indicated he’ll oppose the bill).

The Minnesota DFL responded to the ads — and not without a little snark of their own.

“Given that the Republican Party has spent the past few decades in the pocket of the pharmaceutical companies, it’s no surprise that they were able to mimic the commercial style so well in piecing together and recycling these latest ads,” party chairman Brian Melendez said in a statement.

“Maybe if Republican leaders chose to participate in public discussions on health care instead of planting angry hecklers to disrupt them, they would know that Americans are suffering without adequate, affordable health care, and are desperate for reform right now,” Melendez continued.

The ads, which were originally released by the RNC in July, have been the subject of fact-checking by Media Matters. One bit of spin: the ads say lobbyists prefer the current health reform bill, but media reports recently revealed that health industry lobbyists have spent more than $10 million in efforts to kill the bill.

Walz ad:

Peterson ad:

Pawlenty described himself as “one voice from the heartland” as if he didn’t want to be a diva about it. He boasted that his hometown of South St. Paul had “the world’s largest stockyards,” but couldn’t help adding, “at least for a while.”

It’s not that he didn’t try to soar: “We are the freest people who have ever had the privilege to live in this great nation.” But don’t speakers usually say we’re the freest in the history of the world? (Sure, we’re freer than slaves, indentured servants, tenant farmers and Native Americans — at least after they got shunted onto reservations.)

He retold a story about a construction worker who falls from a great height, miraculously escaping serious injury, and finished with a flourish as the worker is carried off on a gurney mere feet from the ground, pleading, “Please don’t drop me, please don’t drop me.” Pawlenty voiced the worker’s words in a studied tremolo … to an elephant-sized silence in the room. The story, meant as an allegory for the GOP’s woes, fell flat.

His jokes didn’t get much more of a rise, with the possible exception of one that went like this: The only thing rising faster than the deficit is the “man crush” that Chris Matthews (of MSNBC) has for President Obama.

Pawlenty has been telling that subtle confection of media bias, homophobia and presidential belittlement at least since his speech to College Republicans last month (where the cultural references got bawdier), and he repeated it again yesterday for Fox News yesterday (video).

But Pawlenty has seemed to have missed his moment before and his star continues to rise — though perhaps not as fast as the man-crushes that are helping propel him.

The announcement came this morning from Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, RGA chair, who last week named Pawlenty as one of the party’s “stars.”

Pawlenty had already been scheduled for a key speech at RGA’s annual meeting next month in Puerto Rico. This week, he’ll give what’s billed as a major address (at least for his own presidential prospects) to the Republican National Committee.

The RGA post gives T-Paw an excuse to rub shoulders with governors — and more importantly, donors — across the country. That could dovetail nicely with his need to raise a national profile for a 2012 run at the White House.

Pawlenty won’t count former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the woman who did get the GOP nod for VP last year, as an RGA member. (She resigned yesterday.)

And different from Pawlenty, she has had trouble keeping her national speaking engagements.

Pawlenty is expected to offer ideas for expanding the party’s base and tell his life story, from growing up in South St. Paul with a truck-driving dad, to maintaining his own hard-driving no-tax stance as governor at a State Capitol now dominated by Democrats.

Pawlenty just returned from Iraq and is already set to speak at a gathering of Republican governors next month. A travel schedule that started getting heavy when he was in the running as a vice presidential pick last summer never really let up and seems to be accelerating again since his announcement that he won’t seek a third term.

That led to widespread speculation that he’ll make a bid for his party’s presidential nomination in 2012.

“I think he’s clearly doing the things he ought to do to put himself in position if that’s what he wants to do,” says lobbyist and former U.S. Rep. Vin Weber.

Elko noted a then-staggering number of RNC-related tweets: 17,000. Last week, one estimate pegged the number of tweets related to Iran’s election and the subsequent protests at nearly a billion.

A MnIndy sampling of RNC tweets showed that St. Paul’s protests had some of the same confusion and enthusiasm, if not the gravitas, seen in recent demostrations in Tehran:

Police: “You must go to the left.” Protester: “Your left or ours?” 6:31 PM Sep 4th from web

Overheard at May Day cafe: “Dude, I totally got tear gassed. It was fucking awesome.” 11:57 AM Sep 3rd from web

Overheard from excited Mpls policeman, “So I shot him with impact round a[nd] he just fucking dropped!” 6:51 PM Sep 1st from web

Here’s one area in which St. Paul exceeds Tehran, for now. The roster of arrested journalists in Iran is as yet not quite half as long as those arrested during the RNC — though with much more serious implications for the people detained.

He’ll be in good company. Another former Colemanite heading to the RNC:  Coleman’s former campaign manager, Cullen Sheehan, was recently named regional director for the group.

Photo: Lauren Victoria Burke, WDCpix.com

A clothes-shopping spree that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin started in Minnesota didn’t break the law, in the opinion of the Federal Election Commission, even though it was paid for by the GOP.

Palin dropped $75,062 at Minneapolis’ Neiman-Marcus store while in Minnesota to accept the vice presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. She went on to run up an apparel tab that exceeded $150,000.

A complaint (pdf) filed last year by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) asked the FEC to find that Palin’s purchases violated rules against using campaign donations on candidates’ personal attire.

The commission decided today that that restriction doesn’t apply to party funds (pdf).

Also named in CREW’s clothes complaint, as an agent of the Republican National Committee, was Jeff Larson. He’s also figured in a separate Minnesota-related scandal, as the lenient landlord who cheaply rented a basement room in Washington, D.C., to former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman.

Coleman’s own wardrobe procurement, allegedly using unreported cash assistance from friend Nasser Kazeminy, is the subject of yet another scandal, now said to be under investigation by the FBI.

The document lists physical descriptions, phone numbers and other identifying information about activists in Iowa City.

Despite the infiltration, only one Iowa protester was arrested, activists say, and those charges were later dropped.

At least three other people connected to the Ramsey County Sheriff’s office were involved in infiltrating groups in Minnesota. “Norma Jean Johnson” also known as Ramsey County Deputy Sheriff Marilyn Hedstrom, infiltrated the RNC Welcoming Committee.

Rachel Nieting, a Ramsey County jail guard posed as Norma Jean’s niece, and Chris Dugger, was a confidential paid informant who now aspires to be a deputy.