Secret-service

Like a plane from Washington, D.C., descending into Minnesota through iffy Midwestern weather, former Sen. Norm Coleman’s financial support from individual donors took a long, bumpy decline. A week-by-week analysis of new Federal Elections Commission reports shows that receipts from individuals reached a high point around the time Coleman’s election-contest trial began Jan. 26, then trended downward through his concession on the last day of June.

Being out of office has its privileges. One consolation for Norm Coleman after finally conceding defeat to Al Franken: seeing ethics complaints and investigations in his rearview mirror.

The Huffington Post is reporting that the FBI conducted an interview with a person in Minnesota as part of an investigation of so-called “Suitgate” charges leveled against Norm Coleman last summer. HuffPo doesn’t name the person and the FBI won’t confirm or deny. 

Norm Coleman insisted Thursday that he and his wife, Laurie, have done nothing wrong.
The former U.S. senator was talking about a Texas lawsuit’s claim that a campaign donor funneled the Colemans $75,000 disguised as a business transaction. Also, a Coleman spokesman insisted that after three and a half months the campaign is still assembling a request for [...]

On a day that Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak and St. Paul mayor Chris Coleman declare the RNC a “great success” (”nothing burned!”), we look back at the best of the RNC, including real-life delegate quotes, police ineptitude, nonsensical signs, and bird porn. Oh, my!

Tuesday’s adventures began with my shoulder and Mike Huckabee’s shoulder touching–though he didn’t seem to notice. It ended in front of Babani’s Kurdish Restaurant with a column of riot police who, after firing multiple exploding tear gas canisters a half hour earlier, said “thank you” and “we really appreciate it” in their final effort to disperse the remnants of a particularly dynamic march.

A pair of men have been arrested in the Denver metro area after one of them was found to have methamphetamine and numerous guns, including a “sniper rifle,” during a routine traffic stop in Aurora, Colorado. The Secret Service, ATF, and local US Attorney’s office are investigating. Ernest Luning has more details at our sister [...]

Through the course of this extraordinary primary season, few subjects have been discussed so much privately and so little publicly as the matter of Barack Obama’s personal safety as the first African-American presidential candidate to stand so near his party’s nomination. Earlier this week Jeff Zeleny of the New York Times broached the question  in [...]