MPR’s News Cut quotes Lookout Services CEO Elaine Morley promising to include the news organization in legal complaint. What the complaint is about is unclear, beyond a statement on the firm’s website (pdf) alleging unauthorized access by both state government and MPR:

[L]imited portions of the company’s proprietary software may have been illegally compromised by The State of Minnesota and Minnesota Public Radio. … “We have contacted the FBI and other law enforcement officials and we are fully cooperating with their investigation into this matter,” said Elaine Morley, CEO of Lookout Services. Lookout Services Inc., filed suit against The State of Minnesota on December 10,
2009.

The re-election/recount campaign of former U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman made similar statements after local technology experts called attention to campaign donors’ private financial data being left unprotected on the campaign’s website early this year.

At that time, Coleman’s spokesmen said a U.S. Secret Service investigation would get to the bottom of the breach, with legal repercussions for alleged hackers — but no such consequences for Wikileaks or those who raised the alarm have come to light.

And when the Minnesota Independent last checked, nothing had come of charges that Coleman violated state law by failing to notify donors about the breach.

Then they trended downward — with ups and downs along the way — through Coleman’s concession on the last day of June.

The court battle itself offered occasions for Coleman to exploit for fundraising opportunities, and his recount committee augmented those by reaching out to potential contributors via email, video and his website.

But a major snafu put a bite into Coleman’s recount income in March, after donors learned that their financial data had been exposed in a database breach at colemanforsenate.com. The month started with a high of 43 individual donations for a total of $110,000, his fifth-best week. But four weeks later, after news of the leak had made national headlines, he took in only six checks, his fifth-worst week, for $21,500.

It was a turning point for Coleman’s fundraising methods: The campaign yanked the website’s online donation function, asking donors to mail in checks instead. (A U.S. Secret Service investigation into the data leak was still pending this month.)

Weekly receipts continued to rise and fall afterward but never again reached $100,000. The Coleman Minnesota Recount Committee reported receiving its last check on June 16: $10,000 from David Fisher, founder of the Gap.

Two weeks later, the Minnesota Supreme Court told Coleman it couldn’t help him close his 312-vote gap with Al Franken, and within hours Coleman was letting his supporters down gently, telling them his re-election efforts had reached the end of the runway.

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The interview happened “recently,” Sam Stein reports. The story is the first news of FBI investigations into Coleman’s affairs taking place in Minnesota.

It’s also the first resurfacing in months of allegations that Coleman’s friend and benefactor Nasser Kazeminy bought suits for the former Senator when he was still in office.

Coleman has denied the story, which if true would likely mean a violation of reporting rules or gift limits.

The Federal Election Commission will decide within two months whether Coleman’s campaign can pay lawyers who dealt with complaints about the allegations.

The Huffington Post’s anonymous source provided business cards left by the FBI as proof of the alleged interview and also offered other details — including that agents also asked about a different set of allegations in Texas.

In December news reports said the FBI was looking into separate charges raised in civil lawsuits filed in Texas and Delaware that Kazeminy had funneled $75,000 to Coleman via transfers from a business he controls in Texas to the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife, Laurie, works.

The Colemans aren’t named as defendants in the lawsuits, which are mostly concerned with broader business issues having nothing to do with them.

In March the U.S. Secret Service said it was investigating a leak of private financial information, including credit card numbers, from a database of donors stored at Coleman’s campaign Web site.

Update: The Pioneer Press has now reported on the same story, independent of HuffPo, with several new details. The “main topic” of agents’ interest were suits, according to the anonymous source, who couldn’t offer them information based on direct knowledge of the matter. The interview took place within the last two weeks, the PiPress said.

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 federal approval to spend campaign cash on fighting the allegations.

“There have never been any allegations that either my wife or I have done anything wrong,” Coleman told MinnPost correspondent Cynthia Dizikes Thursday as he left a meeting at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “There are allegations between businessmen about a business dispute. But there has never been a single allegation that me or my wife have done anything wrong, and we haven’t.”

That doesn’t mean they’re not spending money to prove their innocence. Both Colemans and both owners of businesses named in the allegations have hired top-shelf attorneys. One of the lawyers is Joe Friedberg, who represented Coleman in his election contest trial and is also representing Coleman donor Nasser Kazeminy, a defendant in the Texas suit.

It’s the first time in months that Coleman has himself publicly addressed the money-funneling allegations.

Meanwhile, a Coleman staffer insisted for the second time in two weeks that the former senator is still seeking federal approval to pay for legal expenses arising from the Texas lawsuit (and a related suit in Delaware) out of campaign coffers.

“We’re in the process of working with the FEC on that matter,” Tom Erickson told The Hill’s Briefing Room blog. It’s the same thing he told MinnPost March 19.

The Federal Election Commission (FEC) provides advisory opinions on questions of federal election law within 60 days to candidates who request them. Often the commission can rule sooner, if the requestor asks for an expedited response, Commissioner Cynthia Bauerly told MnIndy.

That was the case with Franken’s request for an opinion as to whether he and a party organization could establish new funds to pay for the election-contest phase of the dispute.

Coleman’s campaign announced on Dec. 17 it would seek such permission, but the Minnesota Independent’s monitoring of the FEC’s Web site since then has revealed no Coleman requests. An FEC spokesperson has told MnIndy that the agency doesn’t comment on advisory opinion requests until they are officially received.

The FEC has also not made any public response to a complaint filed later in December by the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which asked the commission to rule on what the Alliance called Coleman’s violation of federal election law. The alliance last year asked for investigations into the money-funneling claims by the Senate ethics committee and the FBI.

News last December that the FBI has launched a probe preceded Coleman’s announcement about the FEC request by a few days.

This week, the alliance’s executive director, Denise Cardinal, told MnIndy that she had received a flurry of calls from reporters in Washington, D.C., about the complaint, but she has no news from the FEC.

Interest in the Texas lawsuit, which was filed last October, was revived last week on news of sworn testimony by a second former executive from Deep Marine Techology Inc. B.J. Thomas claimed Kazeminy had demanded in 2007 that the company make a series of $25,000 payments to Hays Companies, a St. Paul insurance firm where Laurie Coleman works. Kazeminy, the executives claim, gave the order in the context of a comment that “United States senators don’t make shit.”

In his brief interview with MinnPost today, Coleman said “I can’t say anything”  about the FBI probe. ”We want this matter to be fully reviewed and fully investigated because nothing happened, and we are looking forward to that taking place.” It’s the same thing he said Nov. 12 in response to the Alliance’s call for investigation — with one difference. This time he didn’t accuse “my political opponents” of being behind the charges.

In a separate federal investigation, the U.S. Secret Service is looking into a leak of donor data, including credit card numbers, from Coleman’s campaign Web site. Coleman’s campaign said they welcome that probe as well.

Best example of police ineptitude/confusion: Three riot cops, standing outside of Dorothy Day Center, a homeless shelter surrounded by a fence, ask, “Is this Rice Park?” Runner up: Police using Styrofoam cups, which blew away in the wind, to mark the spot where a firecracker landed in 7th Street Place. (See below.)

Biggest waste of time and money: Riot cops, State Patrol, ATF, and the Secret Service investigating the “tossing of a firecracker” in 7th Street Place on Day 3 of the RNC.

Speak no evil?: "Mute" riot cops threaten a group of people stranded across the bridge.

Most ridiculous and unnecessary use of riot cops: At 11th and St. Peter at around 7:30 pm on day 4, people leaving “The Daily Show” and/or trying to get to their cars on the other side of the bridge, the side of St. Paul where police have detained nearly 400 people, are confronted by about 15 riot cops and members of the SWAT team. One riot cop jumps on the concrete barrier and points his gun. Two SWAT team members leap on the hood of cars and aim guns filled with tear gas at the onlookers, despite none of them being involved in the protest. The officers don’t speak, issue an order to disperse, nor explain why the onlookers are being threatened. And when the stranded folks ask them how they can get to their cars or where they should go, the cops remain mute, and instead follow their movements with gun barrels.

Best example of this election bringing out the “youth” vote: On Thursday, outside of the line for “The Daily Show,” a school bus drives by filled with elementary school children screaming “Obama!” and holding notebook pages scrawled with “Obama” out windows.

Best “protesters”: Members of the “Wig” party, coming out to wear wigs in support of “hair piece.”

Best sign spotted outside MSNBC “studio” in Rice Park: “I love being a debt slave.”

Best overheard Day 2, convention-goer division: Suited dude in line of folks entering River Centre sizes up Sarah Palin: “She’s too petite. I like ‘em thicker. Makes em bustier.”

Best quote from a street peddler: “Black people used to pick cotton. Now we just sell it. It’s no different.”

Most laughable line from St. Paul Police Chief John Harrington, after police herded peaceful protesters onto a bridge and placed them under arrest: “Nothing burned in downtown St. Paul. No one was injured in downtown St. Paul. It was a very successful day.”

Most laughable line from a local politico on the RNC: St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman, who paid more attention to the fact that MSNBC and “The Daily Show” were using St. Paul as a backdrop than he did police issues and abuses of civil rights: “(D)emocracy took place in the city of St. Paul on a scale that has never taken place before.”

Most locker-room-like chatter overheard from a cop high on power: Gathering in the History Center parking lot after Day 1 and engaging in post-game replays, one cop boasts: “So then I shot him with an impact round, and he just fucking dropped!”

Most repeated overheard line from cops high on power: “I’m so sick of these fuckers,” or variations there of, was uttered by at least three different cops on three different occasions.

Best line uttered from a Texas delegate during a series of delegate interviews by MNIndy on Day 3: “We need to drill. We need to do it now. I like to wake up and turn on my lights in the morning. That’s American.”

Best fake issue subversively being touted to convention-goers, in Rice Park: Bird porn: Those bird watchers are going to hell!

Most ubiquitous protester: Vermin Supreme, offering delegates outside the Xcel Energy Center $1,000 to write in his name for VP, and rallying convention-goers to join him in a John McCain cheer. No one joined. Best line: “For security reasons, you are required to remove your shoes and pants, and get ready to bend over for the next four years.”

Funniest claim scrawled in sidewalk chalk, in giant letters along Wabasha: “The RNC is bunk, eh?”

Best sing-along: “We all live in a fascist police state” to the tune of “Yellow Submarine,” sung on the John Ireland Bridge as cops arrested hundreds of people.

Newest fashion statement: Forearms decorated in Sharpie pens with the phone numbers of lawyers and friends.

Most confusing sign seen during the RNC: It’s so nonsensical it cannot be explained. Something about Obama being A (the) “fake” “flake” “loser.” It’s such a (the) confusing.

Most prominent RNC “look”: Cowboy hats, suits, white hair, and general whiteness.

Funniest claim from mayors R.T. Rybak and Chris Coleman: The Republican National Convention was a success, because, among other things: “So far, national and international media exposure has produced more than 8 billion media impressions, the equivalent of a $330 million ad campaign.” Yet they fail to mention that the top Google results for “RNC” include stories about riots, clashes, police overzealousness and abuse, and suppression of media.

My Tuesday 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 tour through the multi-level media center at the Xcel was like walking into your television set. Look to your left — it’s Mike Huckabee (“make room, let the governor through!”). Look to your right and it’s former UN ambassador John Bolton (and John Bolton’s mustache) gearing up for an interview at the Fox News radio booth — which, by the way, is set up facing the Air America booth. I never once saw them look up at one another across the 15-foot walkway.

Inside the convention hall, with its enormous LCD screen projecting an also-enormous flag flapping in the digital wind, I stumble upon Xcel security staff in the midst of a briefing.

A man stands before them and speaks clear and loud:

“Remember, Elevator Four is for V.I.P. only. And everybody did a great job with credentials last night — we’re just gonna step it up today. The red credentials are the delegates — matches the carpet!”

Below members of the Veterans of Foreign Wars rehearse their appearance in the evening’s proceedings. Triumphant music is playing.

“Forward!” says one man. “March!” The men begin to march away from their positions in front of the podium.

“Hang on!” yells a man wearing large headphones with a microphone attached. He nudges them back into position. “Let me mark some spots,” he says, laying small strips of green tape at their feet.

A man runs a dust broom across the gloss-black stage and a woman stands at the podium to test the microphone and prompter. She’s reading from the main prompter, the one every speaker uses. It’s huge. She stumbles twice, smiles, and walks away. “Please welcome jazz musish … jazz musiksh …”

I’m sitting in an aisle just behind a special seating area covered in blue velour. Two Secret Service agents walk past. One stops and touches the fabric.

AGENT ONE: Pretty blue velour…

AGENT TWO: Huh?

AGENT ONE: Pretty blue velour…

AGENT TWO: (ignoring Agent One and speaking into his communication device) Sandy? Nick and I are heading out. Where are you?

In the hallway just outside the convention space, a television news anchor records her evening news teaser. The camera rolls and she walks slowly towards it, speaking intensely.

“It’s a good thing the Republican base is pro-life, because Sarah Palin’s 17-year-old daughter is pregnant” — pregnant pause –”and she’s keeping her baby.”

The woman records the tease three times.

On the television screens scattered throughout the hallway, a C-Span interview with Ron Paul is playing. A man calls in: “My son is a Ron Paul fanatic — to the exclusion of girls and everything.” Paul chuckles.

On the delegate floor, as jazz musician Al Williams and his band rehearses (it is the smoothest of jazz), a woman shouts into her phone: “Can you hear the entertainment?! We’re on the convention floor!” She’s standing right next to the assigned seats for the Minnesota delegation:

Suddenly my phone lights up with a text message. The first in a burst of Twitter messages about protests and police movements outside.

I’m standing just behind Wolf Blitzer, who surfs the Internet from his broadcast seat. His teleprompter is paused and ready for his next live shot: “With the race in a dead heat, our latest CNN poll…”

The first text message goes like this: “40-60 riot cops reported at 7th and Sibley.”

I tell myself I’m going to stay at the convention.

A man next to me is carrying a spiral-bound notebook with an image of an old newspaper headline on it: “Goldwater wins first ballot!”

A tan hulk of a television news reporter talks into a camera about Sarah Palin: “Virtually everybody says ‘I love her’ — I cannot find a delegate who is not saying, ‘Brilliant pick.’ They love her and they can’t wait to hear from her.”

Another text message, from a concert on the Capitol lawn: “Riot cops at Ripple Effect have rubber bullets, gas canisters, and concussion grenades ready.”

Miss Alaska — not Sarah Palin but the Miss Alaska — poses for a picture in front of the stage. It’s still hours before anybody will take the podium.

A cameraman runs up to a colleague: “I just got Giuliani!”

Another text message about “blocks and blocks of riot cops” and I decide to leave the Xcel. Blitzer’s got it covered, I tell myself.

I walk outside and search for whatever gate will spit me out of the security zone the closest to the State Capitol.

All photos by Jeff Severns Guntzel. Contact him at jsguntzel at gmail dot com.

28-year-old Tharin Gartrell is one of four people being held in possible Obama assassination plot (Aurora, Colorado Police mug shot)

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 site, Colorado Independent.

Update: Denver’s CBS affiliate is reporting that four people are now being held in the case, and that one of the suspects told investigators their plan was to “shoot Obama from a high vantage point using a … rifle … sighted at 750 yards.” As Colorado Independent notes, the FBI is poo-pooing the seriousness of the threat: ““It could also turn out that these were nothing but a bunch of knuckleheads, meth heads.” More details from Colorado Indy.

“The national and international profile of Senator Barack Obama gives rise to unique challenges that merit special concern…. As an African-American who was witness to some of this nation’s most shameful days during the civil rights movement, I know personally that the hatred of some of our fellow citizens can lead to heinous acts of violence. We need only to look to the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and 1968 presidential candidate Robert Kennedy as examples.”

One curious aspect of Zeleny’s story, published on Monday and datelined Dallas: It fails to mention a disturbing report about an Obama rally in that city last Wednesday, where federal agents apparently ordered that security screeners stop checking the entering crowd at Reunion Arena for weapons more than an hour before Obama was to appear on stage. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported that “the order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security…. [Several Dallas police officers] spoke on condition of anonymity because, they said, the order was made by federal officials who were in charge of security at the event.”

More: David Crary of AP writes that fears about Obama’s security run especially high among black Americans; Mark Finkelstein of the conservative media crit site NewsBusters notes that Harry Smith of CBS tried to raise the subject in an interview last month with Ted Kennedy, who declined to play along.