WCCO-TV may not have had enough dough in the budget to get Pat Kessler to Denver for last summer's Democratic National Convention, but top dog Don Shelby, is filing a two-night report from Jamaica on ruthless telephone scammers. Shelby opens with the disclaimer that this isn't a "sunny" getaway, and the story, familiar to many I'd guess, isn't funny. Shelby says the scammers have been connected to 400 murders in Jamaica and routinely threaten skeptics with violence. Gotta love the old investigative reporter's deadly serious narration ... Bill Kurtis would be proud. And he does pose the question foremost in my mind, "How are people so stupid as to believe this stuff?"

The Strib's Neal St. Anthony delivers an odd piece, a kind of mini-psycho study of car dealer Denny Hecker. Anyone who knows Hecker gets the Sammy Glick vibe and Hecker's gilded-age lifestyle cries out for the full profile, with interviews with confidants, business cronies, close employees and play pals, etc. St. Anthony has a business school dean saying, ""I know Denny a little. There's some goodness there. To reinvent himself, he would have to look inside, identify the positive, and introspect those elements that allowed him to fail. He needs to figure out what he needs to change. And, then, he will have to convince key individuals that he has changed.'' It's not quite a news story and a long ways from the full story.

Dan Olson at MPR reports that the state has 300 people trying to track down $108 million in unpaid sales taxes, and another $489 million in income and business taxes. This includes a south Minneapolis car customizing joint allegedly on the hook for, get this, $544,000 in unpaid sales taxes. A hundred grand here, a hundred grand there and pretty soon you've avoided paying some serious money.

Steve Brandt of the Strib tells the head-shaking bureaucratic tale of the twisted I-35 bridge girders that are still cluttering up Bohemian Flats, even though the state has $470,000 waiting to build a picnic shelter and a rest room ... and you know, generally clean up the place. Writes Brandt, "The issue comes before the court because some defendants -- in lawsuits pending from 117 survivors and relatives of victims from the bridge collapse -- want the girders preserved in place. Attorney Dick Nygaard, representing some of the victims, said under Minnesota law, spoiling evidence so that it can't be used to prove a case causes legal liability." Oh, please.

Mark Albert at KSTP-TV serves up the irresistibly sordid story of a woman held hostage for ... "three days" ... and forced to ... "have sex with men," according to the pulled quotes from a police report that are waggled at us on the screen. Naturally, KSTP hypes this one as the tale of a ... "sex slave." The report advances the belief that "more women may be involved." Or maybe not.

The PiPress's Ross Rahaila reports on the death of locally based singer-songwriter Jeff Hanson. By all signs the 31 year-old died from a fall in his new apartment.

MPR's Euen Kerr has a solid, unpretentious interview with author Andre Dubus III ("The House of Sand and Fog"), relative to his new novel, "The Garden of Last Days", which is set in Florida in the days prior to 9/11 when the Saudi hijackers frequented a strip club. Their tip money on a dresser he says was his inspirational image. For research Dubus says he read over 30 books on the Islamic world, including the Quran "cover to cover, twice". Yeah, and I read "Ulysses" once.

Occasional commentator Syl Jones is back in the Strib's Op-Ed section with a kinda, sorta tongue-in-cheek shot at Internet responders, also known as "trolls," the dysfunctional critters who haunt the comment sections of blogs and papers ripping away at everything in sight without ever using their real name. Jones could have used a re-write and a polish for a funnier edge, but check out ... the comments to his piece. For example "noggnbloggn" goes after Jones, asking, "Does it bother you that so many readers take exception to what passes for journalism, that they do not necessarily agree with the latest political spin? Is it your desire to squash descent, because other folks might read it and agree (therefore making it "propaganda", because it doesn't align with the Strib's, or the State's P.O.V.?" That pretty well closes Jones' case.

Vikings Insider, aka Judd Zulgad of the Strib, tries but can't nail down anything definitive in the latest twist in the Brett Favre silliness. The latest is the alleged deadline set by Vikings coach Brad Childress for Favre to decide if he's coming here or not. "A Vikings official," writes Zulgad, "said the team would have no comment, and Favre's agent, Bus Cook, did not return phone calls seeking a response. Childress will not address the media until Thursday." And that, all you kids in j-school, is how it goes some days. The PiPress's Rick Alonzo does his damnednest to add something more, writing that, "The [Green Bay] paper reported that two months ago, Favre's "inner circle" reserved a group of 25 to 30 rooms at a hotel near Lambeau Field for the weekend of Nov. 1, when the Vikings visit the Packers."