Gov. Pawlenty has promised DFLers he will not veto the $1 billion bonding/construction bill. Now the guessing game is over what he'll line-item veto out of existence. He says the DFL has given him something he can work with. DFLers says they couldn't get him to be specific about the line-item vetoes he might use in exchange for concessions on pet projects of his, such as the sex offenders facility in Moose Lake. The Strib's Rachel Stassen-Berger and Pat Doyle asked for a breakdown of specifics for the facility up there. "Among the disclosures, the administration wants to buy 12 outdoor benches for more than $700 each, 10 stools costing $400 each and three natural wood file cabinets for $946 each." Gosh, a feller could buy a lot of flat-screen TVs for that kind of money.

A 20 percent increase in kids in the Edina ... Edina ... school system who are on free or subsidized lunches? MPR's Tom Weber reports on yet another facet of the recession. "[S]tatewide enrollment in Minnesota schools stayed mostly flat from last year to this year, but there was an 8.5 percent increase in the number of students on free and reduced lunch. As a result, more than one in three students receives help from the federal support program, the most widely-used measure of poverty in schools." He notes, "There are 10,000 fewer students in Minnesota schools than there were in 2002, yet there are 65,000 more students on free and reduced lunch."

The anticipated debate over the racino-gets-you-a-Vikings stadium-and-everything-else-you-could-ever-want fizzled Wednesday. I know. You're very disappointed. But the conservative (excuse me, "libertarian") True North blog thinks racino boosters like ex-Sen. Dick Day are going at this all wrong. In true libertarian fashion, its "Alice in Wonderful" logic insists that "Minnesota does not have a revenue problem, it has a spending problem." It suggests re-marketing the racino as ... a tourist lure. It would "provide an additional entertainment option for residents and tourists. From my perspective, the revenue potential is beside the point." Maybe if Day added a roller coaster and a water park?

Stassen-Berger posts on the Hot Dish Politics blog that Elwyn Tinklenberg, Michele Bachmann's opponent in '08, donated the most cash back to his party's central coffers, $250,000. She writes: "Minnesota's Republican House members contributions to the  National Republican Congressional Committee also fell below Tinklenberg's  — and most of the Democrats to the DCCC. U.S. Rep. John Kline, of  Lakeville, ponied up $45,000 and U.S. Rep. Erik Paulsen gave $2,000. The FEC record doesn't show any RNCC contributions from Rep. Michele Bachmann in 2009 or Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee contributions from former Sen. Norm Coleman."

Bachmann, meanwhile, was making a radio appearance, where she continued with her pretty well discredited assertion that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has her as Target No. 1 for defeat this November. The Minnesota Independent's Andy Birkey follows Bachmann so you don't have to. She also encouraged her supporters to “literally start banging garbage lids together” to defeat health care reform. Think about that image for a second. Odd characters here and there standing in their front lawns banging garbage lids. Perhaps the governor could find some cash for a nice facility for them, too?

Jesse Ventura — again — popped up on "The View" — again — Wednesday and didn't do well convincing the ladies that 9/11 was an inside job. City Pages offers a link. The sight of Jesse arguing construction forensics with Elizabeth Hasselbeck on national television is some kind of metaphor for our time.

That bill to require background checks of buyers at gun shows, where anyone, even sex offenders, can walk out with a small arsenal if they've got enough cash? Rejected. No surprise, of course. The gun control crowd had limited hopes for the bill, but its author is saying he might give it another shot before the session wraps in May. Mike Kaszuba files for the Strib: "[G]un-rights groups said [the author] and others had not been able to show that guns bought at gun shows without background checks were a significant factor in crimes." Define "significant."

The median price of homes sold in February ticked up 6 percent. Scott Carlson's Finance and Commerce story notes: "Fewer foreclosure homes are selling now than did during last February ... Since more traditional homes are selling and they are at higher prices than foreclosures or short sales, this pushes the median sales price up." But upper-end inventory is still lagging badly: "[T]he number of home sales priced between $250,000 and $350,000 fell 6.2 percent in February compared with the same month a year ago. For the same period, the number of homes for sale between $500,000 and about $1 million dropped 20 percent while those priced more than $1 million fell 35.8 percent."

John Vomhof's Business Journal story says the uptick gives "the market back-to-back monthly gains for the first time since 2006."

Wednesday's lockdown at Minneapolis schools and Cretin-Derham Hall was pretty annoying every way you look at it. Authorities are following leads to Australia for the perps and to the Netherlands for the warning. (Yeah, it's that kind of world.) The PiPress story, by Mara Gottfried and Doug Belden, says: "As St. Paul and Minneapolis police worked to track the source of the threats, they found they had been sent from the same Internet Protocol address in Australia ... But "whether or not the posting was done by someone hacking into an IP address, that I can't speak to," [said a police spokesman].

WCCO-TV's story suggests a specific suspect has been identified in some way. "The suspect who allegedly — and originally — made the threat hasn't been in the United States in seven years, so police believe this is a prank but continue to look into it," files James Schugel.

The Sydney Morning Herald has nothing more to say other than describing us as "the busy midwestern US city of Minneapolis." Sorry, St. Paul.


Oh, for techie! Target is getting hip to the everything-on-smart phones thing and will begin allowing customers to download coupons to their BlackBerrys and iPhones (and all the others) to then be scanned at check-out. Very "save the trees." Jackie Crosby files a report for the Strib, saying, "Similar to the mobile gift-card program Target announced last month, customers can access the coupons by going online (target.com/mobile) or by texting 'Coupons' to 827438 (which spells "Target")." The Bull's-eye is the first big national retailer to give this a spin.

"The Green Zone", starring Matt Damon, opens Friday. It is, judging by the trailer, a very jacked-up action movie version of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's book, "Imperial Life in the Emerald City." If you read it, it left you, page after page, shaking your head in dismay at American bungling and corruption following the invasion of Iraq. Well, the flick is getting a no-kissy launch from John Hinderaker over at Power Line, even though it's highly unlikely he's seen it yet. He writes, "Green Zone is history as imagined at the Daily Kos and Democratic Underground. The film is a fevered portrayal of a fictional world in which the CIA warned President Bush that Saddam had no WMDs and in which Sunni insurgents are heroic patriots who are brutally targeted by evil American death squads." What? The CIA warned Bush (and Cheney) that Saddam had no WMDs? Where do these Hollywood loonies get this stuff?