Minnesota law is supposed to protect the state's natural and historical resources, but enforcing those protections often falls to local units of government that have other priorities. Case in point: Since last year, an immense pile of dirt has obscured part of Minnehaha Park in Minneapolis, one of the state's most popular parks, and neighbors are persisting in asking why. This is a story of local government embarking on an unauthorized side project while skirting public review to make what a residents' environmental committee calls "a major and unexpected change" to "a unique and significant geological feature" at Minnehaha Falls.

Minnehaha Park annually attracts three-quarters of a million visits from people who gaze at the falls, hike along Minnehaha Creek or picnic in the park's many glens and glades. Not far from the falls, a bronze plaque directs visitors, intriguingly, to an "abandoned waterfall," a separate site from Minnehaha's famous falls. It's at the end of a grassy cul-de-sac known as the Deer Pen, a gentle valley that meets Minnehaha Creek on its way to the Mississippi River. The Deer Pen is really a long-gone western channel of the Mississippi where the river fell and flowed for eons before abandoning that channel in a course change 9,000 years ago. (The same waterfall still exists today, having receded upstream until finally being fixed 120 years ago by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at its current site: St. Anthony Falls in downtown Minneapolis.)

Many park visitors seek out the abandoned waterfall and riverbed, but fewer are finding it these days because it's been buried under tons of fill dirt from a nearby construction project. The new earthen slope stretches over about a third of the 340-yard length of the Deer Pen, and in places nearly fills its 70-yard width. "It's a geological feature," says Irene Jones, a member of the Longfellow Community Council's River Gorge Committee, of the falls site and old river channel. "You don't just fill it up, at least not without talking to people."

Jones and others from the neighborhood say the idea of dumping dirt into the Deer Pen wasn't mentioned last year when the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board presented plans for building new shelters and roads in the adjacent Wabun picnic area -- the project that turned out to be the source of the dirt.

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Last weekend former Minnesota Secretary of State Mary Kiffmeyer got the endorsement nod from House District 16B Republicans to replace embattled Rep. Mark Olson, whose conviction for domestic assault got him booted from the House Republican caucus. If they were looking to replace Olson with someone less controversial, Kiffmeyer may have not been the best choice. District 16B is in Sherburne County and comprises the city of Big Lake.

Kiffmeyer was an extremely controversial figure as secretary of state, drawing criticism from Democrats, independents and, occasionally, Republicans.

Kiffmeyer came under fire for her statements regarding the separation of church and state. At a National Day of Prayer event in 2004, Kiffmeyer said that the "five words" that are "probably most destructive" in America today are "separation of church and state." Kiffmeyer later told the Star Tribune's Nick Coleman, "It's not the words that are destructive, it's the way they are interpreted. There are a lot of good church people who don't think they can be involved in government." She also told the Minnesota Monitor that her statements regarding the separation of church and state were "cobbled together."

Despite the fact that Minnesota's same-day voter registration policy has helped the state maintain the highest voter turnout in the nation for five decades, she often told other officials from other states attempting to implement same-day voter registration that it was problematic and contributed to voter fraud. She told John Fund, author of "Stealing Elections: How Voter Fraud Threatens Our Democracy," that she was "tired of hearing her state's same-day registration extolled." At the same time, she often took credit for the high voter turnout.

Many of her decisions as secretary of state were overturned by the courts. In 2002, when Sen. Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash, she prevented the distribution of replacement absentee ballots to those who requested them, a decision overruled by the Minnesota Supreme Court.

In 2004, she attempted to remove the Independence Party from the ballot, a move that was overruled by the Minnesota Supreme Court. She tried to prevent the use of IDs issued by tribal governments for voter registration, a move that was overruled by the courts.

During the 2004 elections, Kiffmeyer made national headlines when she decided to post terrorist warning signs at polling places throughout Minnesota urging voters to be wary of people appearing at precincts with "shaved head[s] or short hair" who "smell of unusual herbal/flower water or perfume," wear baggy clothing or appear to be whispering to themselves.

Race to the Right, a conservative talk show that appeared on several conservative radio stations around the Twin Cities and St. Cloud, grew very critical of Kiffmeyer after she agreed to go on the air five times, but canceled one appearance and failed to show for three others without notice.

The show's hosts wanted to discuss the fact that the secretary of state's Web site carried only metro-area elections results in 2005, an odd-year election. Kiffmeyer briefly touched on the issue in an interview with Minnesota Monitor's Paul Schmelzer. Of working with the county auditors, she complained: "I did stuff and went to things and found that it is ever-unending. I can't seem to get ahead … You meet this and it's more. You meet this, and it's more. It's unending."

The Kiffmeyer clan made waves on the political scene even before Mary Kiffmeyer's tenure as secretary of state. Her husband, Ralph Kiffmeyer, served one term in the Minnesota House, and he made it a controversial one with a bill to outlaw "sex toys and live sex performances."

Kiffmeyer and her husband are evangelical Christians, and are part owners in a "Christ-centered" bank. In fact, Kiffmeyer was the director of the bank's parent holding company. Two paintings at Riverview Community Bank in Otsego hang on the wall of the office where the bank president prays with bank customers. One painting shows "two businessmen in an office; one is shaking hands with Christ, as though closing a deal," and the other "is a scene of what appears to be Eden. Tucked into the background of that painting is a small representation of Riverview," according to the Pioneer Press in 2004.

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Last September the Chicago-based conservative think tank Heartland Institute rolled out a list of "500 Scientists with Documented Doubts of Man-Made Global Warming Scares." Heartland Institute identified the researchers as those "whose research in professional journals provides historic and/or physical proxy evidence" that global warming has been caused by a long, moderate, natural cycle rather than by the burning of fossil fuels; that sea levels are not rising rapidly nor are they likely to; that wild species are not being driven to extinction but rather are increasing the biodiversity of our wildlands; and that food production is likely to thrive during the decades ahead.

The article's author, Dennis Avery, made the determinations on his own and no one from the Heartland Institute -- or the Hudson Institute, where Avery also published the article -- ever contacted any of the researchers. Last week Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog decided to do just that. After sending out 122 e-mails, Grandia heard back from more than 45 researchers who objected to their inclusion on the list.

Minnesota Monitor attempted to contact the three current and former faculty members at the University of Minnesota who appeared on the list. At the time of publication two of the three had denounced their inclusion.

"I was surprised to find my name in the list of 'Co-Authors' in the Heartland Institute's web page," says Edward Cushing, professor emeritus in the U of M's Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior. "I resent their implication that I agree with one or more of their statements."

Cushing (pictured above) says that he believes many of his colleagues in the field of paleoecology would also disapprove "if informed that they in some way support the Heartland Institute's claims."

Herbert Wright Jr. is a former regents professor in the U of M's Department of Geology, Ecology and Botany who was also named by Avery. "I requested that my name be removed from the list," Wright said, "but the perpetrator refused to do so."

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In this week's audiocast, Hamline prof and Minnesota political analyst David Schultz says he's taking all the post-Tuesday talk about dream tickets and graceful exits with a very large grain of salt. At this point, says Schultz, "Everybody has realized that Clinton can't win, and that the tone she's taking is really damaging to her and the party.  Everybody realizes it except for her. She has said she's going to fight on to Denver. She's sworn she's in it to the end. She has loaned herself $10-11 million and probably will be loaning herself more money.

"George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson, who did that awful debate a few weeks ago, did some analysis and they were speculating that maybe Clinton will try to negotiate an exit by demanding the vice presidency. But Obama doesn't have to negotiate at this point. He's won. He doesn't have to put her on the ticket, and he'd be foolish if he did.

"Second, people are speculating that she'll stay on long enough to go out a winner, after she's picked up West Virginia and Kentucky. I think what's really going to happen is what [Peggy] Noonan said: She's going to start to twist and slowly die. Her fundraising is drying up, and advisers like Terry McAuliffe are suggesting that it's going to end pretty quickly. I think you'll see the mainstream media increasingly just stop covering her.

"I think she winds up going out pretty ugly at this point. And not only does it maybe hurt Obama longer term. In terms of how history views her, she won't be looked on favorably after her departure from the race."

More: In the second half of this week's Schultz Report, we discuss the McCain gaffes of recent weeks that have drawn little scrutiny.

Listen: David Schultz on the end of the nomination race and the Democratic party's changing of the guard (13:31)

When Minnesota Rep. Mindy Greiling, a Roseville DFLer who chairs the House K-12 Finance Division, recently went to Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), the majority-Muslim elementary school in Inver Grove Heights made infamous by a March Star Tribune column, what she discovered was entirely different from what writer Katherine Kersten had reported. In fact, what she saw -- halal food among a broad array of school lunch options, religious after-school activities among a range of other activities, voluntary prayer time and policies that allow children who choose to fast during Ramadan to spend mealtime away from the lunchroom -- seemed to be an exemplary model of how religious belief must by law be accomodated in a public school setting. 

She wrote a letter to the editor of the Star Tribune on Wednesday, calling for Kersten's resignation, citing "reckless journalistic standards" and "gross misrepresentation of the facts." Her letter was picked up on Thursday by Power Line's Scott Johnson, a friend of Kersten's, who says publication of the letter is an "act of thuggery" by Greiling and the paper. I caught up with Greiling on Thursday to ask her about the letter, get her response to Johnson's remarks and hear about her experiences as TIZA. She said she spoke up not only because she feels Kersten's article was incorrect, but because she was amazed by the quality of the school. "I saw such well-scrubbed, beaming students," she said. "It was just such an impressive school.... a school to be emulated, not hated. She's been a thug herself, as far as I'm concerned."

Listen: Rep. Mindy Greiling on Katherine Kersten's TIZA column (8:23)


Read Greiling's letter after the jump. 

Earlier: Kersten column on Muslim school followed by threats, police patrols