At a press conference this afternoon to announce that a lawsuit against the City of St. Paul will continue, protest organizers struck a similar tone. "If we try to march that route with 50,000 people it's going to be a mess," Jess Sundin told reporters.

What these statements make clear is that the legal (and rhetorical) dispute over St. Paul's RNC protest policies won't be settled anytime soon. The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War is extremely dissatisfied with the proposed parade route for the opening day of the convention.

"It is a logistically impossible permit," protest organizer Deb Konechne said at the press conference. "It does not even come close to resembling the permit requested."

On Wednesday the St. Paul Police Department announced that the parade would be allowed to proceed from the Capitol down Cedar Street, across 7th St. toward the Xcel Energy Center, and conclude at a triangle of streets adjacent to the convention location. Protest organizers had requested a more-visible route that would have included the John Ireland Boulevard bridge over Interstate 94 and Kellogg Boulevard.

The group plans to file an appeal with the St. Paul City Council on Monday protesting the parade route. It seems unlikely, however, that the protesters will get much sympathy from the municipal body. Ward Two city council member Dave Thune, normally a strong ally of the anti-war movement, recently characterized the parade route on the St. Paul Issues Forum as "a great route for demonstrating within sight and sound of the Republican delegates."

If the appeal fails, lawyers for the protest group will weigh what other legal options they might have, according to Teresa Nelson, an attorney with the Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union who is working on the lawsuit. "The city really has failed to demonstrate why this route is necessary and needed, and they're required to do that under the First Amendment," she said.

Definitely not work-safe, unless your workplace is full of people who go around shrieking "Fuck!"

TV montage: Losing it (1:48)

The critically acclaimed documentary Body of War, a film co-directed by Ellen Spiro and Phil Donahue, opens Friday at the Lagoon Cinema. The film contains moments that are profound and heartbreaking, not only because of the compelling subject matter -- an injured soldier's struggle -- but also because Iraq veteran Tomas Young (pictured) allows us to see him at his most bare and vulnerable.

There are no pundits in the film. No analysts. No talking heads, save for the footage from the House and Senate floors during the 2002 Iraq War Resolution. In speech after speech, the same sentiment first drafted by Bush is parroted: Saddam Hussein is "a smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Two years after the Resolution, Tomas Young of Kansas City, Mo., then 25, was being sent to Iraq after training in the woods at Fort Hood. Five days after arriving in the desert, he was shot above the collar bone by an AK-47 and paralyzed from the chest down.

The film follows Young's rise as a spokesperson for the anti-war movement and his slow recovery from his serious injury. We watch his mom place a catheter in him. His then-wife clean buckets of vomit. We listen to his tales of erectile dysfunction and his feelings of inadequacy.

Young gives viewers such an intimate glimpse of his life, he tells MinMon, "Because I want to show people what it's like to make a hasty decision of any kind. I signed up right after September 11. I never thought I'd end up in Iraq. And I never imagined I could come back so damaged."

Young talks to Minnesota Monitor about his life after the filming, his experience with the VA, and the reasons he believes that now is the time to stand up.

Minnesota Monitor: I recently learned you sustained a head injury since the filming ended. What happened?

Tomas Young: I fell out of my chair last summer and hit my head on the concrete floor. I had some bleeding on the brain that has caused concentration and memory problems.

Are you being treated at the VA for that?

There's nothing I can really do for this. They have an occupational therapist that has a memory program. But the test she administered to me, she didn't seem to think I had any problems. There are obviously some problems, but apparently nothing that can be detected in a test.

Continued: Click "Read more"

For some time now, notes David Schultz, Franken has been "stuck in the polls. He gained a lot on Coleman, but in the last couple of months seems to be stuck 7 to 9 points behind him. I think the Democrats wanted to force some kind of change in terms of how he approaches the campaign -- underscoring how important they believe it is to be able to knock off Norm Coleman this year.

"They brought in what looks like an experienced pro who may be able to use some of the techniques the DNC has used in the past couple of years and, more importantly, start to massage and change Franken's image. That's always been his biggest problem. I think the recent problems with taxes and the fact that he's had somewhat of an amateur staff running his campaign suggests now that the DNC really wants him to have some professionals who will hopefully do a better job than he's been doing so far.

"Six years ago, with Coleman and Wellstone, the media campaign started in January and February. I was anticipating it would happen here too. But in the last couple of months, Franken has been totally reactive in terms of the media. He's done nothing outside of defending himself in the news. This would have been the perfect opportunity for him to do some ads.

"For somebody who is supposedly so media-savvy, between having his own radio show on Air America, and Saturday Night Live -- somebody people thought would just be a darling of the media and know how to outflank Coleman [in this race] -- it's a real surprise. And it's not like he's broke, either. He's got a lot of money. I'll be curious to see in his [next] filings how he's been spending that money. Is he putting it into staff, or what is he doing? It's definitely a surprise that he's run such a low-key media campaign in terms of getting his message out."

Listen: David Schultz talks about the Franken campaign, the endstage of Obama/Clinton, and the California Supreme Court's gay marriage decision (16:37)

More: See the anti-Obama Mississippi ad referenced in this week's Schultz Report, which Republican Greg Davis ran in an effort to sink the candidacy of Travis Childers, who won a special election to the US House earlier this week. It's below the jump.

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Today James P. Rubin, a journalist who interviewed McCain in 2006 shortly after Hamas's triumph in Palestinian parliamentary elections, writes in the Washington Post that McCain then advocated a position very like the one he's now skewering Obama for touting.

Rubin reprints the text of the exchange:

I asked: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCain answered: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

And here's the video.

James P. Rubin interviews John McCain on Hamas, 2006 (Sky News/UK) (:40)