Two quick stories from the week just past:

The Minnesota Independent’s Chris Steller reports that Norm Coleman is telling donors worried about the possible abuse of their credit-card and other personal information to call his office — which is fine, except that they aren’t answering the phones.   Oh, and they haven’t notified all of their donors about the security vulnerability, either.  Ooops.

Meanwhile, Chuck Olsen at the new Twin Cities video weblog (I’m sorry, but I hate the term ‘vlog’) Eskimo Witch (part of the Minnesota Stories video blog community) made a great catch today:  While looking at some of UpTake reporter Noah Kunin’s "Crashgate" footage ("Crashgate" being the catchall term for the Coleman website follies) it was noted that Coleman attorney Fritz Knaak chose to blame their website woes on — get this — the Russian Mafia.  (It starts about three minutes into the vid.)  Ahem.   Of course, EW interviewed Adria Richards, the IT expert who discovered the Coleman site vulnerability, and asked her if she had any connections to the Russian Mafia.  (Short answer:  No.)