“The Minnesota Marriage Minute videos are an exciting opportunity to promote a respectful dialogue about the future of marriage in Minnesota,” said John Helmberger, chairman of Minnesota for Marriage, in a recent statement announcing the videos.

“We especially want to thank Kalley Yanta, a veteran former news anchor and devoted mother for volunteering her time to make these important videos,” said Helmberger. “We are grateful for Kalley’s faithful commitment to preserving marriage in Minnesota and for her experience and poise in presenting the various topics. We are confident that she will be well received by Minnesotans across the State.”

The first video in the series is an introduction:

Yanta launched her new project with Minnesota for Marriage on Pastor Brad Brandon’s “Word of Truth” radio show on Wednesday.

“This is a big deal,” she said of the anti-gay marriage amendment. “People need to really pay attention to this.”

Yanta said they’ve taped 30 of the “marriage minutes” and are considering also creating radio and television spots. The Minnesota for Marriage group asked her to be the “face” of the effort, she told Brandon.

She also said she signed up for the project because of her own marriage and that fact that same-sex parents are harmful to children.

“I feel very, very grateful to have a good marriage,” Yanta told Brandon. “I want to be a part of … preserving that as our definition of marriage in Minnesota. … There are many efforts under way to tear apart the foundation of our society, which is the family.

“Thirty-one states across the nation have taken up this amendment and all have passed it, so if Minnesota doesn’t, we’d be the first not to, and that sets a precedent for the rest of the nation, and we don’t want to do that” she continued.

Yanta refuted the idea that same-sex parents can raise healthy, well-adjusted children, referring to a conversation she had with a “very prominent CEO of a major metropolitan hospital here in town,” who defended gay parenting.

“I have beg to differ with that opinion,” she said. “There are studies that are being conducted right now about how children are being raised and how that affects somebody in their psyche and in their self-esteem and in the various ways that that can affect a person being raised by either a man and a man or a woman and a woman. It’s not natural.”

Yanta also said that if the amendment doesn’t pass, Christian parents could be arrested.

“If marriage between homosexuals is legalized, what would some of the consequences be?” she asked rhetorically. “Parents who want to opt their kids out of the public school on the day that they’re teaching about homosexual relationships how it should be okay and accepted, and the parents are charged with discrimination and are hauled away sometimes in handcuffs. … We just can’t allow this to happen.

“We all need to have courage when it comes to speaking the truth,” she continued, noting that, so far, she hasn’t received any backlash from the videos.

But while Yanta may not have received backlash, the videos have.

Minnesotans United for All Families, a coalition of more than 100 groups, analyzed the images in the first video released and determined that not a single person in the video was actually from Minnesota.

“While this video is full of stock images, it is strangely lacking in real Minnesotans,” the group said on its Facebook page. “Perhaps they couldn’t find any real Minnesotans willing to support their divisive agenda?”

One image appears to have been taken by a French photographer of a French family, and another is being used on the website of an India-based health-care center.

Most of the images were purchased through low-budget stock-photo websites.

And it’s not the first time a group affiliated with the National Organization for Marriage (NOM is one of three groups that make up Minnesota for Marriage) used stock photos to misrepresent support for their cause. In 2011, the group’s New Hampshire affiliate used images from a rally featuring Barack Obama and passed them off as their own rallies.

The Minnesota for Marriage videos are not Kalley’s first foray into conservative Christian issue-oriented video production.

She has recently produced documentaries that express aimed her anti-abortion beliefs. In a November video, Yanta accuses Planned Parenthood of building “clandestine” and secretive headquarters in St. Paul, Minnesota’s Midway neighborhood. The video compares the Planned Parenthood construction to the Nazis’ Auschwitz concentration camp complex.

Yanta’s video also discusses “post abortion syndrome,” a controversial notion that women experience higher rates of mental illness following an abortion. The video portrays it as a real illness, despite recent scientific research to the contrary. A study in January 2011, for instance, showed that women do not have a higher risk of mental illness after having an abortion. In fact, studies that have shown a link often have neglected to assess the mental health of the women prior to them becoming pregnant.

Yanta courted controversy in the late 1990s, when as the anchor of KSTP-TV, a Minneapolis ABC affiliate, she had to cancel a speaking engagement with a group called Concerned Citizens for Action, an anti-abortion group that would later become Pro-Life Action Ministries, an entity that Yanta has worked with for several years. The station did not say why the news anchor had to cancel the appearance, but Yanta later told the St. Paul Pioneer Press that the event created the appearance of bias for the anchor.

She’s also been involved in Total Life Care Centers, a network of crisis pregnancy centers in Minnesota, many of which are state-funded despite providing information that medical experts and reproductive rights advocates have called false and misleading.

Photo: Screen shot of Kalley Yanta anchoring “Minnesota Marriage Minute: Episode 1″ (Source: minnesotaformarriage.org)

U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Utilities Service Deputy Administrator Jessica Zufolo made the announcement Monday morning during an annual meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in St. Louis.

In a following statement, U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said, “Today’s funding will provide residents of these rural communities with high speed internet connections to improve health care and educational opportunities and connect to global markets. In addition to providing much needed services to rural businesses and residents, these investments will increase jobs, not just in the near term, but through expanded opportunities in rural areas.”

The USDA provided three examples of how the funding would improve quality of life for rural residents. In Minnesota, they said, Rural Development Broadband Loan Program funds will be used to extend Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative’s existing Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) network to serve rural communities in north-central portions of the state. The program will offer service to more than 45,710 households and businesses through a company that has been operating since 1952.

In North Dakota, the funds will expand Polar Communications Mutual Aid Corporation’s broadband system throughout 18 exchanges to provide voice, video and high-speed data systems. When the project is completed, all of Polar’s subscribers will have access to broadband.

Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc., based in Indiana, will begin the process of designing and building broadband services to its 5,711 subscribers spread over 1,148 miles.

USDA is providing $478.6 million in funding to companies that meet eligibility requirements. Companies slated to receive funding, by state, are:

Colorado

• Eastern Slope Rural Telephone Association, Inc.–$18,725,000 will be used to upgrade the existing fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) network, capable of providing modern broadband services to subscribers in 10 exchanges.

Idaho and Utah

• Albion Telephone Company–$17,075,000 in loan funds will be used to install 453 miles of buried fiber optic cables throughout the proposed FTTP system, providing nearly 60 percent of subscribers with FTTP.

Illinois

• McNabb Telephone Company–$3,700,000 in loan funds will be used to make system improvements, including constructing new FTTP facilities. A total of 115 miles of buried fiber optic cable will be deployed to improve service to subscribers.
• Shawnee Telephone Company–$30,286,000 in loan funds will be used to construct FTTP facilities, allowing Shawnee to provide voice and data services at speeds of up to 100 Mbps to both residences and businesses.
• McDonough Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$15,728,000 in funds will be used to upgrade the rural areas with FTTH technology. Approximately 766 miles of buried fiber cable will be deployed to provide over half of the subscribers with access to improved broadband service. McDonough has been serving its rural subscribers for over 60 years.
• Wabash Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$21,867,000 will be used to install 777 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will enhance service to 70 percent of Wabash’s subscribers.

Indiana

• Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$29,139,000 in loan funds have been awarded to Perry-Spencer Rural Telephone Cooperative Inc., (PSC) which provides telecommunications services to nearly 6,000 subscribers over approximately 1,150 square miles in southern Indiana. This loan will enable PSC to start the process of designing and building FTTP to enhance broadband services across the service area.

Iowa

• Mediapolis Telephone Company–$13,401,000 in loan funds will be used to make system upgrades to the transport system and the network architecture from the existing copper Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL) to FTTP broadband systems.
• Griswold Cooperative Telephone Company–$12,747,000 in loan funds will be used to complete a system-wide FTTP network, enhancing broadband service to all subscribers.
• La Porte City Telephone Company–$9,867,000 in loan funds will be used to make system improvements, including installation of a FTTP broadband network that will serve all of the borrower’s subscribers. A total of 297 miles of buried fiber optic cable will be deployed, enabling downstream data rates of up to 20 Mbps.

Kansas

• The S & T Telephone Cooperative Association–$29,814,000 will be used to implement a full FTTH design to allow the migration to 10-20 Mbps broadband speeds to all subscribers and to provide IPTV in the near future.

Minnesota

• Paul Bunyan Rural Telephone Cooperative–$19,749,000 in Rural Development Broadband Loan Program funds will be used to extend Paul Bunyan’s existing FTTH network to serve the exchanges of Park Rapids Rural and Trout Lake in North Central Minnesota. With this extension of their network, Paul Bunyan will be able to provide advanced telecommunications services to over 45,710 establishments (households and businesses) across all service areas. Paul Bunyan has been operating since 1952 and has been a telecommunications borrower with the Rural Utilities Service since 1953.

Nebraska

• The Hemingford Co-operative Telephone Company–$10,280,000 will be used to upgrade the outside plant with optic cable, fiber optic drops and FTTP equipment. These funds will add 377 fiber miles of fiber optic cable.

New Mexico

• Roosevelt County Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$12,358,000 will be used to deploy new equipment and install FTTP equipment to enhance the broadband network.

North Dakota

• BEK Communications Cooperative–$26,746,000 in loan funds will be used to expand a FTTH broadband system. Upon completion of this RUS-funded project, 100 percent of BEK’s subscribers will be served by fiber.
• SRT Communications, Inc.–$24,832,000 in loan funds will be used to install 2,143 miles of buried fiber optic cable and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will be constructed in areas outside of towns in twelve of the borrower’s twenty-six exchanges. The service areas in the towns will continue to be offered DSL at speeds of at least 55 Mbps with its relatively new copper plant.
• Polar Communications Mutual Aid Corporation–$32,939,000 in loan funds will be used to expand the Borrower’s FTTP broadband system throughout the borrower’s eighteen exchanges. The upgraded system will help meet current and future requirements for delivery of voice, video and high speed data to subscribers. Upon completion of this RUS-funded project, 100 percent of Polar’s subscribers will be served with broadband via various technologies.

Oklahoma

• Terral Telephone Company–$4,855,000 in loan funds will be used to convert the existing copper network to a FTTH system, and connect new subscribers. The proposed FTTH deployment includes construction of over 62 miles of fiber plant in and around Terral, and the replacement of the existing softswitch and power plant. This FTTH deployment will create nine jobs and save seven jobs.

South Carolina

• Sandhill Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$5,930,000 will be used to provide for system improvements, including purchase of a new switch.

Tennessee

• North Central Telephone Cooperative Corporation–$27,069,000 will be used to upgrade portions of North Central’s outside plant and network infrastructure by deploying a FTTP network.

Washington

• Inland Telephone Company–$24,823,000 in loan funds will be used to expand Inland’s FTTP broadband system and connect new subscribers.
• The Toledo Telephone Co., Inc.–$18,091,000 in loan funds will be used to install 292 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system, offering enhanced service to all Toledo subscribers.

Wisconsin

• Union Telephone Company–$13,308,000 in loan funds will enable Union to deploy approximately 336 miles of fiber, which will provide approximately 60 percent of Union’s subscribers with access to improved broadband services.
• Marquette-Adams Telephone Cooperative, Inc.–$19,781,000 Marquette-Adams will use loan funds to complete a system-wide FTTP network, including over 370 miles of new or modified buried fiber, providing enhanced broadband service to all subscribers.
• Vernon Telephone Cooperative–$24,143,000 in loan funds will be used to install 1,206 miles of buried fiber optic cables and related equipment throughout the proposed FTTP system. The FTTP system will offer enhanced broadband service to 90 percent of subscribers.

Wyoming and Colorado

• Dubois Telephone Exchange, Inc.–$11,391,000 in loan funds will be used to expand the FTTP system to provide video and data services over an optic network with speeds up to 100 Mbps. Included in this loan is $9,462,000 for construction and engineering in Wyoming and $1,929,000 for construction and engineering in Colorado.

The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency (PCA) is responsible for monitoring and enforcing environmental standards in the state. For the final quarter of 2010, the PCA had an accounts receivable balance of $8.2 million, with errors of $6.2 million.

Auditors found that the PCA hadn’t created adequate controls to monitor regulatory fines or penalties the agency received. Because the PCA didn’t safeguard or keep daily logs of receipts, auditors found that checks could have been lost or stolen without the agency’s knowledge.

The PCA also failed to “redact not public information, such as bank routing and account numbers.” The agency allowed employees without a business need to access the information, which auditors said employees could use to “commit fraud against the check writer.”

The PCA also neglected to safeguard non-public data, which was available for all agency employees to view, and which 52 employees could edit, auditors found.

The lax financial controls led to errors in the PCA’s quarterly report, the audit found.

“For the quarter ended December 31, 2010, the agency reported about $8.2 million of accounts receivable to the Department of Management and Budget; however, the report had significant errors and concerns, totaling about $6.2 million.”

Those errors included an overstatement of superfund receivables by $4.5 million, including $3 million where the agency had already either settled and failed to adjust the balance or didn’t post the payments to the debtor’s account.

The report concludes that the agency was ultimately unable to substantiate hundreds of thousands of dollars in regulatory penalties due to the lax controls.

Auditors recommend that the PCA institute safeguards for its accounts receivables, limit the workers who have access to view and edit non-public data and that Office of Management and Budget provide more oversight for all state agencies on dealing with account receivables.

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If you have any questions on where, when or how to vote, the League of Women Voters has information on how to register to vote, where to vote in your local area, what to bring to the polling place and all the relevant laws governing the process at Vote411.org.

In St. Paul, Tuesday’s election signals the city’s first use of ranked choice voting, which allows voters to pick a second choice that will be counted if the voter’s first choice is eliminated (more information on ranked voting is available at the Ramsey County election center).

Wherever you are in the state, if you run into any problems at the polling places tomorrow—long lines, not enough ballots, partisan attempts to intimidate voters—we encourage you to report that news to the world by using the Twitter hashtag #votingproblems and by emailing the Minnesota Independent at tips@minnesotaindependent.com.

Paul’s speech in St. Cloud touched on issues like domestic economic policy, the drug war and foreign interventions.

“The country and the world is in a mess today, and I’m quite convinced that we know exactly how we get here and exactly what to do,” Paul told the crowd, “and one thing’s for sure is we don’t need more government.”

Paul blamed the Federal Reserve for helping to bring about the speculative bubbles that sunk the nation’s economy.

“It’s the Federal Reserve that by interfering in the monetary system, monkeying around with interest rates, they create the bubbles,” Paul said. “For a while they can create one bubble and patch it up again, but eventually the big bubble bursts.”

He also condemned government bailouts of big banks and companies.

“They said if we don’t bail out the system there would be a depression,” Paul said. “Guess where the depression would have been? It would have been on those who were receiving our money. Instead the depression was dealt to the people, the middle class, they lost their jobs and they lost their houses and we the taxpayer absorbed the debt.”

Paul also voiced support for abolishing the Department of Education and the federal income tax, condemned the drug war as a tragedy and worried about creation of a worldwide monetary currency.

He told supporters that the country is increasingly in agreement with their libertarian economic views.

“We’re witnessing the end of an economic era,” Paul said. “This is a tremendous opportunity for those of us who believe in liberty to get this message out.”

Paul’s foreign policy stances have drawn jeers from some Republican crowds at debates, but he continues to advocate for neutrality and condemn the United States’ assassination of American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, saying that ”what we must worry about is the rule of law because the rule of law protects us.”

Organizers put the turnout for the Republican candidate at about 2,500. Paul has trailed in most polls, but has captured a number of high-profile straw poll victories.

“You can not stop an idea whose time has come and the idea of liberty’s time has returned,” Paul said of his supporters. “We don’t have to understand each little issue, all we have to do is legalize freedom.”

The office will be located at 2722 University Avenue S.E., in Minneapolis. An invitation sent to supporters invites them to meet fellow activists and learn about the campaign’s “grassroots strategy for re-electing the president.”

“One year isn’t so far away, and we have to build for the long term and strengthen this movement today. Come on Monday to see how you can be involved and how together we will re-elect the President and reclaim the basic values that make our country great.”

Obama’s Republican rivals are currently focusing their resources on early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

The campaign board is proposing changes to its recently released guidance documents. Those documents tell political committees and other groups that get involved in the ballot campaigns how to account for political donations and political expenditures.

The board is considering dropping a section that directed the board’s staff to look into donations that don’t fit neatly into the disclosure requirements.

Already the board has set up disclosure requirements for money spent “that expressly advocates the adoption or defeat of a ballot question measure” or communications that are “susceptible of no reasonable interpretation other than as an appeal to vote for or against a ballot question measure.”

But there may be campaign activity that isn’t as cut and dry. The board had included a provision for fundraising appeals that were more ambiguous:

The Board recognizes that communications beyond express advocacy or its functional equivalent may be communications to promote or defeat a ballot question. Staff is directed to provide further research and options for language to extend the definition of ballot question expenditure to these communications.

But at Tuesday’s meeting, the board is considering dropping that provision and that is a problem for government transparency groups like Common Cause Minnesota.

“The staff recommendation could allow millions of dollars of undisclosed money to flow into the ballot campaign in Minnesota,” Mike Dean, the group’s executive director, said in an email to the Minnesota Independent. “At the June 30 meeting, the Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board took an important position to protect Minnesotans right to know what special interest are funding the ballot amendment campaigns. Since then the board has begun to reverse that decision because of threats and intimidation from organizations that want to keep Minnesotans in the dark.”

Though two sides of the debate over the anti-gay marriage amendment will be subject to the board’s guidance, only one side has threatened not to follow the rules.

Earlier this month, Minnesota for Marriage said it would not comply with any of the new guidance set forth by the board opting only to follow older rules set up well before the Legislature created a new campaign finance reporting system in 2010. The group is urging Minnesotans to support the constitutional amendment.

Minnesota for Marriage is a partnership between the Catholic bishops, the Minnesota Family Council and the National Organization for Marriage (NOM). NOM and groups affiliated with it have attempted to shield donors and supporters by challenging existing public disclosure laws in almost a dozen states. It has also lost in almost every state the group has launched a challenge.

The board will take up a recommended changes at its meeting on Tuesday which will also include some language tweaks.

The board is dropping its plan to research when and how an organization might be given a waiver that would allow them to opt out of disclosing their donors or expenditures. The board is also proposing changes to language regarding implied fundraising pleas.

Dean said those changes could have serious consequences and that campaign finance loopholes can add up.

“Experience at the federal level has shown this approach creates a huge loophole,” Dean said. “For example, Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS, a Section 501(c)(4) organization that reported over $16 million in independent campaign expenditures during the 2010 congressional campaign, disclosed none of its donors because none of its contributions were expressly earmarked for political ads.”

Dean added, “This recommendation will only further erode public confidence in government by allowing special interests to hide behind the loopholes created by the board.”

The company and the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers Union resumed negotiations on Monday, but a statement from a company official indicates that talks broke down at some point on Tuesday. The company is now offering the workers a revised final contract, and has given the workers until 11 p.m. on Nov. 1 to accept the offer or continue to be locked out.

Workers have been locked out of plants in Minnesota, North Dakota and Iowa since Aug. 1.

The statement issued Tuesday by Brian Ingulsrud, vice president of administration for ACS, said, in part, that the company began this week’s negotiations with a high expectation of resolution.

“Despite public comments by the union regarding significant movement, their offer failed to adequately address the issues identified by both parities as being the keys to reaching an agreement,” Insulsrud said. “Their new offer had no change in position whatsoever regarding the issue of subcontracting and job security. In the area of health care they offered very minor changes, but continued their demands for free health care insurance. … The company offered to revise the subcontracting language to guarantee that no employee or position will be eliminated due to subcontracting. The company also offered to delay by a year implementation of the transition to the management health care plan.”

John Riskey, Grand Forks, N.D. BCTGM Local 167G president, issued his own statement indicating that the company is proposing only minor changes to a contract that workers have already refused.

“Company executives seem committed to continuing a lockout that is tearing the community apart, putting hardship on 1,300 families and costing a farmer-owned cooperative an unsustainable amount of money,” he said.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Minnesota farmers have harvested 95 percent of their sugar beet crops. Sugar beet producers in North Dakota are also nearing completion.

An action alert from the AFL-CIO said that the company was attempting “to break the employees’ union” and is “risking this year’s harvest and the stability of local communities by sacrificing these good jobs to sweeten its corporate profits.”

To: American Crystal Sugar CEO Dave Berg

Sugar workers have always stood shoulder to shoulder with American Crystal Sugar and growers to protect and advance the sugar industry. They worked hard for the sugar program, Farm Bill, and stood up against the North American Free Trade Agreement and many other unfair trade agreements that hurt the sugar beet industry.

Together, the workers, company, and farmers have built the local economy, supported families, and helped communities flourish.

We respectfully urge you to reconsider your take-back plans and let your union workers stay on the job.

Shar Knutson, president of the Minnesota AFL-CIO, believes the lockout at ACS is placing at risk the entire U.S. sugar program that places a limit on how much sugar can be imported.

“An agricultural bill backed by Democratic Sens. Richard Durbin of Illinois and Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Republican Sens. Richard Lugar of Indiana and John Thune of South Dakota would eliminate the sugar program entirely and is gaining serious momentum in Congress,” said Knutson.

Previously, he indicated, such plans to eliminate the sugar program have been quashed by a coalition of organized labor and industry officials.

“Labor-friendly members of Congress without sugar beet farms in their districts or states supported the program in previous years because of the once-positive labor relations at companies such as American Crystal,” Knutson said.

“But with American Crystal’s recent treatment of union workers, it’s going to be extremely difficult for organized labor to get behind the sugar program once again. Labor-friendly members of Congress from non-sugar producing areas also will have a hard time supporting an industry that is treating workers as poorly as American Crystal is right now.”

The lockout affects workers at facilities in Moorhead, East Grand Forks, Crookston, and Chaska, Minn.; Hillsboro and Drayton, N.D.; and Mason City. American Crystal Sugar is a cooperative that provides 38 percent of the nation’s sugar from sugar beets and 15 percent of all sugar production.

During the 2004 general election, Oregon was among 11 states that passed ballot measures banning gay marriage — 57 percent of Beaver State voters approved the ban. But in 2012, Oregonians might be given the opportunity to vote to lift the ban, if the state’s largest LGBT-rights group, Basic Rights Oregon (BRO), decides to it has enough support to start a full-fledged ballot-initiative campaign.

As The Register-Guard reports, volunteers have recently been working the phone bank at the BRO’s Eugene headquarters, trying to gauge support for marriage equality in the state.

Last month, Basic Rights Oregon announced it was exploring a Marriage 2012 campaign and, simultaneously, organized an advisory group made up of community leaders and campaign professionals to help finalize that decision in late October or early November.

“Deciding whether to go to the ballot is not something we take lightly nor a decision we will make alone,” said BRO Executive Director Jeana Frazzini in a statement on group’s website. “We want to hear from the experts and leaders on the Advisory Group as well as from the larger LGBT and allied community, because we cannot move forward unless we have a viable ballot measure as well as a supportive and engaged base of support.”

According to the Register-Guard, in 2004, gay-marriage-ban campaigners spent $2.5 million to push the amendment, while marriage-equality supporters spent almost $3 million.

The state’s leading marriage-equality foe, the Oregon Family Council, has promised to give BRO “the fight of their lives to protect marriage” if they start a ballot measure campaign.

If next year Oregon joins Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Vermont and the District of Columbia in becoming the seventh state to offer marriage to both straight and gay couples, it will be the first state to legalize same-sex marriage via popular vote and the first to overturn a constitutional gay-marriage ban.

Meanwhile, campaigns to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage wage on in Minnesota and North Carolina, and GOP presidential candidates face pressure from social conservative groups to support a federal constitutional gay-marriage ban. However, contender Herman Cain made news on Sunday’s “Meet the Press” by saying he thinks banning or legalizing gay marriage should be a state’s decision.

“I wouldn’t seek a constitutional ban for same-sex marriage, but I am pro-traditional marriage,” Cain told “Meet the Press” host David Gregory.

Cain, along with Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), are the only four GOP candidates in the leading pack of eight that did not sign the National Organization for Marriage’s controversial “Marriage Pledge,” which among other provisions binds the signer to supporting a federal constitutional amendment “defining marriage as only the union of one man and one woman.”

Watch Cain on “Meet the Press”:

As Minnesota Pastor Brad Brandon noted on his radio program last Friday, since his October 2010 endorsements of a slate of Republican candidates including U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, he hasn’t received a thing.

“You’d have to be living under rock if you didn’t know back in October of 2010, I chose to endorse candidates from behind my pulpit,” Brandon said. “Everywhere I go people ask me, ‘What happened?’”

“Are you ready for what happened? I’m going to explain to you what happened.” Brandon played a few seconds dead radio air. “That’s exactly what happened. Nothing happened.”

“So far the IRS has done absolutely nothing. What does that prove? That this is nothing more than an intimidation factor by the goverment to try to control the pulpit, to control the church.”

He added, “They know that if this were ever to go to the Supreme Court it would be shot down.”

Our sister site, The Minnesota Independent, first reported on Brandon’s endorsements in 2010 and that reporting generated a complaint to the IRS by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State.

As Brandon notes, the complaint appears to have gone nowhere.

Rob Boston of Americans United told the Minnesota Independent that the reason why the IRS hasn’t been effectively enforcing the law is “complex.”

“A few years ago, the IRS moved to audit a church in Minnesota that had endorsed Michele Bachmann,” he said. “The church sued, claiming that the IRS had not followed its own procedures for auditing churches. The church won the case when a federal court ruled that the IRS official who approved the audit was not of sufficient rank.”

The Independent’s reporting on Pastor Mac Hammond’s endorsement of Bachmann, as well as a financial set-up within the church that came under heavy scrutiny, generated that IRS investigation back in 2007. The IRS lost its case because the law limits how the agency can investigate churches and it had not followed its own rules.

“Subsequently, the IRS announced that it would revise its policies for church audits,” Boston said. “As far as we know, this process is ongoing. So, if there has been a pause in enforcement, it’s just that – a temporary pause.”

Even if the IRS isn’t currently going after churches that break tax laws, it still advises churches not to break the law.

“The IRS website continues to contain material warning churches (and other non-profits) against partisan politicking, and no change in policy has been announced,” Boston said.

Other churches continue to break the law every year and skate by with little to no consequences. Warroad Christian Church in northern Minnesota has been endorsing Republicans over the last few years.

The IRS dropped its investigation of that church after the Hammond court decision.

The church decided to endorse again this year as part of a broader movement called Pulpit Freedom Sunday. The Alliance Defense Fund, a conservative Christian legal group, encourages churches to endorse from the pulpit each October. This year the movement picked up 539 churches around the country.

In Minnesota, five churches participated in Pulpit Sunday. Aside from Warroad, Faith Baptist Church in Brainerd, Hill City Baptist in Hill City, Landmark Baptist Church in Red Wing and South Troy Wesleyan Church in Zumbro Falls also announced they were endorsing candidates.