Just before Election Day, we noted that the editor of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, in preperation for the final showdown between Al Franken and Norm Coleman, ordered the paper's local columnists, whose work appeared in the news pages, to “refrain refrain from partisan political commentary in their columns on the news pages, at least until after the election.”

The editor was quite clear:

For the duration of the campaign, we will not run any columns on the news pages that support or attack one candidate or the other or take a strong partisan stand.

We thought that was a bit odd (aren't pundits supposed to opine about campaigns?), but if that was the ground rule set down, so be it. But the question now is, does the edict still stand? Because technically, the election is not over since Minnesota is about to begin a lengthy recount of the hyper-close race.

And if the Strib editor didn't want to overly influence the public's perception of the campaign, wouldn't that still apply during the contentious recount process?

We ask because we saw that Strib's in-house Dem critic, Katherine Kersten, just published a column critical of Minnesota's Democratic Secretary of State who is oveseeing the recournt. Does the Strib have its thumb on the scale?