By JAMES WALSH, Minneapolis Star Tribune

FAIRDEALING, Mo. - Inside a backwoods mobile home, Rodger Seratt pulled a handwritten recipe from the front pocket of his jeans and went to work on a new batch of bath salts.

Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois governor who served a stint on NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice" before a jury convicted him recently on multiple counts of public corruption, and other famous public dis-servants get the attention.

Prescription drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, and the Obama administration recently announced steps to better address it.

He arrested her once, 20 years ago, over threats to bomb an airlines flight.

According to the FBI, she's been threatening to kill him ever since.

They keep digging new graves for young people on the Red Lake Indian Reservation.

Those who work to combat crime in the northern Minnesota reservation point to a seemingly perpetual cycle of violence. Slights lead to assaults. Assaults lead to shootings or stabbings. Witnesses become victims. Victims become suspects. Some become dead.

To federal prosecutors, the laws against "providing material support" to terror groups are a critical weapon in an arsenal that keeps us safe from attack.

To antiwar protesters, now caught up in an expanding investigation of their activities, those laws infringe on our cherished rights of free speech and free association, and smack of political intimidation.

Why would the federal government fly a U.S. Navy officer, his Samoan wife and her unemployed sister thousands of miles from Hawaii to Minnesota to appear in a small St. Paul, Minn. courtroom?

Every day, "Misty" finds out that another pedophile has been caught with images of her. He could be a pastor, a cop or a mechanic busted with pornographic pictures taken when she was 8 or 9 years old. In each case, another person is making her a victim again and again, said her attorney James Marsh.

She goes by the name of "Amy," and the photos her uncle took of her a decade ago -- when she was 8 or 9 years old -- are among the most widely circulated series of child-pornography images in the United States.

Now her fight for damages from those who possess or distribute those photos is emerging as a big issue in federal courtrooms across the country. Including in Minnesota.

Employing a respectful demeanor toward suspects who would inspire only revulsion in others, Maureen Lese is in the vanguard of FBI attempts to combat one of the fastest-growing illegal activities on the Internet.