So now what? The implications of Judge Kathleen Gearin's order suspending a portion of the budget cuts singlehandedly imposed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty last summer will likely take months to play themselves out. But here's a quick spin through some of what Donald Rumsfeld would call the "known unknowns" to watch in the days and weeks ahead.

Last summer, when House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher (DFL-Minneapolis) and other DFL legislators were meeting with groups touched by Gov. Tim Pawlenty's unallotments to discuss legal options, one of the key consiglieres in behind-the-scenes deliberations was David Lillehaug, the former U.S. Attorney and DFL activist. PIM spoke with Lillehaug on Wednesday evening, a couple of hours after the release of Judge Kathleen Gearin's temporary restraining order.

"[The order] clearly lays out that the way Gov. Pawlenty used unallotment at the end of the last legislative session was not constitutional," Kelliher told PIM. "The governor took a go-it-alone attitude, and when you are facing a budget crisis of the size and magnitude we are, that is unacceptable."

Ramsey County Judge Kathleen Gearin sent a deep shock through Minnesota government -- and the state's precarious general fund budget -- this afternoon when she issued a temporary injunction against enforcing some of the budget cuts unilaterally made by Gov. Tim Pawlenty last summer.

House Research has completed the brief of amicus curiae that supports a complaint in Ramsey County District Court against Gov. Tim Pawlenty's unallotment.

Over Republicans’ charges of political gamesmanship, the state House Rules Committee this morning agreed to issue a friend-of-the-court brief crossing Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s budget cutting unallotments earlier this summer.

As we await this afternoon’s budget-cutting announcement, I wanted to briefly flag something pertinent that Mike Kaszuba of the Strib wrote late last week about ...