The Wilson family calls it the “Permibus”: a 1984 Bluebird school bus painted green and converted into a traveling exhibit of sustainable living. The Wilsons - Stan, 52, Delyla, 44, and their daughter Megan, 17 - have lived on the “Permibus” since it went on the road from California in February. They share their home with three dogs, three chickens and a composting bin full of worms.

On Saturday, however, the Wilsons were evicted from the Permibus after it was pulled over and impounded by police on Interstate 94. Caught up in last weekend’s security sweep ahead of the Republican National Convention, the Permibus is now parked in the city of Minneapolis impound lot, illegal to drive until 23 alleged safety violations are fixed.

It’s another confrontation in a week that has put the balance of maintaining order and ensuring free expression to the test in the Twin Cities.

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If Juris Curiskis were a lawyer, he would have enough billable hours to charge his client maybe $50,000. But he’s an architect, working out of his home office with no legal training. His client is himself. That hasn’t deterred him from a three-year, against-all-odds legal attack on the way the city of Minneapolis charges property owners for street maintenance projects. Amazingly, without a lawyer, he persuaded the Minnesota Court of Appeals last year to reverse the trial court’s decision and keep his gripe alive. Since then, his case has been thrown out once again. But he’s drawing up the legal briefs to make his case, a second time, to the appellate court.

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Reading my colleague H.J. Cummins’ report on Xcel Energy’s effort to recover their money from hundreds of malfunctioning gas meters, it seems timely to tell the tale of a man and his electric meter, which he says had the opposite problem: it claimed he was using all kinds of juice at his condo over the winter, when he and his wife weren’t even living there.

Earl Weckman, 74, is a retired Hopkins police officer. That doesn’t mean he has forgotten how to build a case.

Weckman lives with his wife Marilyn in a condo in Rogers. When winter comes, the couple departs for four months in Arizona. They get their bills forwarded to their place in Mesa, and this past winter, Weckman noticed something strange in his Xcel Energy bills. They were about double what they were the year before (in January 2008, $82.17 versus $39.50 in 2007).

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In April, Kathryn Hansen was ordering some new checks from Wells Fargo when the agent on the phone made her an offer. Open a home equity line of credit and you’ll get two free plane tickets to London. That’s easily $1,000 per person, she determined, well worth paying the $275 closing costs for a HELOC, which she was interested in anyway.

Hansen, who lives in St. Paul and works for Target in real estate development, checked with her partner and settled on the dates for the trip, next year. Then she learned the tickets came with a condition: you have to pay for a week’s stay in a hotel. Well, she and her partner were going to have to get a hotel anyway, so that was acceptable. Then came the unacceptable.

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