This article from STL Today gives a bit more detail about what happened with the Gephardt staffers threat against the unions. It's nasty.

In a sharply worded letter sent to Gephardt Wednesday, McEntee and Stern said that during the Dec. 1 meeting, Aboussie "demanded that AFSCME and SEIU not campaign for Howard Dean in Missouri." The letter says Abouisse outlined three specific prohibitions:

*the unions shouldn't send any of their Missouri union members to Iowa, a must-win state for Gephardt and a place where the two men are locked in a tight race for the lead
*the unions shouldn't make an independent expenditures for Dean in Missouri
*and the unions shouldn't communicate with their Missouri members about their support for Dean

If they didn't comply, Aboussie said, she would release a letter signed by 22 Democratic state legislators calling for the repeal of Holden's executive order giving state employees collective bargaining rights.

Given this kind of nastiness, I lend more credence to my initial thought that the stories about the "Dean volunteer" who called asking if it was ok for out-of-staters to vote in the caucuses was nothing more than a big fat plant. (I mean, why would a Dean volunteer not call the Dean campaign directly or post a note on BFA if they were curious?)