Mark Dayton’s churlish luncheon companion

Imagine, if you will, a lunch hosted by Mark Dayton for Power Line’s Scott Johnson and a “friend.”

First of all, which of these two is more likely to have the poor taste to talk about the lunch?

And second, which one is more likely to have been the churlish companion?

At a charity auction in 1994 or so I won the opportunity to have Mark Dayton take me and a friend to "power lunch for two" at the Minneapolis Club. The lunch occurred toward the end of Dayton's tenure as the Minnesota state auditor. The lunch was extremely unpleasant because Dayton seemed to be unable to disagree agreeably. [ ]

So, we know it was Scotty who has the poor taste to talk about it, but Scotty says Dayton was the unpleasant one.

Run that one through Louis Nizer’s Rule of Probability, boy and girls, and see what you come up with.

Scotty’s rich story telling ability was brought to bear here as a preamble to a real scoop obtained by the Republican cub reporter Luke Hellier:

It turns out that affidavits filed by his wife were removed from the court file of his second divorce. They appear to have been removed by Dayton's attorney on Dayton's behalf [ ] and their removal was resolved by a subsequent court order returning most of the the divorce file to the parties.

Except, of course, they weren’t removed on Dayton’s behalf. Oops.

I took out the reference to a correction in the quote above, because I wanted it to be a surprise for you, boys and girls. Here it is, from the same post:

Luke Hellier has corrected his MDE post to reflect that the affidavits were removed from the court file by the attorney for Dayton's wife, not by the attorney for Dayton. That seems to me to make it more likely that the affidavits raised issues personally sensitive to Dayton's wife rather than to Dayton. I regret the error. [But he doesn’t regret the smear.]

You have to love the guys at Power Line. They certainly do. They are each others’ favorite commenters — in fact, they are each others’ only commenters. They’ll pop in on somebody else’s post, snap a few towels, and engage in some locker room jocularity. John, the performer formerly known as Hind-rocket, did it on this one:

JOHN adds: In 2006, Alan Fine was the Republican nominee for the Congressional seat that Keith Ellison ultimately won. At that time, the Minneapolis Star Tribune took a gleeful interest in Fine's ten-year-old divorce proceeding. The Strib's coverage was misleading at best, and was based on court files that may have been leaked illegally. Will the Strib show a similar level of interest in Mark Dayton's personal history?

I know, I know. Just kidding.

Just for the record, there were police reports of domestic abuse in the Fine case.