by Steve Timmer

May 2, 2013, 9:30 AM

Another squirt gun fight at the OK Corral

And never mind the mixed metaphors

(Update: The Brodkorb hearing has been postponed. This story was ready to go, though, and it seemed like such a waste of a great Avidor sketch not to put it up. Mike is shown in the sketch wearing part of his costume from his very first RPM job. It’s funny, too, because Brodkorb went from puppet to puppet master in a short time and then lost that gig, too. No new hearing date has been scheduled.)

It’s a week for hearings for Minnesota politicos. Yesterday, it was State Senator Kent Sorenson (an Iowan actually), Andy Parrish, and Michele Bachmann in a political inquest involving a presidential candidate floating face down in the Des Moines River and sacks of dollars left on Sorenson’s back porch. That’s a gripping tale of intrigue, perhaps for another day.

Today, Michael Brodkorb squares off with Senate Leader Tom Bakk in another in the Super Soaker ® Challenge series in Brodkorb’s suit against the Minnesota Senate for alleged illegal defenestration.

Well, that makes it sound more exciting than it will be. But according to the MinnPost story at the link, the magistrate is gathering the lawyers — and the parties — to go over pretrial discovery (which is frankly not all that complicated) and take another shot at badgering them to settle.

It is in some ways amazing that the case has not settled; it would have if the parties, especially the Senate, had just looked at the economics of the case. The Senate has already spent a third of what Brodkorb is demanding in outside counsel fees, never mind the cost of the time and attention of people inside the Senate.

But the people who created the problem — the Republicans — were swept out of the majority to be replaced by the DFL and a new leader, Tom Bakk, who apparently couldn’t get the time of day from the Senate’s lawyer when the GOP was in charge. The case has been a little adrift.

The only real bridge to the past in the suit is Dave Senjem, who attended the Scarlet Letter award ceremony for Amy Koch with Geoff Michel and David Hann, while in a scene right out of the Godfather, the Senate’s button man, Cal Ludeman, was kneecapping Brodkorb in a suburban restaurant. I’ve always wondered if they played Neapolitan music at the Moose Country. (The near-simultaneous timing of the two events was also Godfather-esque.)

Dave became the Senate’s leader after Amy Koch “resigned.” He’s gone from saying the case was “in lawyer land,” to he wasn’t going to look in the rearview mirror, to recently, “We need to put cement around our heels.” There are some depositions already scheduled, and Dave Senjem and Geoff Michel’s are among them.

Dave doesn’t seem, um, decisive, and is probably not much help at this point. To Tom Bakk, I am sure the case seems like a hot potato, but it will only get hotter and more of a DFL problem the longer this drags out. Still time to call it the Republican’s problem if you settle, Tom, but that won’t be true forever.