One more thing: NFL wants snow-plowing priority for Super Bowl

And this after we’ve already said, “You can’t make this stuff up.” In the PiPress Doug Belden says, “About a month before local officials made their winning pitch to the NFL to land Super Bowl 2018, metro mayors got an unusual-looking request. An email dated April 23 from the public stadium authority included a draft letter asking the leaders of St. Paul, Minneapolis and Bloomington to promise the NFL it would receive ‘timely, selective and prioritized snow removal operations’ during Super Bowl week. It appeared the league was so skittish about winter in Minnesota that it wanted its folks to be plowed out first in case of a big storm.”

Anytime $1.8 billion is being tossed around there’ll be a lot of “intervention.”  For the Forum News Service Patrick Springer says, “The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ bid to enter the legal fray over the proposed $1.8 billion Fargo-Moorhead diversion highlights an issue that has lurked beneath the surface: Can Minnesota assert legal authority over the federal flood control project? … In its court filing, the agency argues that the Diversion Authority should not contend it is immune to state law because the corps is leading the project. In the corps’ planning documents, it acknowledged Minnesota’s permitting authority, the state contends.”

Tim Scannell took the stand in the Tim Scannell sexual misconduct trial up in Duluth. The AP says, “Scannell says he kissed the girl multiple times but didn’t intentionally touch her in a sexual way. He says he contemplated suicide after his sister overheard him talking with the girl. Scannell’s attorney says his client acted inappropriately but not criminally.”

In the Morrison County Record Tina Snell trumpets a local guy’s winning photograph. “Beau Liddell of Little Falls is featured in the upcoming third edition of the Capture Minnesota photography book. In fact, he won the grand prize for his picture of ‘Sailin’ Into the Fog’ on Lake Superior in the Grand Marais harbor.” Very nice composition. Photo at link.

One of the most consistently informative and entertaining shticks in area journalism is Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Dan Bice’s Q&A with readers. In his latest the the topic is — shocker — Scott Walker, the state’s polarizing governor. A recent poll showed him in a dead heat with hios Democratic challenger.

“Q: Cindy R., Milwaukee — My theory is that all the [Marquette University] polls don’t mean diddly because the real ad buys are just starting, and that’s what will determine the race. Wait until Walker has defined [Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary] Burke for voters on TV, and to whatever degree she can afford, vice versa. Yes or no?                        

“A: Daniel Bice — For those not paying a lot of attention, the latest installment of the Marquette Poll came out just an hour or two ago. The bottom line: Gov. Scott Walker and his Dem foe, Mary Burke, are in a dead heat. But the devil is in the details, the most interesting of which is this: Nearly half of Wisconsin’s registered voters don’t know who Mary Burke is. She has been running bio ads to try to fill that gap; Walker’s team are taking shots at her intended to define her negatively. Expect a lot more of that. Another interesting detail: Walker led Burke by 9 percentage points among independents in May. Now he is up by one point. Not a major, major development, but still interesting.”

Today in Second Amendment rights … . Aaron Rupar’s City Pages story on the shooting of a 17 year-old Bemidji girl standing on her front porch adds some pertinent details. “Yesterday, 40-year-old Bemidji resident Chad Pickering was charged with first-degree attempted murder for allegedly shooting his 17-year-old neighbor for no good reason when she went outside to walk her dog about 10 p.m. Monday. … From the complaint: … He said that he had taken his children for a ride with the lawnmower and that after he returned home a girl came to the front door and threatened him. He said that the girl confronted him about trespassing and said that if she saw him back on the property she was going to take action. Pickering said that he then went over to the house and knelt down by a pine tree “… and I waited, and I waited, and I waited.” He said that after 15 to 20 minutes the front door opened and the girl came out and that he shot her.”

When you just have to upgrade your lifestyle … Paul Walsh of the Strib reports, “The onetime finance manager for a youth athletic association in Rosemount siphoned more than $113,000 from the organization’s account by writing checks to himself and then cooking the books, according to charges filed Thursday. Robert S. Reischauer’s greediest stretch during the two-plus years of thievery, prosecutors alleged, was a six-month stretch when he stole more than $48,000.”

In a similar nefarious vein … Nick Woltman at the PiPress says, “The Minnesota Department of Commerce has ordered a financial adviser who stole millions of dollars from his clients to stop engaging in securities-related activities in the state and to pay a $300,000 fine. Mark Holt, a licensed broker, insurance agent and attorney, pleaded guilty in April to stealing more than $4 million from his clients — many of whom were elderly Minnesotans — through a Ponzi scheme, according to court documents.”

With Medtronic’s tax inversion deal already trumped by a new even larger move to Ireland, the Boston Globe’s conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby writes, “The corporate inversions just keep on coming, and the White House and its allies are calling them unpatriotic. But it’s a funny sort of ‘patriotism’ that insists American businesses put the Treasury’s insatiable appetite for revenue ahead of the best interests of their customers, shareholders, and employees. … With America’s corporate tax burden now the most punitive in the industrialized world, business executives would be derelict in their fiduciary duties if they didn’t at least consider the competitive advantages of lawfully inverting.” If someone has read a story where a majority of shareholders have specifically demanded company executives exercise the “inversion option,” please send it my way.