In April 2006, Time Magazine offered its list of the 10 best Senators in the upper chamber, a list that comprises nine still-serving members, plus Ted Kennedy, who passed away last year while still in office.  The article can still be read on Time’s website, along with links directly to the passage for each Senator listed.  In the same April 24th, 2006 issue, Time also listed its worst five Senators, only two of whom are still serving: Jim Bunning, who will retire this year, and Daniel Akaka.

But Time readers can’t access the passage for the man that Time named the worst overall Senator, Mark Dayton, because Time has apparently scrubbed it from their site — just as Dayton stands for the DFL primary today in Minnesota to win the nomination for the gubernatorial race.  Luke Hellier at Minnesota Democrats Exposed found a hard copy of the article that Time apparently wants to bury:

When he was elected in 2000, Mark Dayton seemed well prepared, having worked as an aide to Walter Mondale in the 1970s.  But he has exhibited erratic behavior since then; in October 2004 he shut down his office for almost a month, citing an unspecified terrorist threat. The 99 other Senators had access to the same intelligence and kept their offices open, even while Dayton went on television to tell his constituents not to visit the Capitol.  …

Inside the Senate, Dayton has passed few bills partly because some are too liberal for the Republican-controlled body, including one that would have created a Department of Peace and Nonviolence.  He has confounded his colleagues by complaining about the basic facts of the job, such as his limited power in a chamber where authority derives from seniority.

In fact, Time has buried all of the “worst Senator” sidebars from their April 2006 issue.  They had them up on the website at one time, as each name listed on the page has a hyperlink to now-missing pages.  It’s impossible to know when the redaction occurred, but it seems oddly coincidental that the memory hole impacts mostly on the man likely to win the nomination today and run for Minnesota’s top political office.

Update: My apologies; Daniel Inouye is President Pro Tem, not Akaka, the other Senator from Hawaii.  Inouye was not listed in either category.

Update II: To be fair to Time here, most of the original “10 Best” article is missing, too.  Why remove it from the archive?  Time keeps almost everything else live on its site.

Update III: Time Magazine has restored the missing pages of its article, including the one on Dayton.