Keep your eye on the ball.  No matter how many e-mails are saved in the future, Matt Blunt is not promising to let anybody see the records surrounding the Eckersley scandal.  As Penrose’s cartoon points out, the governor is doing everything he can to keep that information from becoming public.

Matt Blunt refused to reveal what’s in his own e-mail files about Scott Eckersley’s advice to him and then got caught red-handed in a lie about what those files would have shown.  So he’s decided to paint himself as the high priest of transparency.  His minions filed Sunshine Law requests for every scrap of paper and every e-mail for the last three years from nineteen leading Democratic legislators.  As you can see, he believes in transparency–from other people.  Don’t think of it as harassment; think of it as making other people practice what he preaches.

And he does preach it, brother.  He has been converted and has proven it by announcing the creation of a permanent e-mail retention system for the entire state government.

“I take great pride in my administration’s commitment to being good stewards of taxpayer dollars and commitment to accountable and transparent government.”

All both of the voters who might be taken in by his more-transparent-than-thou act, should notice that he’s still not revealing his past e-mail files in the Eckersley scandal.

Instead, by firing Eckersley to begin with and now by harassing Democrats about their records, he has turned what could have been a minor skirmish into war. 

OzarksPolitics.com recommends a counterattack, one justified by the Republican abuse of the Sunshine Law.  The harassment of Democrats is so obviously just that:

No particular issues or events are targeted, Sloca wants everything. Among the targets is Springfield State Rep. Sara Lampe, who holds a leadership position in the Democratic caucus. So, if you have ever sent her an e-mail expressing your opinion on an issue or asking for help in a personal manner, or just telling her she is doing a good job, the Missouri GOP will soon get their hands on it.

So the blogger recommends that we knock out some Sunshine Law requests that do focus on particular issues and lists nine possibilities.  My favorite would be to write one requesting:

Any correspondence between St. Louis County State Rep. (and Senate hopeful) Jane Cunningham, Rex Sinquefield and the organization All Children Matter in regard to school voucher plans.

That request would be using the Sunshine Law rather than abusing it, and the results might be worth a look-see.  How does one write a Sunshine Law request?  Do I just put my request on paper, noting that it’s a Sunshine Law request, and pop it in the mail?

Who else deserves to get one of these letters?

photo courtesy of Fired Up!

Matt Blunt’s been claiming that no e-mails exist from Eckersley telling him that deleting e-mails is illegal under the Sunshine Law.  He won’t release e-mails so that reporters can look for themselves, but he claims Eckersley never warned him–until a reporter mentions that she saw one.  Oops.

Courtesy of Penrose’s Blog at Fired Up!

Some caution is advisable in taking Scott Eckersley’s word against the entire Blunt administration.  After all, Eckersley did take a job with those scummy people, so why should we assume that the young lawyer is a pure-as-the-driven-snow idealist. 

In the game of “he said/they said”, Eckersley claims he told the higher ups in the governor’s office that their policy of deleting e-mails was illegal.  They didn’t like to hear that, so they fired him and promised to smear his character if he complained.  They say he never said any such thing–until after he was fired for moral turpitude. 

He claims he wouldn’t have gone public if they had at least given him a recommendation so he could get another job, preferably with the Romney campaign.  They say he tried to extort the Romney job from them by inventing this tale about warning them to stop deleting e-mails.

Some “he said/they said” brouhahas are impossible to sort out, but not this one.  This one’s plain.  Bluntco is lying through its collective teeth, and as liars, they blunder around like drunks.  As much practice as they get at evasion, equivocation and stretching the truth, you’d think they’d develop some skills.

Tony Messenger of the Springfield News-Leader outed the story with the original Sunshine Law request for e-mails that the governor’s office refused to honor, and Messenger has done yeoman’s duty reporting on all the subsequent developments.  He says that the extortion claim is fishy at best when you consider how Eckersley went about protesting his firing:

When Eckersley first went to KC attorney Mike Ketchmark to talk to him about his wrongful termination case, Ketchmark advised Eckersley that this would be a very messy affair and that the best thing to do would be to make it go away. Eckersley agreed and Ketchmark tried to make that happen. He called former U.S. attorney Todd Graves, who then called Craighead to ask him to help get involved so this embarrasment would not hit the press. Craighead confirmed on the record this morning that it was Graves who first called him.

It makes no sense to go through a former U.S. Attorney (who was fired by Bush for being too ethical) if your aim is extortion.  Intelligent liars would have at least considered Graves’ role before deciding to smear Eckersley’s character and to pursue the “extortion” angle. 

Instead, they were eager to drag Eckersley through the muck, presumably because he had the temerity to mention that their e-mail policy did not conform to state law.  To that end, they sent boxes of his records and e-mails, unsolicited, to the Post-Dispatch and to Tony Messenger.  These were the same records that they had refused to send to Eckersley’s attorney because they were “private personnel matters.”  So private that they sent them, unasked for, to two newspapers?  Seriously.  These guys are so dim they’re out of their depth in a puddle.

So it comes as no surprise that they were dumb enough to refuse to give Eckersley a recommendation and let him get another job.  If they had done that, he’d have stayed quiet.  The whole thing would have gone away. 

But no, they had to be bullies.  Now the press is asking to see the e-mails Eckersley says he wrote them warning them that deleting e-mails about state business was illegal.  Eckersley says he’d be happy to make those public, but since he was Blunt’s lawyer when he wrote them, he’s not at liberty to make them public without Blunt’s permission:  attorney-client privilege forbids it.  And Blunt’s office is refusing to let the press see all the records.

If I were a public figure planning to deny that someone wrote me e-mails, it might occur to me in advance that I’d be asked to reveal all the e-mails so that the press could get at the truth.  And, therefore, if I knew those e-mails did exist, I wouldn’t start a public hubbub.  Because hiding them would look bad. 

But that’s me.  Bluntco apparently didn’t think this out, and now Blunt is hiding records to protect himself.  Isn’t this where we came in, with Blunt being secretive and uncooperative?  He looks guilty as hell.  Hell, he is guilty as hell.

And he still hasn’t learned the lesson.  He’s still deleting e-mails and daring anybody to file a civil suit to make him stop.  Nixon could do so, but since that would look politically motivated, he has held off so far.  And that’s a smart move, because, as long as Blunt keeps thumbing his nose at the public’s right to know, he looks more and more like his role model:  George Stonewall-’em-and-lie-to-’em Bush. 

Matt Blunt is nonchalant about the fuss over all the deleted e-mails in his office.

Blunt, in explaining his staff’s intentions, said with a chuckle, “I think people are trying to have a clear and manageable in-box. That’s what they’re trying to do.”

Chill.  Those e-mails will be available to the public “if they exist“.  So what’s the problem?

Jo Mannies pointedly rebutted Blunt’s easy assertions, insisting, for example that:

the preservation requirements mandate that all state communications or memos dealing with management, policy or financial matters need to be preserved for three years, or 90 days after the release of a state audit on that office. The law defines communications broadly, including those on paper or electronic.

And she defended Jay Nixon against one of Blunt’s misrepresentations (“Nixon has never publicly made such an assertion. What he has said repeatedly …”)

In fact, it was impressive the way Mannies refused, without being biased, to be sucked into the usual he said/she said journalistic “neutrality” game.

Despite Mannies resisting his charm, though, Matt is not worried.  I’m sure he’d tell us: this is no Rovian scheme to hide the fact that Ed Martin’s been doing anti-abortion campaign business on state time–or to hide any of the other illegal stuff we’re up to.  Hell, we don’t have anyone of Rove’s intellect steering us.  We just figure that when you control both houses and the executive, you don’t have to be sub-tile.  Right? 

In that respect, Blunt is a Bush clone, someone who believes he should be able to give a comradely chuckle, then flap his hand dismissively at pesky reporters and bloggers.

That was Dubya’s attitude when the whole Joe Wilson/Scooter Libby brouhaha surfaced.  He pretended for a few seconds to take it seriously–gotta offer the public at least a thin veneer of concern–but George knew all he had to do was pardon Libby.

And this situation is nowhere near as serious as Bush’s was.  Blunt knows, if worse comes to worst, that he might have to start saving e-mails.  Shrug. 

Only people who take themselves too seriously would wax eloquent about the indecency of covering up crimes and misdemeanors this way.  Only pontificators would remind the governor of what happened to Richard Nixon and Al Capone for their coverups.  Such sermonizers would be vastly overstating Blunt’s danger. 

No doubt, the governor sees this dustup as something that nobody but political nerds will notice.  The Republican base sure doesn’t care.  This subject is dry.  It lacks the blood and guts of stem cells and baby killers.  As far as that goes, the issue won’t grab many independents.  And if you want to know the truth, most Democrats will shrug and think, “everybody loses e-mail.”

Blunt’s probably right.  Yes, he’s broken the law, but he’s unveiling his health insurance for the poor scam program, and that’s more important than some dusty old Sunshine law.  Yada, yada.  Don’t get your knickers in a twist.