Ed’s gone. (hat tip: Jason Rosenbaum)

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!

I would gladly offer Matt Blunt’s office advice on how to make the entire administration implode, but they don’t seem to need my help.  They’ve got it covered.  On Tuesday, they whined like third graders that Carnahan’s guard had shoved someone too.  That bought them an extra day of heated coverage.  But on Wednesday they really outdid themselves, moving decisively on every front. 

News broke that they have filed a complaint against Eckersley with the Missouri bar for breaking attorney-client privilege.  (Actually, they did that way back on October 19th, but Eckersley’s been out of state and only just returned and discovered the news.)  Breaking privilege isn’t illegal, but it can be grounds for disbarment.  Just what Bluntco needs:  to look vengeful against someone who told the truth.  Because that’s what’s so fascinating about the move: it’s a tacit admission of what Eckersley claimed from the beginning.  They’re compaining that he told the truth when he said that he advised them their e-mail retention policy was illegal. As he commented:

“First I’ve been told I didn’t say anything, now I’m being told I said too much.”

Technically speaking, that’s an old move that only just got revealed.  Here’s a new one.  Bluntco wants a special prosecutor appointed to investigate Jay Nixon.  They’re demanding a special prosecutor for no particular reason (the MOGOP is still on about Nixon’s use of the state car and a couple of other equally irrelevant issues).  The real reason is that they’re being toasted to a crisp, so they figure Nixon deserves to feel some heat too. 

It’s a preemptive strike, since Nixon is promising to reveal before the end of the week his plans as attorney general for dealing with the governor’s failure to adhere to the state’s Sunshine Law policy.  McCaskill, by the way, has recommended that Nixon keep clear of launching what looks like a politically motivated investigation by appointing a special prosecutor.

Having publicly stepped into the fray, McCaskill is coming in for her share of Blunt trauma.  His office has filed a Sunshine Law request that she produce every document, “both deleted and undeleted” from  her last sixty days as state auditor of Missouri.  She should send them the deleted ones first, don’t you think?

And for good measure, the MOGOP is also requesting that nineteen Democratic legislators, all in leadership positions, produce every piece of paper and every e-mail from their offices for the last three years.  It’s a transparently vindictive move, but the Democrats will comply–wasting days, weeks or months.  But they’ll be rewarded for their efforts by having ringside seats as they watch Matt Blunt KO himself.

Fired Up! has the best summary of Bluntco’s plan of action:

These developments can’t be viewed favorably for the few remaining Blunt boosters out there.  Once your man is so damaged that he starts lashing out at everything that moves, even when the lashing out does as much harm to him as it does his adversary, it’s a sure sign that he’s mortally injured and is headed for the exit.  Team Blunt is wounded, desperate and punching at anything it thinks it sees through its swollen eyelids.  Despite all the rage, they are slowly bleeding out.  Good riddance.

photos courtesy of Columbia Tribune

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Jack Kennedy apologized on national television for sanctioning the plan and was nonplused to discover that his approval rating immediately jumped ten percent. 

Maybe Matt Blunt should consider that anecdote.  Suppose the boy governor were to apologize for:  deleting e-mails, firing Eckersley and then sliming him, lying about the existence of Eckersley memos, employing a bodyguard who shoves reporters around.  And continuing to lie.  OK, his numbers wouldn’t bound upwards like Kennedy’s because it wouldn’t be a sincere apology about a well intentioned mistake.  But it might at least stop the hemorrhaging. 

Most Missourians, little interested in the goings on in Jeff City, are as yet barely aware–if at all–of the brouhaha, but if it keeps gaining ground as it has been, it will damage an already fragile re-election effort beyond repair.

The K-C Star’s Prime Buzz issues a dire warning:

Gov. Matt Blunt is in the middle of a political meltdown that could bring down his administration.

He might not just lose next year’s election against Jay Nixon. He could get demolished.

In the face of these problems, Blunt has apologized for the unfortunate shoving incident and promised to make his e-mail records public whined that one of Mel Carnahan’s security guards once pushed a reporter.  Bluntco is correct:  such an incident did take place.  And in fact, Carnahan’s man pushed the reporter about thirty feet!  But really, Team Blunt’s complaint sounds like indignation from a third grader.  “Yeah, I hit Susie, but last week Billy hit Mary.  Why are you picking on me?”  Like his role model, GWB, Blunt believes apologies are for sissies.

And by the way, when Carnahan’s guard shoved a reporter, Carnahan–who wasn’t already being grilled to a soot blackened wienie over anything–apologized.

There’s speculation, even from Ryan Cooper, the brother of penitentiary-bound representative Nathan Cooper (R-Cape Girardeau), that with the holiday weekend coming up, Matt Blunt will fire his chief of staff, Ed Martin, the man who did the Eckersley firing.  The theory is that we’ll wake up from our turkey induced snoozes to find that Martin is gone and all is well again.

Maybe Martin is toast, maybe not.  And considering how little attention the voters pay, firing him might work.  Or not.  But Governor Blunt should consider the possibility that he’s going to get demolished a year from now.

Apparently Blunt feels the axe hanging over his head because he stumbled through questions from K.C. Star reporters in this video.  Finally, his security guards had to rescue him by shoving reporters aside, slamming the door of the SUV, and spiriting the governor out of harm’s way.

Mitt Romney, the son of Michigan governor George W. Romney, is beloved among Republican elites here in Missouri. Matt Blunt and Jim Talent both endorsed him fairly early. Jack Jackson, Jason Crowell, Gary Nodler, Bryan Pratt, Shannon Cooper, David Day, Doug Funderbunk, Dwight Scharnhorst, Neal St. Onge, and Bryan Stevenson have all endorsed him, too. And in a recent e-mail, Rod Jetton (h/t Arch City Chronicle) details how he was won over at a meeting with Mitt, just like “when you go to those time-share presentations.” (That’s a direct quote – I kid you not.) Ed Martin was won over with the answer to the first question of the meeting – his own – which was about the Iraq war abortion universal health care global warming Romney’s Mormon faith, of course.

Romney has a record of moderate governance, working to balance budgets, preserve a woman’s right to choose, extend health care to every citizen. Of course, that gives him no chance in the Republican presidential primary, so now he’s running as the most conservative candidate in the race. Double Guantanamo! Slash taxes! No universal health care! Stay the course in Iraq!

In honor of his whiplash-inducing position changes, the Democratic National Committee is auctioning off a ‘Mitt Romney Flip Flop Kit” on eBay. Details below the flip.

The Democratic National Committee is auctioning off a special edition Mitt Romney Flip-Flop Kit.

Having apparently run out of policy positions to auction off this campaign season, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney is now calling on his supporters to join him in selling off parts of their pasts too.  Sure, smooth talking Mitt Romney is reportedly planning to spend as much as $60 million of his own money to win the GOP nomination.  But his campaign is still looking to reverse its declining fundraising numbers by convincing supporters to auction off old belongings and give the proceeds to the campaign. 

Since Romney has tried to smooth talk his way to the GOP nomination by shedding his previous positions on just about every issue in this campaign, his friends at the Democratic National Committee decided to join the fun by auctioning off Romney’s past.  This one of a kind, special edition Mitt Romney Flip Flop Kit includes:

Mitt Romney’s Flip Flops on issues ranging from abortion, immigration, tax cuts, the Reagan administration, gay rights, campaign finance reform, climate change, conservatism, gambling, gun control, etc.;
A limited edition DVD of some of Romney’s more infamous flip-flops;
Flip-Flop flash cards in the shape of flip-flops so you can study on all of Mitt Romney’s various positions, courtesy of the Massachusetts Democratic Party.
A new pair of flip-flops;
A collectors edition foam flip-flop distributed at campaign events by a rival candidate;
A replica of the snowman that Mitt Romney is afraid to take questions from at the YouTube debate; and
A collection of Democratic signs, posters, pins and collectibles.
In order to avoid profiting from Romney’s flip-flopping, the DNC will donate an amount equal to the winning bid to a local pet shelter in honor of embattled Romney family dog Seamus. [http://www.democrats…] 

Special note-our lawyers are making us say this-the winning bid is a contribution to the Democratic National Committee and is subject to the restrictions and limitations of federal campaign finance laws.  The DNC will make a contribution equal to the amount of the winning bid to a local animal shelter.  Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes. 

Paid for and authorized by the Democratic National Committee.  This communication is not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.

Team Blunt has stepped in it.  “It” is a combination of feces and bubblegum that stinks and sticks.  Not all that many Missourians are paying attention to the scandal yet, but they will because, not only is it not going away, it’s gaining momentum.  The furor bids fair to last into the campaign season and even to wind up in court.

Someone (Jay Nixon, eventually?) might sue the governor’s office for deleting e-mails in contravention of the state’s Sunshine Law and for refusing to reveal all the documents pertaining to this case.  But that scenario is still distant.  For now, Nixon is staying out of it and watching Bluntco hoist itself on its own petard. 

Another thread of the scandal that could end up in court is the brouhaha over whether the state broke into Scott Eckersley’s private e-mail account.  When Bluntco got wind that Eckersley had contacted the press, the office decided to preemptively smear him in the media.  The state mailed boxes of his records, unsolicited, to the Post-Dispatch and to Tony Messenger at the Springfield News-Leader.  Eckersley has proof that some of the e-mails in those boxes had to have been obtained from his private e-mail account.  Hacking into a private account is illegal.

Eckersley has a document from his internet provider AppRiver, stating that on September 28th he requested his e-mails not be forwarded to his government account and that they stopped forwarding any e-mail.  Yet some of the material that Blunt’s office sent to the Post and to Messenger was written after September 28th.  Not only has someone in the governor’s office, then, gained unauthorized illegal access to Eckersley’s private account, that someone was stupid enough to send proof of the crime to the media.

Since the purpose of sending that material was to smear Eckersley as a sexual pervert and as someone who cheated taxpayers by doing work for his private firm on government time, he’s not likely to feel charitable toward his former bosses, especially since they still maintain he lied about warning them that deleting e-mails was illegal.  At the very least, Eckersley is not going to shut up.

What he wants and what reporters want is for Matt Blunt to open all records dealing with this issue.  Blunt’s reasons for refusing to do so must be powerful if they can induce him to continue inviting such unwanted scrutiny.  Howard Beale, at Fired Up!, has a fine piece speculating on the reasons, starting with this quotation from one of Ronald Reagan’s wordsmiths: “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.”

The first and most interesting conjecture has to do with the man who actually fired Eckersley, chief of staff Ed Martin.  Perhaps:

*Crazy Eddie Martin has chosen this battle as his own personal Waterloo.  Martin, who’s been both completely absent from the scene and who some have speculated is the target of coup attempts, remains inexplicably as the sole beneficiary of the complete protection of the Governor’s office.  It is possible that Blunt has committed himself to the increasingly suicidal decision to hide the truth because Martin has made clear that the totality of his actions in connection with Eckersley must never become known.  Already embarassed, Martin may well have made it clear to Team Blunt that he’s to be protected from further humiliation or else he shares the wealth and talks about what goes on inside the mansion.

Beale also thinks the stonewalling might be explained by Blunt himself having taken some part in this directly and not wanting it revealed.  Or his resistance might be simply hubris–feeling that he is above the law and thus not required to explain himself to anyone. 

The final possibility Beale offers is that:

*Blunt believes that doing the right thing in this instance will lead down a slippery slope to his having to comply with the law all the time.  It’s possible that Blunt believes that if he caves on this matter and shares the truth that he will be expected to do so with respect to other controversial situations.  He knows that –even if he slides on the Eckersley scandal– if the press gets the idea that it can access documents and communications about fee office distribution, his brother’s lobbying his office, the Nathan Cooper/James Harris scandal or any number of other sensitive items that he is irretrievably sunk.  So he’s sticking by his guns, telling the media they’ll get nothing and like it.

It looks as if Matt Blunt is in for a long, hard bout of public embarrassment.  Whether his malfeasance will sink into the public consciousness remains to be seen.  One would think it would, but then again, his role model, George W. Bush, got away with far more for far longer, even managing to squeak by in the 2004 election.  Let us hope that Blunt is not so fortunate in ’08.

What could be better, Matt Blunt asks, than the appearance of scientific objectivity on controversial issues?  Actual objectivity would be most inconvenient, but our governor knows how to convene a well packed task force.  Two of them, in fact, recently.

One is a task force to study the physical and psychological effects of abortion on a woman’s health.  The members of the task force are all from organizations opposed to abortion, including Alliance for Life-Missouri, and you can guess what sort of conclusions they’ll reach.  It’s all very (un)scientific.  A columnist at the Columbia Missourian takes them to task:

C. Everett Koop, former surgeon general under Reagan, could not determine the effects of abortion on a woman’s physical and psychological health based on extensive scientific research, despite his own conservative stance on the issue. His letter to the president only said, “the available scientific evidence about the psychological sequelae of abortion simply cannot support either the preconceived notions of those pro-life or those pro-choice.” That is as true today as it was in 1989. How can we, the people of this great state, expect a fair and unbiased report from this biased “task force” if the surgeon general could not find a conclusion?

The other task force the governor has created is studying how CAFOs should be regulated in Missouri.  At least the members are fully familiar with the issue, considering that most of them are part of the CAFO industry.  Still, the governor did invite Ken Midkiff of the Sierra Club.  Midkiff scornfully refused to lend his good name to such a travesty.

Matt Blunt is pandering to his religious base and giving Smithfield Farms some political cover.  He hasn’t stepped out of character.

The to-do between Scott Eckersley and the entire Blunt administration hinges on one contested issue:  Did Eckersley, previous to his firing, warn the governor that deleting e-mails was illegal under the Sunshine Law?

Blunt’s office, in the person of Rich AuBuchon, has insisted there are no such e-mails:

“Mr. Eckersley never once voiced a concern, never once wrote an e-mail, never once talked to other employees in the office evidencing any concern that the governor’s office was not complying with the Sunshine Law or any record-retention policies.”

So far, we don’t have the definitive answer, but we do have a pile of circumstantial evidence that Baby Blunt is lying.  To begin with, Blunt is hiding the e-mails in question behind attorney-client privilege.  Possible motives for doing that would be: 

a)  He wants to keep the story going, so that he can continue to look bad.

b)  Like his role model, George Stonewall-’em Bush, he thinks no one should have the right to ever question him or make him prove anything.

c)  There are several e-mails in there that would hang him, and he’d rather look guilty than be caught with his pants down.

Without the definitive proof, reporters are left to work with what they’ve got, and that would be the boxes of Eckersley’s effects that the Blunters shipped to the Post-Dispatch and to Tony Messenger at the Springfield News-Leader. According to Messenger, there are items of interest in those boxes:

One of the e-mails sent by the state to reporters was sent Sept. 20 from Eckersley to Jonathan Bunch, a former Blunt employee. Here’s what Eckersley wrote after Bunch asked about Eckersley’s discussions with his bosses about e-mail retention:

“Wow … I fired on people yesterday about that – I just got so sick of it – I emailed Chrismer and HH and ed.”

That Eckersley says he e-mailed Blunt spokesman Rich Chrismer, HH (probably attorney Henry Herschel) and ed (likely chief of staff Ed Martin) proves nothing, of course.

But it would sure indicate that somebody ought to be looking for e-mails to those three high-level Blunt staffers.

Messenger emphasizes the importance of that and other e-mails that are similarly inconclusive but that, taken together, indicate that Eckersley is credible.

One of the most intriguing parts of the story is that the governor’s office sent those boxes of Eckersley effects of its own free will.  Nobody asked to see them (except for Eckersley’s attorney, who was refused).  The state just … sent them, apparently without reading all of them first, since several of them lend credence to Eckersley’s claims.  They sent out enough material to pique our interest and tar their own credibility, and now they want us to drop it. 

Never mind being effective at governing.  These dimwits weren’t even smart enough to leave well enough alone.

(photo of Scott Eckersley courtesy of Fired Up!)