Last December, Jake Zimmerman said:

Perhaps you’ll remember Jim Lembke, the diabolical, despicable Jim Lembke, who’s now running for the state Senate, and who must be stopped at all costs. But for purposes of the House, the diabolical, despicable Jim Lembke leaves that seat open. And suddenly you don’t have the hard-working creature of Satan, who’s been there for, like, six years, you’ll have some new creature of Satan, who nobody really knows who they are yet. And that’s potentially four or five percentage points of difference with a good Democratic candidate. Thank god we have a good Democratic candidate, whose name is Vicki (Englund), and she’s been working hard and raising money early. I like that district. Republicans’ll probably invest some money there because they’ll try and force us to work for it.  But, you know what, I think the odds are very good we’re going to win it.

The latest creature of Satan, as Jake would put it, is, from what we can tell so far, much less colorful than Lembke. His replacement on the ticket is Cloria Brown, who–like Vicki–thinks that property taxes shouldn’t go up when the housing market is on the skids. Brown also wants to make sure that illegal immigrants don’t get government benefits. Just your typical Republican, who got the nod to run because she’s been a good footsoldier and it’s her turn.

Ms. Brown, though, finds herself digging in her fingernails in an attempt to hold this district for the Rs, because the area is no GOP stronghold. Before Lembke took it in 2002, it had been in Democratic hands. It’s considered a 50/50 district. Both Kerry and McCaskill won there. And although Lembke won solidly when he was first elected, the subsequent two Democratic opponents each came within four points of unseating an incumbent. Bob Burns lost last time partly because of Lembke’s underhanded (hard as that may be to believe about a Republican) tricks.

But Brown may find herself victory-challenged on November 5th. Conventional wisdom has it that incumbency is worth about five percentage points, so that four point lead Lembke had in the last two elections just got erased. The playing field isn’t quite even, though. Here’s the story on money: As of September 5th, Vicki had taken in a total of $52,732 and had $17,170 on hand. As of the that same date, Cloria had taken in $26,567 and had $16,293 on hand. Whoa, we have not just parity but a situation where the Dem has actually raised more money? Ha! When I said things weren’t quite even, bet you thought I was going to repeat the usual line about how the opposition has stinkin’ tons of money but our gal is knocking on those doors.

Not that she’s being careless about knocking on doors. Of the 12-13,000 homes in her district, she and her people had knocked on 8,000 by primary day, concentrating on Dems, undecideds and the slew of unknowns that have resulted from all the newly registered voters.

And then there’s Vicki herself. Unfortunately, I don’t have anything world shaking to say about her. She’s just … normal. Hard working. Interested in good governance. Honest. Well-informed. You know, all that boring stuff. Which we’d be delighted to settle for.

She’s a good fit for that district. It’s true that even though she’s Catholic in a district with lots of Catholics, she’s pro-choice (has endorsements from Planned Parenthood and NARAL). But the Catholics there are mostly moderate. They voted in favor of stem cell research a couple of years ago, a stand Vicki shares with the majority of voters. Her attitude about abortions is that we need to prevent unintended pregnancies by having sex ed programs in schools that cover more than just abstinence only.

And like all her Democratic brethren, Vicki is interested in restoring the Medicaid cuts. She would like to see emergency rooms used for emergencies again, instead of as holding pens for uninsured sick people. These days emergency rooms have infinitely long waiting lines–for the most expensive kind of treatment per square yard of space that there is. Treating people there is driving up insurance costs for all of us.

So. It’s looking good for Englund and the Dems in HD 85. Englund and her people will hang in and do their jobs in this final six week push. But let’s not risk letting this seat elude us. Help her out.

What we get from this Republican legislature is so far from sensible, often with a subtext of threat, as to border on nutso. For example, the House just gave first-round approval to HB 1463, which bans enrollment at public Missouri colleges and universities for the entire .1 percent of illegal immigrants now attending them. Big whoop. As minority leader Paul LeVota pointed out:

“People don’t come to the state of Missouri so they can go to college, they come to work. This bill does nothing to solve these problems.”

Also in the sharkwatch on the Mississippi category of legislation is HJR 41, a bill for a constitutional amendment (another  in the plethora of useless, dangerous proposed amendments) that would ban Missouri judges from imposing taxes without voter approval.  As if they ever had. In some other states judges have done so, including in Kansas (omigod, right next door: the sky is falling, the sky is falling). And once, twenty years ago, a federal judge ordered the state to pay for teacher salary increases in Kansas City.

Undeterred by the lack of examples to prove the necessity of this amendment, Rep. Jane Cunningham (R-Chesterfield, running for the senate) said: “They [those treasonous judges, I presume] are on our doorstep. We have a clear and present danger right across the street.”

Her horror of judges would be laughable if it didn’t remind me so much of Pervez Musharraf kicking Pakistan’s chief justice off the supreme court. Naturally, I can’t claim that Cunningham has done anything as radical as that, but only because she can’t. She and her cohorts are still bound by due process.

Nevertheless, Pervez Cunningham and Rep. Pervez Lembke (R-District 85–running for the senate, pictured at left) are doing all they can to intimidate judges. Last January, Lembke proposed impeaching a judge in Osage Beach for ruling the “wrong” way in a child custody case. As a judge, Christine Hutson is bound by law to keep quiet about the case, but look who defended her:

Hutson’s defenders – including the Republican legislator from her town – say she is a respected judge who weighed mounds of evidence and followed the recommendation of the children’s court-appointed attorney.

“Any time you tear something apart, it can get ugly,” said Rep. Darrell Pollock, R-Lebanon. “Somebody’s a winner and somebody’s a loser. … I just question why we would be taking this two- or three-minute look at what this case was, and coming up with an idea that we could impeach this judge.”

Lembke may have abandoned the impeachment idea by now, for all I know. It doesn’t matter. The point’s been made. To anybody thinking of leaving private practice for the bench: think about it. If you’re not a Republican, do you want to take a cut in pay for the privilege of facing similar harassment? And if you’re already a judge, do you want to render a judgment that might get one of these pitbulls coming after you?

(On Wednesday, I’ll write about the centerpiece of this year’s attack on our judiciary, the Republican attempt to do away with the Missouri Non-Partisan Court Plan.)

But back to HJR 41. It looks to be headed for the ballot, and you can get an approximate sense of “justice” under Republicans by looking at how they conducted debate about the proposed amendment:

Legislators gave initial approval to the proposal Tuesday in a controversial move. After about 10 minutes of debate, Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, R-Blue Springs, called for closing remarks from Cunningham, even though several Democrats were standing and Rep. J.C. Kuessner, D-Eminence, says he was waving his hand, asking to speak.

For his part, Pratt said: “Nobody was seeking recognition. There wasn’t a single hand in the air.”

As usual, they notice no irony in telling judges what’s fair while exhibiting no clue about fairness themselves.