Howard Beale's blog

We've written before about the candidacy of Republican Mike Lair for the 7th House District and how his campaign is largely financed by Blunt administration fee agents installed by son-in-law James Harris.

Harris, who served as the Blunt administration's appointment secretary and now counts the gubernatorial campaign of Sarah Steelman among his clients, looks to be sharpening his talons on Mike Lair's opponent in preparation for Kenny Hulshof.  

The Joplin Globe, from ultra-liberal southwest Missouri, says 'no thanks' to GOP photo ID voting requirements:

Those without photo ID generally are women, the elderly or the poor.

We have enough bureaucracy.

Heaping on one more barrier, or making the system even more prohibitive for some, smacks of political gamesmanship.

Let’s get down to taking care of problems that are real.

Dealing with real problems?  Novel idea.

Blogger Digby on our state's little photo ID party:

There's a big voter disenfranchisement scheme unfolding in Missouri this week. It could be a very big problem --- they want it in place before November...

We know this hits African Americans and Latinos hard and it's designed to make them think twice about putting themselves through this legal hassle. But there's another group that's going to be hard hit by this ---- the elderly. And in Arizona, where they now require proof of citizenship, even though they've been voting for 60 years, they are now just out of luck

The people who think we should limit the franchise in Missouri want very badly to make the median Missourian believe that new voting laws will only affect the sorts of people whom we aren't really supposed to care about.  Fact is, as Digby notes, the Photo ID voting law's most profound effects will be on elderly Missourians whose "citizenship" has never been in question.

Someone named Scott Canon (and presumably his editors) at the Star's PrimeBuzz blog thinks it's perfectly fine to refer to former Senator and Presidential candidate by a derisive moniker given him by no more balanced media figure than Rush Limbaugh.  

Can we count on Canon and colleagues to head their posts with whatever hilarious impotent-old-man tags we hang on John McCain?  Why am I skepical?

Tell me again about that liberal media, please.
 

Judging by what he's been doing since announcing in January that he wouldn't seek a second term, Matt Blunt believes it is his role to be a guy with a big megaphone who can use his ample official resources to benefit GOP candidates by regularly attacking Democrats.  Yesterday's contrived assault on Jay Nixon and last week's childish tilt at Jeff Harris are but the most recent examples.

But despite a concerted effort to be the anti-Nixon, Blunt has been heretofore silent about the specifics of his support in the Republican gubernatorial primary.  One can only imagine that, at some point before August, the sitting governor will roll around to announcing his support for one candidate or the other in the race to succeed him.

The big question about that, of course, is whether his is support anyone wants.

Legislature ditches increased fees for driving records. 

I wonder if lobbyist Andy Blunt Jay Reichard will still get to keep his bonus from BearingPoint?

When did it become okay to run an anti-Nixon attack machine out of the office of Governor?

Makes one think that Team Blunt should be reporting the hours spent on drafting this stuff as in-kind contributions to the eventual GOP nominee.  Of course, I'm not sure Hulshof or Steelman would take the help if it meant having to list Matt Blunt on a report as a supporter. 

In what is perhaps the best use of political cash ever embarked upon by the Missouri Republican Party, campaign finance and other documents show that the MOGOP has, for the last nine months, been paying an internet consultant who runs a political blog that regularly attacks GOP gubernatorial candidates and other elected officials.

According to reports filed with the Missouri Ethics Commission, the Missouri Republican State Committee paid $5,000 on August 31, 2007 to a committee called Missouri Spectrum.  Missouri Spectrum quickly turned around in September of 2007 and made a payment of $2,500 to an outfit called NLB Enterprises. 

NLB Enterprises is, according to its own website, a political communications consulting firm headed by a man named Christopher Arps.  NLB Enterprises LLC was registered on October 8, 2007 with the office of the Secretary of State, and lists Christopher Arps as one of the LLC's organizers on its state filings. 

Interestingly, while it doesn't mention the $14,000 judgment entered against him after a suit by the Ethics Commission, Arps' profile on the site does list a couple of the websites for which he claims responsibility.  One is the MO Spectrum website.  From his Facebook bio:

What to say about Tony Messenger's story today about Scott Eckersley's recording of the conversation with Ed Martin during which Eckersley was informed he'd been fired?  It's hard to do it justice via description, so here's an excerpt:

Yesterday saw a couple news stories about how GOP legislators have grown livid about the increase in fees for driving records charged by the Blunt Department of Revenue.  From the KC Star:

A new fee structure for Missouri motor vehicle and driver records has insurance companies enraged and a lawmaker promising action in the waning days of the legislative session.

The state Department of Revenue on May 1 raised the fee to $7 per record and has said it would not provide a bulk discount to companies that use the data for things such as calculating insurance rates. That means companies now must pay about $28 million for the entire database.

The story notes that the fee increase pushed through by the Blunt Department of Revenue represents a 300,000% increase in the fee previously charged.  We get more clues about why from the AP's story:

Like Mike Hendricks, I've often wondered what it is Matt Blunt had in his emails that he seems so intent on hiding at all costs.  In fact, I've even posted here about it and suggested that the finding out what was in those emails was the "most important" question.  Hendricks spends his entire column today asking the same thing:

What secret Blunt and his top aides want to protect, we still don’t know. But keeping it from becoming public was and continues to be all-important. ...

Just what is Blunt trying to hide by refusing to turn over the e-mail tapes that those two bureaucrats refused to destroy?

Certainly not the fact that his administration engaged in a cover-up of something. That we’ve known for months.

Now, as I said, I'm as guilty as anyone of focusing in on the nature of the documents hidden instead of the hiding itself.  But something about reading Hendricks' explicit formulation (and apparent endorsement) of that concept in print makes me suspect that I've been very wrong to do so.

So we asked this morning for Freddy Hulshof and Sarah Steelman to weigh in on Matt Blunt's alleged involvement in ordering the destruction of computer backup tapes.  Sarah courageously refused to answer the question:

Meanwhile, at a news conference to announce her intention to make a variety of tax cuts if she’s elected governor, state Treasurer Sarah Steelman said it would be inappropriate for her to comment on the lawsuit.

It would be "inappropriate" for her to comment, she says.  More inappropriate, even, than the Governor and his top aides leaning on subordinate employees to break the law and destroy public records?  This seems a strange conception of propriety.  

A typically stupid outcome of a stupid policy implemented by Indiana Republicans.  

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn't have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary's Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

Naturally, Missouri Republicans are chomping at the bit to put in place the same sort of foolish law.  Why does the Missouri GOP hate brides of Christ?