Doug Ervin

The Associated Press:

U.S. attorneys are pursuing allegations of bribery, conspiracy and mail fraud as part of an investigation into former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton, according to court documents received by a former lawmaker summoned before the grand jury Tuesday.

Former Republican Rep. Bob Johnson, of Lee's Summit, said U.S. attorneys quizzed him about whether he knew of a $35,000 political contribution by the adult entertainment industry, and whether that money played a role in Jetton's decision to assign a 2005 bill regulating sexually oriented businesses to a committee Johnson led.

The same article notes that Jackson County Circuit Judge David Byrn and Chris Benjamin spoke to the grand jury in February. 

Bryrn was treasurer of the Committee for Honest Campaigns PAC that received the $35,000 from the People of Private Enterprise PAC in April 2005. The Star reported in January that Rep. Doug Ervin (R-Kearney) said Don Lograsso "told him that the Committee for Honest Campaigns was organized specifically to discreetly funnel donations that could be politically damaging to fellow Republican candidates."

For reasons I won't pretend to understand, twelve Republican state representatives voted against extended unemployment benefits yesterday (HB 1544).

The legislation sponsored by Rep. Barney Fisher (R-Richards) passed 143-12, and will allow more than 62,000 Missourians to receive extended unemployment benefit, and not cost the state a dime.

Jason Brown, birther Cynthia Davis, birther Ed Emery, Doug Ervin, birther Tim Jones, Andrew Koenig, Will Kraus, Mike Leara, Brian Nieves, Mark Parkinson, Tom Self and Bryan Stevenson all opposed the extension.

The Star has the fascinating story of what happened when Rep. Doug Ervin (R-Kearney) and former Rep. Brian Baker (R-Belton) asked pointed questions about the receipt of strip club contributions by a campaign committee with strong ties to (former?) House Counsel Don Lograsso, and the prompt actions by former Speaker Rod Jetton to make sure anti-strip club legislation went nowhere.

According to Erving and Baker, Jetton blackballed them:

Ervin and Baker said they initially raised questions about the contribution with Jetton and Lograsso in 2005, shortly after the strip club bill was killed in committee.

“They obviously knew who that (campaign) committee represented,” Baker said.

But when they approached Lograsso, Ervin said he dismissed their concerns. Ervin said Lograsso also told him that the Committee for Honest Campaigns was organized specifically to discreetly funnel donations that could be politically damaging to fellow Republican candidates...

Ervin and Baker said that, following a Star story in 2006 about the donation, they held a tense meeting with Jetton and asked Lograsso to address the situation before the entire Republican caucus, which was worried that adult-entertainment money might find its way into their campaigns...

Baker and Ervin...said they were “blackballed” by the speaker’s office until Jetton left the post in early 2009. Baker was stripped of a committee chairmanship and Ervin said he nearly lost his.

The crazy for-profit birthermercial we mentioned last week did indeed air on KSPR last week. The general manager for KY3, Inc. (which runs KSPR) said "the opinions of this particular program may be a minority of our viewers, but certainly I think this group has the right to express themselves. I don't think it's libelous in any fashion."

In his story, Catanese said the conspiracy theorists "may be a fringe movement," and the post on the story at The Turner Report described the birthers as the "lunatic fringe." While I certainly agree that the birthers' accusations are pure lunacy, it's important to remember that the alleged "fringe" includes a disturbing number of high-ranking leaders in the Missouri Republican Party.  

Rep. Robert Cooper has withdrawn his constitutional amendment calling for the state to inspect Barack Obama's birth certificate.  As far as I know, he hasn't actually acknowledged that Obama is a legitimate President yet, but at least he's give up on writing the conspiracy theory into our constitution.

For now, anyway.

Hat tip to ShowMeProgress.com for noticing the change.

It appears that Rep. Cynthia Davis wants to join Rep. Timothy Jones as a plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging Barack Obama's citizenship.

Davis and Jones subscribe to a right-wing conspiracy theory alleging that Obama is actually an Indonesian man named Barry Soetoro (no joke). Right-wing Republicans have been obsessed with Obama's birth certificate and citizenship for a long time, but their half-baked ideas have been shot down again and again. (A great summary of the Birther movement and the embarrassment they're causing the Republican Party can be found here on Politico.com.)

A new constitutional amendment from House Republicans, ostensibly written to protect voters from fraud, is actually a vehicle for the Capitol Crazies to peddle fraudulent conspiracy theories about President Obama.

Rep. Robert Cooper's Voter ID proposal includes language that would require the Missouri Secretary of State to request the official birth certificate of presidential candidates to independently verify their authenticity.  And not just future candidates -- Cooper wants the Secretary of State to independently verify the citizenship status of every previous presidential candidate.

Of course, Cooper and his 15 co-sponsors only really care about the birth certificate of one presidential candidate: Barack Obama.  Right-wing Republicans have been obsessed with Obama's birth certificate and citizenship for months, but their half-baked ideas keep geting shot down again and again and again. The facts haven't slowed them down yet, though, and Cooper is hoping to make Missouri the first state to actually write the insanity into our constitution.

Here are the key parts of Cooper's proposed bill:

The secretary of state shall determine that each person is qualified for the office he or she seeks, according to the law, before placing his or her name on the ballot.

For candidates who are required by the Constitution of the United States to be natural born citizens, the secretary of state shall request an official copy of the candidate’s birth certificate.

Other certifications, such as a certificate of live birth, shall not be accepted.

Should any candidate fail to provide an official birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, his or her name shall not be placed on the ballot.

The secretary of state shall verify the qualifications of any elected officeholder who was previously placed on a Missouri ballot. Should any elected officeholder fail to provide the required documentation or birth certificate within thirty days of the request by the secretary of state, the secretary of state shall turn the matter over to the attorney general who shall within twenty days file suit to obtain the required documentation.

This is obviously targeted at the Presidency -- it's the only office to require natural born citizenship. And while Barack Obama has provided an official, certified copy of his birth certificate, it's been tough to satisfy these fringe groups with the facts.