Matt Bartle

What bill did the House Rules Committee consider Monday night immediately after rejecting the bipartisan ethics reform proposal? 

Sen. Matt Bartle's anti-porn bill (SB586), legislation almost identical to the legislation at the center of a federal grand jury investigation.

"The people are not able to come to the people right now with anything halfway controversial."

Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee's Summit) in a Senate Financial & Governmental Organizations and Elections Committee hearing this afternoon.  Bartle was lamenting the apparent lack of controversial legislation in the Missouri General Assembly in a debate about SB796, intended to limit abuse of the initiative petition process

Listen:

The Associated Press [updated]: 

Republican Sen. Matt Bartle, of Lee's Summit, testified for a little less than an hour Tuesday at the federal courthouse in Kansas City. Bartle says he is not a target of the probe.

The senator told reporters that he believes there is a link between the demise of his 2005 legislation, which never made it to the House floor, and a $35,000 contribution by the adult entertainment industry to a political committee with connections to an adviser for former House Speaker Rod Jetton.

Michael Mahoney has more: 

Bartle would not be specific about his testimony. But he did tell reporters of 2005 anti porn bill he sponsored and how it was killed.

As first alluded to here yesterday, a federal investigation appears to be looking at the alleged pay-to-play leadership of former Speaker Rod Jetton -- especially his role in killing a 2005 bill sponsored by Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee's Summit) that tried to crack down on strip clubs. In today's Star:

Former state lawmaker Bob Johnson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, said three FBI agents last week interviewed him about the bill and Jetton’s role.

“No question there’s interest in Rod Jetton,” Johnson told The Kansas City Star. “That’s all they wanted to talk about.”...

This is not good news:

Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler [R-Farmington] also is bracing for trouble. Eight of the 10 senators term-limited in 2010 are Republicans. Of the 10 additional senators term-limited in 2012, seven of them also are Republicans.

"Over half my majority is term-limited, and most of them aren't running for higher office, so they have no responsibility to the voters," said Engler, R-Farmington. "Some things that would be tempered before will not be tempered now, because their objective is, 'So what? You sure don't care what the public thinks. I can kill everything if I want, because I'm not up for election."

The idea of Republican Senators being even less "tempered" in their obstructionism and extremism gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Sources close to Rep. Brian Yates (R-Lee's Summit) report that the four-term legislator is expected to resign his seat in the coming days.  Yates is term-limited, and was previously thought to be in the hunt for the 8th District Senate seat, now held by Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Blue Springs).

With Yates' apparent departure, it's unclear who -- if anyone -- will step up to challenge Rep. Bryan Pratt (R-Blue Springs) for the SD8 seat.   Rep. Gary Dusenberg (R-Blue Springs) and Blue Springs Mayor Carson Ross have been floated as possible primary contenders.  The latest news out of Jackson County is that three-term legislator Rep. Will Kraus (R-Lee's Summit) has begun exploring a bid for the 8th District Senate seat.  If Kraus decides to run, who will Yates and Bartle support?

At a recent Senate committee hearing, Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee's Summit) made plain that early voting or no-excuse absentee voting would not receive GOP support unless Democrats dropped their opposition to Photo ID legislation:

The only way one is going through is with the other. The Republicans have figured out early voting is not good for them, and the Democrats have figured out that voter ID is not good for them.

On one hand, it's nice to hear Bartle acknowledge the Republicans' goals in constructing new barriers to voting for individuals without photo identification (who just happen to be minorities, seniors , women, persons with disabilities and nuns who are less likely to support GOP candidates). I assume that with Bartle's admission, we can stop the whole "combating fraud" charade.

On the other hand, the facts just don't seem to back up Bartle's assertion that early voting is "not good" for Republicans.

Speaking at a Senate committee hearing this afternoon, Sen. Matt Bartle (R-Lee Summitt) summed up GOP opposition to early voting legislation succinctly: the GOP won't make voting easier (with early voting) unless they can enact Photo ID legislation (to disenfranchise more than 200,000 voters).

Like Rep. Stanley Cox (R-Sedalia), the champion of GOP voter suppression efforts in the House, Bartle isn't really trying to conceal the partisan motivations behind attempts to make voting as inconvenient and burdensome as possible on behalf of the Republican Party.  I guess there's something to be said for honesty.

Wouldn't having more people involved in democracy be a good thing?  And wouldn't it be better for everyone if the GOP worried more about doing what voters want, and less about making voting onerous? 

You've gotta love GOP politics. Don Lograsso owes the porn industry big time for subsidizing his taxpayer salary with consulting fees via one of his PACs.

So when the porn kings asked Lograsso to get involved in the State Senate primary against Senator Matt Bartle, Lograsso had no choice but to oblige. And he did it with great vigor. Here's the letter he sent out just before the primary attacking Bartle and his campaign team.

So now, the entire Senate leadership has retaliated by sending a letter of their own, to all Republican members of the House.

Lucky for longtime Lograsso pal, Senator Luann Ridgeway, only the leadership was asked to sign so she didn't have to make a difficult personal decision.