Messenger: Team Blunt Sent Reams of Documents to Smear Eckersley, Refused His Attorney's Request for Others

Tony Messenger has a column up that once again has Governor Matt Blunt's office looking like a sadsack bunch of lawbreakers that can't shoot straight.  Go read it, right now. 

The long and short of it is this: though the governor's office sent reams of unsolicited personnel materials to Messenger and others --materials intended to smear Scott Eckersley-- Eckersley's attorney was denied his sunshine request for other documents relating to his client's employment because they are "closed personnel records."

This isn't even clever or creative corruption.  It's just simple, bullheaded insistence that the Governor and his agents are completely and unquestionably above the law.  But, as Messenger notes, this ploy itself leaves one of Blunt's own lawyers in the pinch.  He correctly surmises that if it would be against the law for an administration attorney to provide records about Eckersley's employment because they are personnel records, then it was a violation of that very same law for another Blunt attorney to have provided all sorts of documents about Eckersley to reporters and bloggers.  (Ed.note: This very point was made by FiredUp! commenter T.Kniest yesterday on this thread.)

The question of whether Blunt and his inner circle of advisors have broken the law isn't even open for debate any more.  They have done so with such consistency and with such single-minded, outcome-driven efficiency that people of Missouri ought to be seriously frightened.  This is a government that has demonstrated its unhalting willingness to crush those who commit against it the smallest transgressions, as well as a commitment to disregarding the rule of law which exists to hem their power in.  ­

I'm sure the latest revelation of lawbreaking by Blunt and his staff will be met by a defense from paid GOP operatives and bloggers that explains why none of this matters because Scott Eckersley signed up for some website or once wrote a handwritten note to a judge.  As everyone knows, this a canard whose disguise as an excuse becomes ever less relevant with each passing minute (and which had almost no relevance to begin with).

But alas, they've nowhere else to go.  The jig is up for their guy, and they can either admit what's gone on in the Governor's office is inexcusable, or sling more meaningless mud at an innocent.  As per custom, I'm sure they'll choose the scoundrel's route.