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 From the ­St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

...Bond played a key role in attacking the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the regulatory agency that oversees the two home-financing firms at the center of financial turmoil:

— In 2004, Bond tried to oust the oversight office's director, Armando Falcon Jr., as Falcon was looking into questionable accounting at Fannie Mae — problems that led to the resignation of its top two executives...

From AP:

A Justice Department investigation finds former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of the Western District of Missouri was forced out because of opposition from Missouri Sen. Kit Bond's office...

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Jean Carnahan and Jan Polizzi joined health policy expert Peter Harbage to highlight a new report released today by the Center for American Progress Action Fund that shows that Senator John McCain’s proposed health care plan would threaten the employer-based health benefits of 3.2 million people in Missouri and that as many as 400,000 Missourians could lose their health coverage.  These findings, confirmed by the Economic Policy Institute, were compounded by the fact that the McCain health care plan would amount to a tax increase for middle class families in Missouri, with the average family paying almost $540 more in taxes by 2013.  In Missouri, Sen. McCain’s plan would:  Story Continued »

From the Center for American Progress:­

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New Report Details How McCain’s Radical Health Plan Hurts Missouri Families

The Center for American Progress Action Fund, in partnership with the Wonk Room, is releasing a new report detailing how Sen. John McCain’s health care plan would cause hundreds of thousands of Missouri families to lose their coverage, and raise taxes on the middle-class.

Click here to read the report.

CAPAF is working with the Service Employees International Union, Change to Win, Health Care for American Now and the Economic Policy Institute to make Americans aware of the negative effects of John McCain’s radical health care plan.

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It was a great story in yesterday's Post-Dispatch about the bump in pay to which Peter Kinder's official staff are treated to when a member of the staff leaves the payroll to work on politics.  

But one piece of phrasing just begs to be pointed out.  Here's how the piece describes the departure of former Kinder chief of staff Eric Feltner:

Neither Feltner nor Bennett work for Kinder anymore. Feltner resigned in June after news broke about his indictment on misdemeanor pornography charges. He has since pleaded guilty of displaying sexually explicit materials and is on probation.

Sadly, I guess this is how the permanent record will remember Eric Feltner... as someone guilty of "pornography" charges.  Others of us may remember Feltner quite differently, as a man arrested for having sent perverted emails to someone he believed to be a 13 year old girl. 

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More on Todd Graves' ouster as US Attorney... From AP:

Former U.S. Attorney Todd Graves of Missouri likely was forced out of his post two years ago because of opposition from Missouri Sen. Kit Bond's office, a Justice Department investigation concluded Monday.­  Story Continued »

Yesterday, September 29th, 2008, Kenny Hulshof, with a his "no" vote on the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act, obliterated the public record of State Treasurer Sarah Steelman.

Steelman, who challenged Hulshof for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, sits on the state's pension fund board.  There, she oversees nearly $8 billion of pension fund investments, much of that in the stock market.

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Over at RealClearPolitics, a right-tilting website tracking national polling data, they have now moved Missouri from "leans-McCain" to "Toss-Up" based on recent polling data.  Sounds like we are going to be in the game down to the wire, so get out there and get in the YES WE CAN spirit!!!!!

From p. 103 of the DOJ report:

However, William Mercer, the Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General at the time, told us that he recalled Sampson voicing at some point ­“real concerns” about Graves’s wife’s contract be­cause it did not reflect well on the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Margolis told us that he would not have been surprised if the license fee contract issue “played a huge role” in Sampson’s decision to place Graves on the U.S. Attorney removal list. As Margolis recalled it, Sampson was “really hot about it” because Sampson thought the arrangement made the Department and the Administration “look bad,” despite Margolis’s finding that Graves did not commit any misconduct.72 However, Margolis could only speculate as to Sampson’s thinking because he was never consulted on the decision to remove Graves and was not even aware of the resignation request until it was made public in May 2007.­­

From the DOJ report on the U.S. Attorney firings comes this tidbit about Senator Kit Bond's counsel, Jack Bartling:­­

Bartling said that at some point, possibly in a third call to the White
House Counsel’s Office, he also raised the issue of Graves’s wife accepting a no-bid contract from Governor Blunt that paid considerably more than what the highest-paid state employees made. Bartling told us that he viewed that appointment as posing a conflict of interest for Graves as the chief federal law enforcement officer in the western part of the state, who might be called upon to investigate allegations against the Blunt Administration. (emphasis added p. 106 DOJ Report on the Firings of U.S. Attorneys.)

Dixton was the only person from the White House Counsel’s Office
involved in the Graves matter who agreed to be interviewed by us, and he confirmed that Bartling called him about Graves. Dixton told us that Bartling called him in the spring of 2005 and expressed interest in changing the U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri when Graves’s 4-year term expired in October 2005. Dixton stated that while he had no distinct recollection of doing so, he probably brought Bartling’s request to the attention of Sampson and Deputy White House Counsel William Kelley. However, Dixton said he recalled having only one conversation with Bartling, and he did not recall discussing the issue of Graves’s wife’s no-bid contract during that conversation.

In approximately August 2005, the responsibility in the White House Counsel’s Office for legal issues in the Eighth Circuit (which includes Missouri)was assumed by Associate White House Counsel Richard Klingler. We determined that based on the timing of the calls from Bartling, it is likely that at least Bartling’s final call raising the issue of Graves’s wife’s state contract to the White House Counsel’s Office was taken by Klingler rather than Dixton. Klingler, who now works at a private law firm, informed us through the White House Counsel’s Office that he declined to be interviewed in our investigation.

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­A remarkable revelation in the findings of a special report released recently on an investigation into the Bush U.S. Attorney scandal and the departure of Todd Graves from the Western District of Missouri.  From page 331 of the report (emphasis added)...­

C. Reasons for the Removals of Individual U.S. Attorneys

In Chapters Four through Twelve, we analyzed the reasons proffered by Department officials for the removal of each U.S. Attorney. Those chapters demonstrate how flawed the removal process was, and the evidence in those chapters also contradicts the Department’s initial claims that U.S. Attorneys were removed for performance reasons.

In January 2006, Missouri U.S. Attorney Todd Graves was the first U.S. Attorney told to resign. As described in detail in Chapter Four, while our ­investigation into Graves’s removal was hindered by the refusal of Goodling and key officials in the White House to be interviewed, the evidence showed that the ­primary reason for Graves’s removal was complaints from the staff of Missouri Senator Christopher S. “Kit” Bond. Bond’s staff urged the White House Counsel’s Office to remove Graves because he had declined to intervene in a conflict between Senator Bond’s staff and the staff of Graves’s brother (a Republican Congressman from Missouri). Thus, it appears that Graves was told to resign because of a political dispute among Missouri politicians, not because of an objective assessment of his performance as U.S. Attorney.

Todd Graves has repeatedly asserted that his dismissal from the U.S. Attorney's office was the result of his "refusal" to prosecute certain politically motivated vote fraud cases --an assertion that has always been unsupported by little to no evidence.  Unfortunately, Graves' self-justifying rationale has often been passed along uncritically by members of the press. 

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Today, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch outed Peter Kinder as a serial abuser of Missouri taxpayers.  Here is an excerpt:

JEFFERSON CITY — In June 2006, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder's chief of staff received an e-mail with some good news about his financial future.

Eric Feltner was about to get a 50 percent raise.

Feltner had not been promoted. Instead, he was being rewarded because a co-worker was takin­g an unpaid leave to do political work.

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