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Plenty of Choices on Super Tuesday

January 31, 2008 By

They might have folded their campaign tents, but you can still vote for them next Tuesday–and you can vote for a lot of other people too on Super Tuesday.

Romney, McCain, Huckabee and Paul are still running big league campaigns as well as Clinton and Obama.

But you can still vote for Thompson, Giuliani, Tancredo and Edwards, Richardson, Kucinich, if you want to.

Deputy Secretary of State Mike Bushmann, who heads the elections divison, says they are among the names of 27 candidates on the ballots of three parties facing voters Tuesday. He says candidates who have announced their recent withdrawals from the presidential races are still listed because they announced too late to have their names removed.

Among other Republican candidates is postal service employee Virgil L. R. Wiles of Florissant, Hugh Cort, who says he’s an internationally recognized counter-terrorism expert. Among the Democrats is substitute teacher Ralph Spelbring and a bunch of other names you’ve heard of at various times.

You even have six choices on a third-party ticket: the Libertarians.  One of the candidates calls himself "the most recognized sports odds maker and prognosticator in the world."  Another is the founder of the American Medical Marijuana Association. Still another is a charter bus driver.

Maybe it’s not true that anybody in this country can be president, but Missouri’s Super Tuesday ballot shows that certainly anybody can run.

More information is available on the Secretary of State’s website .

Audio for this story removed 2/4/08.


Filed Under: Politics & Government

Campaign Contribution Proposals Could Return

January 31, 2008 By

The top Democrat in the Missouri House is pushing a campaign contribution limit proposal favored by the party’s main gubernatorial candidate, number two man in the State Senate says that bill isn’t going anywhere.

House Minority Leader Paul LeVota (D-Independence) wants the current campaign contribution limits extended to cover political parties as well as candidates.  LeVota dismisses suggestions that the parties and candidates will find a way around limits by simply forming multiple committees. LeVota notes those committees still will be subject to the limits and that should reduce the amount of money involved in campaigns.

Political parties can, under current law, give 10 times the limits for individuals, which range from $325 to $1,275 depending on the office. Donors who want to contribute more than the limits allow often give to political parties which can then forward the money to the candidate, circumventing the limits.

The State Supreme Court threw out the law that lifted campaign contribution limits in its July 19, 2007 decision Trout v. State of Missouri . It made the ruling retroactive in a supplemental decision handed down August 27, 2007 . Within that supplemental ruling, though, the court left a door open for the legislature to return to the issue. It stated that its ruling didn’t preclude the General Assembly from enacting new legislation that constitutionally lifts campaign limits entirely.

LeVota’s idea is backed by Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jay Nixon and it’s not going anywhere according to Senate Majority Floor Leader Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph) who says politicians have become adept at getting around such limits. Shields supports lifting the limits. He supports lifting the limits in favor of full disclosure, with a requirement that contributions of at least $5,000 be electronically reported within 48 hours. Shields acknowledges it’s often difficult to push election legislation during an election year.

Download/listen Brent Martin reports (:60 MP3)

Filed Under: Legislature Tagged With: , , ,

Legal Challenge to Stem Cell Summary Has Day in Court

January 31, 2008 By

The legal challenge to Secretary of State Robin Carnahan’s summary wording of an initiative to limit certain forms of stem cell research in Missouri has its day in court – but there could be more such days.

Attorney Eddie Greim, representing the plaintiffs led by the group Cures Without Cloning , argued before Cole County Circuit Judge Patricia Joyce that the summary is not an honest attempt to let voters know what a yes vote or a no vote would mean. He adds the signature collectors would have to spend a lot of extra time by having to explain to voters why the wording on the summary is so vastly different from the goal of the plaintiffs.

Assistant Attorney General Karen Mitchell, representing the state, argued the ballot summary is just that – a summary – and is not intended to tell all about an initiative. Mitchell insists the summary language is sufficient and fair.

The judge expects to have a ruling on at least part of the challenge by the middle of the month. If more arguments are needed, a February 20th court date has been set aside.

Download/Listen: Steve Walsh report (:60 MP3)

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With: , ,

Navy Will Build New "Missouri"

January 31, 2008 By

Virginia-Class Attack Sub

In U. S. Navy history, the word "Missouri" and "Battleship" are almost automatically together.

But the newest warship to carry that name won’t be a battleship.

It will be a submarine that’s 25 percent longer than a football field, goes at leat 28 miles an hour under water, and will operate with a nuclear power plant that will not need refueling for about thirty years.

The new Missouri will be one of three new Virginia-class attack subs to be built by the Navy. The Virginia class is described by the Navy as "the first U. S. submarine to be designed for battlespace dominance across a broad spectrum of regional and littoral missiions as well as open-ocean, "blue-water" missions."  The Missouri is scheduled to be the seventh Virginia-class sub built. 

The Navy says the Virginia class is designed to be highly-flexible tomeet changing missions and threats and will accept new technologies that will keep it up to date well into this century.  In fact, says the Navy, the sonar system on the Missouri and other Virginia-class submarines "has more processing power than today’s entire submarine fleet combined…"  

Congressman Ike Skelton of Lexington, who knows his history, says it will be the fifth Navy ship bearing the state’s name. The first Missouri was a side-wheel frigate that was one of the first steam warships in the Navy, at a time when steam-powered ships still had sails. It burned at Gibraltar while taking the American Ambassador to Egypt in 1843. The second Missouri was part of Theodore Roosevelt’s "Great White Fleet" that toured the world, 1907-1909. Skelton’s father was a fireman on that Missouri during World War One. The ship was scrapped in 1922 under a treaty limiting naval armaments.

The most famous Missouri, launched in 1944, is the ship on which the Japanese surrender was signed, ending World War Two. It also saw action in the Korean War and in the first Gulf War. It’s now berthed at Pearl Harbor and is open to tourists.

There was a one more Missouri but Skelton doesn’t count it. It was a Confederate ironclad gunboat that was so leaky when the Union got it at the end of the war that it that it was scrapped and never put into the service of the U-S Navy.

Skelton says it will take about two years to build the new Missouri, which will carry 38 weapons and will be operated by a crew of 113.

 

(Our thanks to King City, Missouri native Dow Rogers, a retired Navy Submarine Master Chief who is now a civilian field engineer for the Department of the Navy at the Submarine base in Groton, Ct., for providing some expert guidance in preparation of this story.  The Virginia-class subs are being built there.  He tells us the Chief of the Boat and about 50 other men will be reporting for duty on the Missouri later this year as the commissioning crew that will see the Missouri through its construction and testing phases.).

 

 

Filed Under: Military

Michael Devlin Now "Home" at Prison in Cameron

January 31, 2008 By

Michael Devlin has moved into his permanent home to serve his 74 life prison sentences. Devlin will be at the Crossroads maximum security prison in Cameron. He’s being held in a single-man cell and is held in administrative segregation.

He’s been undergoing evaluation at the prison diagnostic center in St. Joseph for about three months. He’ll never leave prison alive because he kidnapped two young boys in eastern Missouri and abused them.

Filed Under: Crime & Courts Tagged With:
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