Life Of Jason

When I first heard someone say to me there was a stink in Jefferson City about Eckersley, I had to wonder what kind of bizarro fantasy league still had a team with Dennis Eckersley on it.

However, it’s the story of Scott Eckersley, a lawyer who apparently quickly rose through the ranks until he started blowing the whistle on some cover-ups involving public documents and e-mails.   As you can imagine, the left and right have already started their spinning about it because it either proves the Governor’s office is corrupt or that we have Jay Nixon’s group trying to discredit the Governor during an election cycle.  Both sides are shouting to the heavens and neither one is listening to the other…and the roar is getting louder.

I’m not shy about the fact I’m an independent conservative and as such will likely side with the Republicans and the Governor on most issues.   The parties are so polarized that it’s impossible not to have one party to which the fringes of the opposition will claim you belong because the idea of someone thinking for themselves is very foreign in political debate in 2007.  So while it’s likely I’m about to be lambasted by both sides on this I’m going to have to say that neither side has proven to me anything other than something is a little fishy in Jeff City.

The guy in question, Scott Eckersley, looks on the surface to be a top notch guy who lives out his personal beliefs and was dedicated to this governor and the rule of law.  I understand that we’re only really seeing the story that Eckersley and his lawyers are presenting to us at this point but there seems to be a lot of credence to Eckersley’s claims about his life.  Right now, the smears against him seem to be concocted and stretches of the truth.  (If you really think you can brand someone based on the spam e-mails they get, you’d think I was a hard core Hillary Clinton supporter.)  The fact they’re so detailed in the accusations in my mind lends credibility to the claim that these are being concocted to try and throw attention to Eckersley and away from the violations of the Sunshine law happening in Jefferson City.  (Kind of like when we bombed another country to take attention away from a little blue dress.)

The timeline that was laid out by several reporters does create serious questions about what went down in this situation and when it happened.  The claims we’re hearing laid out by the hard-core supporters of Blunt and the Republicans really seem outlandish in their scope because it seems to conflict with the rapid rise of Mr. Eckersley in the political structure.  No matter how much the Republican spin machine wants to try and say this is all media bias blocking their story there is still something wrong with the time line and the accusations versus the promotions.  These are valid questions and ones that deserve a rock solid answer (preferably in some legal action so it’s on the record.)

What really concerns me is that several Republican leaning websites and blogs started making a rather vehement defense of the Blunt administration and it’s staff before the story really began to take root in the press.   If there really is nothing here…if this is really just a disgruntled ex-employee…why the strong early defense and campaign to shut down Eckersley?  I understand it’s politics but if you really have a slam dunk against someone to shut down their claims you don’t have to be that aggressive in your defense this quickly.

Now, I’m not ready to say Eckersley is telling the truth and there is corruption on this issue within the Blunt administration.  I’ve known many people that had secrets and kept them for a long time without anyone finding out about it.  It’s entirely possible the Blunt administration is getting a bum rap on this issue.

However, as much as those on the far left and far right don’t want to admit it, there’s nothing proven conclusively on this issue.   The questions raised are valid and need to be answered in a public way under oath.  An investigation is warranted and justified here.  It also needs to be done quickly as to effect the Governor’s race as little as possible should the charges prove to be unsubstantiated.  However, we’re past the point in statewide politics that we can just “take their word for it” and go on from there.

Now, if only we could get moving fast on the investigations into Jay Nixon’s use of state vehicles for private purposes to make sure he really did pay back everything he owed…