Senate Education Committee begins discussion of Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act

Sen. Gary Nodler's Education Committee began discussions on the Emily Brooker Intellectual Diversity Act Wednesday.
The act is named after the Missouri State University student whose professor required her and other students to write letters to the Missouri General Assembly supporting gay adoption.
Though the university handled the situation quickly, settling a lawsuit filed by Miss Brooker, Rep. Jane Cunningham offered this bill, which will require university and college officials to produce reams of paperwork to show they are providing "intellectual diversity:"

David Robinson, a history professor at Truman State University, said 28 other states have introduced bills similar to Cunningham's and all have been defeated.

"Legislation would stop the free market of ideas and rifle debate," Robinson said.

But Cunningham said this would encourage debate and stop students from being afraid to speak against their professor’s opinions. She added that 51 percent of students at MU and MSU said they had to agree with a professor to get a good grade.

Mesa to offer expanded airline services out of Joplin

On Wednesday, Mesa Airlines announced it will provide more services out of the Joplin Airport and other airports it serves.

According to an article in the Grand Island, Nebraska, Independent, Mesa announced a codeshare agreement with Midwest Airlines:

The agreement means that passengers from Grand Island will be able to buy a single ticket to fly from Grand Island into Kansas City, Mo., to connect with Midwest's 44 daily departures there.

Those departures include 17 nonstop destinations to places such as Washington, D.C.-National, Orlando, Fort Lauderdale, New York-LaGuardia and Los Angeles.

"With the addition of the Midwest Airlines codeshare ... we now offer not only great local fares to Kansas City but great new connecting opportunities with Midwest Airlines," Mesa spokesman Jeffrey Hartz said.

The agreement affects not only the Mesa flights from Grand Island but also those from Columbia/Jefferson City, Mo.; Joplin, Mo.; Kirksville, Mo.; McCook; and Omaha.

More about GateHouse Media

Last week's post about GateHouse Media's firing of Carthage Press General Manager and Managing Editor Ron Graber and Associate Editor Michael Davison has become a continuing source of comments, with 46 at last count.

The comments have been critical of everyone from Graber and Davison to GateHouse Media, to Rick Rogers, John Hacker, Chip Watson, and as usual, me.

I have grown used to people who comment on this blog making negative references about everything from my teaching ability (which not one of them knows anything about) to my reporting ability, to my motivation for writing this blog. One childish commenter was so upset that I deleted his post which included an obscenity, that he wrote an even more childish response.

One thing seems undeniable. Even though all of the national reports say newspapers are dying, the people who are interested in them are passionate about that interest. Count me among that group. I have loved newspapers since my dad, driving a truck for the Neosho Nurseries at the time, used to bring me copies of the Tulsa World, the Daily Oklahoman, and the Kansas City Star. We always subscribed to the Joplin Globe and the Neosho Daily News, and I used to pay 15 cents every afternoon to Alan Oxendine for a copy of the Joplin News-Herald.
Every afternoon, after school, I sat in the back of Gum Mercantile with my friends, drinking a Doctor Pepper, as we waited for the car to arrive with the Neosho Daily. Newspapers were important, they're still important, but the times have changed and so have the newspapers.

One of those who commented last week said the Press has been declining for years, and that is absolutely true, but that was not the way it was before American Publishing (later Liberty Group Publishing, later GateHouse Media) took over. When that happened, The Press had a larger circulation and a better newspaper than the Neosho Daily and it remained that way up until my last day at The Press in May 1999.

But the moves that eventually cost The Press much of its support in the community had already started while I was there. I wrote about it in the July 14, 2004, Turner Report:

A page one story in The Carthage Press tonight dealt with The Press' purchase of the building that used to house Honey's Restaurant on Central Avenue. The article saddened me.
It's not that I'm that connected with the present Press building, though I have plenty of good memories of my nearly 10 years there, the final five and a half as the managing editor. The reason behind that move is what is depressing.
The Press is currently located in a three-story building at 527 S. Main. The building is far too large for the newspaper's needs...primarily because the newspaper has been gutted by Liberty Group Publishing, the company that owns The Press, the Neosho Daily News and The Big Nickel.
About six years ago, after Liberty bought the newspaper from Thomson, the company decided it could save money by pulling out the press, selling it, and sending the paper 25 miles to Neosho to be printed. Sure, it improved the company's bottom line, and it improved the Neosho Daily's bottom line, but it cost The Press plenty. The Press was printing nearly every high school newspaper in the area at that time, as well as a few small-town weeklies. Also, the sense of ownership a town has about a newspaper is diminished when it is printed somewhere else. Those things were sacrificed for the bottom line. Also sacrificed were the jobs of the three people who ran the press, including one who had been there for nearly three decades. Chalk another one up to progress.
I didn't know until early last month that there is no longer a composing room at Carthage. That, too, is also done at Neosho now. These steps have saved the company money and improved the bottom line, but they have forced artificially early deadlines on The Press, which can no longer deal with any kind of breaking news in the morning. That doesn't appear to be a problem that bothers anyone connected with Liberty.
Whatever happened to a newspaper being in the business of providing a public service?

That public service aspect of newspapers, like the importance of the medium, may soon exist only in memory.

Neosho Daily: Snow days bill screwed up by legislature, joint committee to work out problems

In an article in today's Neosho Daily News, new Managing Editor John Ford writes about the latest development in the ever-winding road being traveled by Rep. B. J. Marsh's bill to forgive school days missed during the January ice storm.
Apparently, eagle-eyed Sen. Gary Nodler, R-Joplin, found an error in the wording of the bill, which would have prevented the Joplin R-8 School District from taking any of the missed day off its calendar. Rep. Kevin Wilson, one of the bill's co-sponsors, explained the problem in a telephone interview with Ford:

According to Wilson, it was there that a drafting error was discovered by state Sen. Gary Nodler. Wilson said the initial language of the bill contained an exclusion for the Nixa school district.

"On bills, you can't just exclude a school district, you have to give a description of the district," Wilson said in a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon with the Daily News. "The description also fit Joplin, and Joplin wanted to use it."

Wilson said when the error was discovered, the measure was added as an amendment to a Senate tourism bill, Senate Bill 376.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the bill was headed into conference, with members expected to meet today. After that, the bill will again be presented to the House and Senate.

"The way it's written could end all of the unintentional confusion," Wilson said. "I haven't heard any opposition. I expect it to be done Thursday."

I hope someone lets the legislators know that May begins next week.

Information needed on Shields for Pro Tem Committee

If any readers have the information on what the new name of the campaign committee formerly known as Shields for Pro Tem is, please leave the information in the comment section to this post.
Two e-mails I sent to the Missouri Ethics Commission trying to uncover this information went unanswered. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Remembering the work of David Halberstam

One of the things I have enjoyed most over the past three decades has been the work of author David Halberstam, who died earlier this week in an automobile accident in California.
The first book Of his I came across was The Powers That Be, his examination of the modern media, with a particular emphasis on CBS, the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and Time Magazine.
His The Best and the Brightest offered the definitive look of how the U. S. became mired in Vietnam.
But Halberstam's works was not limited to typical, serious non-fiction topics. He also wrote some of the best non-fiction sports books of the past several decades, including The Breaks of the Game, which examined an NBA season with the Portland Trail Blazers, Summer of 49, which detailed a pennant race between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox, The Friends (I believe that was the title), which told of former Red Sox Johnny Pesky, Dom DiMaggio, and Bobby Doerr taking a trip to Florida to see Ted Williams before he died, and the book I enjoyed most of all, October 1964, which told the story of how the St. Louis Cardinals came from six games out with 11 to go to win the National League championship, then beat the heavily-favored Yankees in seven games in the World Series.
As I read Halberstam's book, the memories of sitting by the radio and listening to Harry Caray and Jack Buck describe those games came back. Halberstam was also able to get into the psyche of the sports heroes I had as a child, with memorable tales of Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Tim McCarver, Bill White, Curt Flood, Mike Shannon, and other members of that Cardinal team, as well as Yankees Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, and Whitey Ford, among others.
I will miss seeing new Halberstam books arrive, but fortunately he left behind nearly two dozen books which will be read for generations to come.

Office of Special Counsel to investigate U. S. attorney firings

The Office of Special Counsel will examine the firing of eight U. S. attorneys, according to an article in today's Washington Post.
Investigators will look into possible violations of the Hatch Act, which is designed to ensure federal resources are not used for political purposes.
The firings included Bud Cummins of Arkansas, who was in the middle of an investigation into the awarding of lucrative license fee offices in Missouri when he was given the heave-ho.

The case against Blunt administration laid out by blog

With nearly every mention of the scandal surrounding the dismissal of eight U.S. attorneys, I have noted that one of them is Bud Cummins of Arkansas, who was in the middle of an investigation into Governor Matt Blunt's awarding of lucrative license fee offices and the franchising of those offices.
It has been a backburner story among the other more publicized firings, but it appears that is about to change. An article from BradBlog connects the dots with well-sourced accusations that Blunt apparently misspent $20,000 in campaign funds to cover personal legal fees, that Congressman Sam Graves and his brother, former U. S. Attorney Todd Graves are connected to the license fee scandal, and of the involvement of powerful law firm Lathrop & Gage. The post concludes by noting:

We hope the folks in both the Senate and House Judiciary Committees might find these pointers useful, even as we hope to offer more in the near future on all of this. "No Underlying Crime"? Only if someone slipped another new provision into the PATRIOT Act making it legal to politically interfere with ongoing criminal investigations.

Ironically, Cummins investigation was wrapped up in October of 2006, with no charges being brought. But we'd suggest there are more than enough grounds for a fresh investigation into the attempts to scuttle the original one in the first place, and the plan that led to Cummins having his legs cut out from under him mid-course.

Blunt machine raises big bucks for Romney in southwest Missouri

It may be the only place left in Missouri where this holds true, but in the southwest corner of the state, Governor Matt Blunt is still a political powerhouse.
Evidence of that can be seen in examining presidential contributions from this area. According to Federal Election Commission documents, Blunt's preferred candidate, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, has raised $36,000 from southwest Missouri during the first quarter of 2007...more than all other presidential candidates combined.
The other candidates received $32,175, led by Arizona Sen. John McCain with $9,750 and Illinois Sen. Barack Obama with $7,625. Other candidates and the amounts they received include: Rep. Ron Paul $250, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani $3,000; New York Sen. Hillary Clinton $2,000, Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback $100, California Rep. Duncan Hunter $500; and former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards $1,450. Contributors are listed below:

Mitt Romney- Jodee Herschend, Branson, $2,300; Peter Herschend, Branson, $2,300; Mrs. Randy Brown, Diamond, $2,100; Dorothy Farber, Neosho, $2,100; Rudy Farber, Neosho, $2,100; Mark Gardner, Springfield, $2,100; Valia Gardner, Springfield, $2,100; Glen Garrett, Purdy, $2,100; Sharon Garrett, Purdy, $2,100; James Hackney, Carl Junction, $2,100; Leigh Ann Hackney, Springfield, $2,100; Jerry Hall, Monett, $2,100; Patricia Hall, Monett, $2,100; Robert Plaster, Lebanon, $2,100; Mary Jean Plaster, Lebanon, $2,100; Jean Willard, Carl Junction, $2,100; James Combs, Bradleyville, $2,000

John McCain- Andy Williams, Branson, $4,600; Debbie Williams, Branson, $4,600; Bryna Justice, Springfield, $250; Robert Wooldridge, Springfield, $300

Rudy Giuliani- Richard Davidson, Neosho, $1,000; Rudy Farber, Neosho, $500; Eloise Ragland, Neosho, @50; Ronald Neville, Springfield, $500; Christopher Varisco, Branson, $500; Chris Fuldner, Monett, $250

Sam Brownback- Vera Pember, Springfield, $100

Duncan Hunter- Douglas Young, Webb City, $500

John Edwards- Robert Baird, Springfield, $500; Phillip Roberts, Monett, $700; Constance Fine, Springfield, $250

Barack Obama- Robert Bone, Cassville, $2,300; Mary Kellogg-Joslyn, Branson, $2,000; John Joslyn, Branson, $2,000; Margo Reid, Nixa, $500; Christina Fugett, Springfield, $300; James Gammill, Nixa, @50; Jonathan Lee, Springfield, $275

Hillary Clinton- Ron Campbell, Nixa, $1,000; Sam Hamra, Springfield, $1,000

Republican candidates received $49,600, while Democratic candidates picked up $11,075.
***

(Note: It appears I overlooked a couple of Branson contributions for Romney, which bring up the total to at least $1,500 to his total, making it $37,500.)

Farbers put $4,200 into Romney candidacy

You can add another $4,200 to the money contributed by Neosho banker and newly-minted State Highway Commission member Rudy Farber and his wife, Dorothy.
Federal Election Commission (FEC) documents indicate the Farbers chipped in with $2,100 apiece to Governor Matt Blunt's favorite presidential candidate on Jan. 30.
As noted earlier in The Turner Report, Farber, chairman of the board of Community Bank and Trust, contributed $50,000 to Governor Blunt's campaign on March 4, just two weeks before Blunt nominated him to serve on the Highway Commission. The Senate approved Farber's nomination Thursday.