Pretend I'm writing this for the Beeb

Up-to-date reports of this developing story can be best read from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's Political Fix and tweeted by Tony Messenger and Jake Wagman. Again, pretend I'm writing this for the BBC. (If BBC wish to use it, they're more than welcome to. By the way, my mobile number is 077…)

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A lawmaker made famous by the 2004 documentary "Can Mr Smith Get To Washington Anymore?" will resign from his seat in the Missouri state senate after pleading guilty to federal charges of obstructing justice.

Jeff Smith, a Democrat state senator from St Louis, admitted in court that he knew about an independent campaign producing fliers aimed to benefit Mr Smith's 2004 campaign for Congress.

Mr Smith finished second of ten in the Democratic primary for Missouri's Third District, behind eventual winner Russ Carnahan for the open seat vacated by long-time congressman Dick Gephardt.

'This event has humbled me.'

In a statement to the press, Mr Smith admitted fault and apologised to the constituents of his district in St. Louis city.

“Federal campaign finance law prohibits specific coordination between a campaign and anyone preparing an independent expenditure,” Mr Smith said. “When the independent operator requested funding, I authorized a close friend to raise money for the effort, and my press secretary provided public information about my opponent’s voting record. I withheld my knowledge of these facts during the Federal Election Commission’s 2004 investigation, misleading investigators and filing a false affidavit.”

Local media have named the 'close friend' as Milton 'Skip' Ohlsen III. Mr Ohlsen is currently in jail following a guilty plea to mortgage fraud charges. A 2007 investigation by the Federal Elections Commission, spurred by a complaint filed by Mr Carnahan, named Mr Ohlsen as the distributor of fliers that improperly attacked the Carnahan campaign in 2004. The report also found that Mr Ohlsen received $13,000 from an unknown source to fund the fliers.

In recent weeks, Mr Ohlsen was discovered to have become heavily involved with the Missouri Democratic Party, assisting with campaigns and dining in the governor's mansion in 2004 with then-governor Bob Holden. Mr Ohlsen has been in legal troubles since the 1990s.

Another member of Smith's 2004 campaign, state representative Steve Brown of Clayton, pleaded guilty to similar charges today and also resigned.

Grassroots campaigner

Mr Smith was in the third year of his first four-year term in the Missouri Senate, first elected in November 2006.

His resignation likely brings to a sudden close a political career that meteorically rose during his 2004 campaign for Congress as told in the documentary, "Can Mr Smith Get To Washington Anymore?"

Then a 29-year-old professor at Washington University in St Louis, Mr Smith relied on personal connections and funds to develop a grassroots campaign to challenge the perceived establishment candidate Russ Carnahan. Mr Carnahan's father Mel was the Missouri governor who died in a 2000 plane crash.

Despite gaining support along the campaign, Mr Smith lost by two points to Mr Carnahan in the August 2004 primary.

Mr Smith ran in 2006 for the open state senate seat in St Louis city, beating four Democratic candidates in the primary before arriving uncontested in the state capital Jefferson City.

Mr Smith's campaign would be the forerunner of other modern grassroots campaigns that would elevate lawmakers from near-obscurity into prominence, most notably President Barack Obama and former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

Four Months Since the first post…

And chances are I still have posts from early July at the bottom of this page. It hasn't been working out too well wedging regular ruminations of current events here and back home inbetween planning a wedding from scratch 46 days before the ceremony, exterminating fleas by way of vacuum cleaner, and other domestic necessities.

It's very rarely the desire of a journalist to be the story, but I can't help but realise how seemingly unique my situation is: to essentially walk away from a seemingly promising career in radio broadcasting just off my home turf, leave my native Missouri, leave behind four generations of family, sell my car that ran on 85% corn ethanol, all to be with the woman whom I will marry in one month. Already one of my longtime friends suggested I drop the political commentary and just focus this blog on, well, me.

It is easy to resort to talking about oneself (and it would be hypocritical to say I don't like talking about myself), but frankly, is there really interest in people hearing how a loud American is faring in Britain? Or do I stick with just the occasional retort to reports from home?

I've set up a poll to last the remainder of the month on the right. Have at it.

Life sentence = Two weeks??

Just moments ago, the lone man convicted of bringing down Pan Am Flight 103 over the Scottish village of Lockerbie took off on an Airbus from Glasgow to make the trip back home to Libya. And with it could be the biggest gamble of an independent Scottish government since the hare-brained idea to colonise the Isthmus of Panama over 300 years ago.

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was convicted in a Scottish court in 2001 for placing on board the Pam Am flight the bomb that brought it down in December 1988, killing 259 people on board and 11 on the ground. That incident exacerbated Libya's isolationism under Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and Pan Am's inevitable collapse and absorption into Delta. Megrahi was sentenced to spend the remainder of his life in prison.

Earlier today, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill, from the Scottish Nationalist-led government, granted Megrahi's request for release on compassionate grounds, stating that Megrahi was terminally ill with prostate cancer and had only three months to live. MacAskill cited the prevailing desire of providing humanitarian compassion over justice. With the release granted instead of transferring Megrahi to a Libyan prison, Megrahi will have spent two weeks in prison for each fatality. And Megrahi will arrive in Libya on the night of an annual celebration commemorating Col. Gaddafi's rise to power.

Reaction among English politicans are like that of their American counterparts. The Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, himself a Scot, quickly declared the decision a Scottish affair. Conservative leader David Cameron, while affirming the right of the Scottish government to make the decision, called MacAskill's decision flat-out wrong. This statement was echoed by the leader of Scotland's Labour Party.

What complicates this case is the introduction of devolution to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales ten years ago. Had Pan Am 103 been stricken two minutes earlier, we'd probably be talking about the bombing occurring in Cumbria's Brampton, thus having the case go through English courts. (Ideally, we'd never be talking about it on account of the flight never coming down.) But since July 1999, Scotland has operated its domestic affairs separated from Westminster, but its foreign affairs still made by Westminster. The efforts by the U.S. State Department and seven senators were unable to sway the Scottish government, which will be seen by political pundits as a sign of Scotland asserting its right to independence.

As this chapter of this tragic incident plays out, mixing with the emotions of families on both sides of the pond, the question of devolution has found its way into the discussion. William Wallace just might be smiling.

Maybe that national Boy Rangers camp wasn't such a good idea…

A rising star in Missouri politics featured in a 2004 documentary might come crashing down to Earth following reports that he is under investigation by the FBI.

State Senator Jeff Smith, a Democrat from St. Louis city, is reported to be contemplating resigning his seat amid reports in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the FBI is investigating potential campaign improprieties in Smith's 2004 bid for Congress. At the moment, Smith has not confirmed or denied the Post-Dispatch's reports, and likewise the FBI would not confirm or deny whether Smith is under investigation.

According to the Post-Dispatch, this reported investigation stems from a complaint initially filed by the campaign of Russ Carnahan, who eventually beat Smith and eight others in the Democratic primary and went on to become the Congressman for Missouri's 3rd district. The complaint alleged that fliers targeting Carnahan's campaign were by Smith's campaign, misleading, and funded in a way that contravened federal election laws. An earlier investigation, however, identified the distributor of the fliers as Milton "Skip" Ohlsen, who has served jail time for possessing cocaine, and is in jail now on unrelated charges of firearms possession and mortgage fraud. Where Ohlsen received $13,000 to enable the fliers' distribution, however, was not determined.

This happens to be the campaign where Smith's campaign was filmed for the documentary "Can Mr. Smith Get To Washington Anymore?" Smith came in second, within two percent of the son of deceased governor Mel Carnahan.

So now the question circulating around Jefferson City and Senator Smith is whether those funds did in fact come from his campaign. And recent actions—Smith turning in teaching credentials at Washington University, staffers for Governor Nixon and Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields looking up state statutes concerning the resolving of vacancies in the State Senate, Smith not posting on his Twitter account in 11 days—don't look too well for preserving his innocence.

Sounds like he might need to pull the same stunt his Hollywood character namesake (portrayed by James Stewart in 1939) if any such charges have no merit. Else, be ready for two elections in the 4th State Senate District in 2010, as Smith's first term is to expire next year.

Return to Laclede County

Sometime this week, the man whose odyssey originating in eastern Laclede County gave the ruling military junta in Myanmar the kangaroo court case desired to affirm next year's general elections as a joke in their favor, will return home to the comfort of his home somewhere off Highway 32 east of Lebanon. And meanwhile, the woman who has become the face of the struggle for democracy around the world, remains under house arrest for the next 18 months, just after said general elections. All thanks to a senator from… Virginia?

Virginia senator Jim Webb travelled to Myanmar over the weekend to visit with the military junta's leadership, on his own accord. This trip resulted in the release of 53-year-old John Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years hard labor following his conviction of entering Myanmar illegally. Yettaw, meanwhile, is in a Bangkok hospital following a seizure, and will have to find his own way back to Missouri. (And according to a recent search of When To Fly, it's going to run the family $890 for a one-way ticket from Bangkok to Springfield, if they book him today to arrive on 8 September.)

And what still startles me is the lack of response on the local front. After meeting with both the junta leadership and pro-democracy leader Aung San Soo Kyi, Webb has expressed support for easing sanctions on Myanmar. (Reports of China and India increasing trade with the country would undermine the current sanctions.) But in the three months the man from Falcon, Missouri, who claimed he had a vision and sought to warn Soo Kyi, no statements were made by any elected official from Missouri concerning his condition, conviction, or even that of Soo Kyi. Perhaps with Mr. Yettaw on his way home (and a reporter from a major Missouri media operation finally writing about this, this particular story by The Kansas City Star's Tony Rizzo featuring Mrs. Yettaw), we might hear from Webb's colleagues about their office's views on what transpired over the last three months.

Foot-In-Mouth Disease might have claimed a Dovorian first…

And if this MP has his way, it might skip my train station for the sake of marketing.

A missive written by Labour MP Gwyn Prosser of Dover last May has recently sparked the attention of detractors. This comes as Southeastern Trains announced that peak train service on its new Javelin "bullet train" to Dover, Folkestone and Thanet will expand three months ahead of schedule. The expanded service, through Ashford and Medway's Ebbsfield to London's St. Pancras station, will begin on 7 September, and full service will start by year's end.

In May, Prosser wrote that were the Javelin's service "tweaked", it could make the trip from Dover Priory station to St. Pancras in just under an hour. By tweak, Prosser means dump one of the two Folkestone stops so that Dover can claim it's less than an hour away. He calls this a "psychologically important threshold."

Prosser's missive for the Hawkinge Gazette re-surfaced yesterday when Folkestone West Councillor Tim Prater, upon linking to it, tweeted the suggestion as: "Rubbish. Folkestone Central has best bus links, Folkestone West more parking. We need both." And three negative responses from readers have been published.

Back home, Trenton is an hour's drive west of Kirksville. The fastest I drove it down Highway 6, however, was 64 minutes. As far as I'm concerned, it's an hour's drive.

Forget Swine Flu; UK braces for Tory Foot-in-Mouth Disease

While the US debate vigorously the virtues and/or follies of the NHS, and the NHS replace the teenagers they hired to diagnose over the phone cases of Swine Flu, another ailment has swept through the ranks of the Conservative Party.

At first, it claimed London mayor Boris Johnson, who last month called an extra £250,000 for writing a weekly column for the Daily Telegraph "chicken feed". This is on top of his salary as mayor, which is a mere £140,000, and was initially raised amid criticisms that he was receiving it in spite of a directive from David Cameron for Tory front-benchers to dump their second jobs in preparation for the election that has to occur before 3 June 2010.

Now comes a video, filmed by an invited visitor who was protesting the excessive expenses claims of MPs, where shadow Commons leader Alan Duncan stated: "You have to live on rations and are treated like s---." The base salary for a Member of Parliament is £65,000 per year, plus reimbursable expenses.

Naturally, most Conservative front-benchers were quick to distance themselves from Duncan's comments, and Duncan's apology was equally quick. However, his chance of recovering from this strain of foot-in-mouth disease appears grim, as he might have an extended stay in an intensive care unit called a backbench.

Friedman helicopter lands in London, stretches my dollar

Today the Bank of England, as authorised by Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling, announced that it was infusing another £50 billion into the British economy as part of its "quantitative easing" scheme to get Britain spending again. This brings the total up to £175 million flowing out of the City of London. With the release, however, that figure promptly went from US$297.5 million to US$294 million, as more liquidity in the economy means less value and thus more inflation.

Or as the bank's hoping to do, no deflation. And the bank seems to have its way with preventing deflation, with house prices up just over 1 percent and forecasters revising their year-end house sales projections from a decline of 10 percent to a modest rise, but still a decline in 2010.

I'm not an economist, but with major figures appearing to bottom out, I sense that we just might be at the end of the beginning of the global recession. And that might be putting it cautious.

Time for East Normal to cook up more spin…

With several economists calling the collegiate Class of 2009 the "Lost Generation", graduating in the midst of a global recession, it doesn't look good if you're at a university that either can't get their grads hired or into well-paying jobs.

So how will liberal arts universities (like my alma mater) respond to the lead of this story in today's Kansas City Star, which purloins a famous country/western lyric advising parents to not let their kids go to liberal arts colleges? The story, citing data from a global database of workplace salaries, reinforces what's been circulating around high school guidance offices and university quads for years: grads from engineering schools on average make a lot more per year than grads from liberal arts schools.

How much more? By this study, driving 90 miles south from Columbia to the Missouri University of Science and Technology results in making 42.9% more than 90 miles in the opposite direction to Truman State, at max $57,300 to $40,100. Mid-career the gap remains percentage wise, with Rolla grads making up to $30,000 more. Of course, engineering careers are typically hi-skilled (energy, construction, transport), while liberal arts careers tend to be around government and civil service (education, nursing, mass media).

The big question that universities will need to tackle, should this recession drag on, is how to attract students who are worried about making ends meet without breaking the bank. Certainly for blue-blood and engineering schools, not too big a problem. But for universities whose graduates tend to go into careers where jobs are evaporating and/or aren't being propped up by government subsidies, some spin might be in order.

Hmm… maybe I should have learned to do my laundry a lot sooner…

Fortnight Over

After two weeks in the Kentish wilderness, I have finally caught up with what I missed whilst chopping wood, burning wood, and providing a smash hit with my home-made rotisserie cooker. By smash hit, I mean it actually cooked three chickens, none of them fell into the fire, the pole didn't break, and no one had food poisoning the next morning.

So now, after missing out on Parkville's Tom Watson narrowly missing a chance to win the Open at Turnberry and Labour resorting to homophobia in their futile effort to retain Norwich North in the recent by-election, I'm back parked behind my laptop. And recently I've been making notes on how British media are framing the States in their correspondent reports. And for correspondents from a country where 70 percent of the populace don't say that there is a God (in spite of all coinage containing abbreviations for "By the Grace of God" and "Defender of the Faith" with reference to Queen Elizabeth II), any story from the U.S. where religious fervour equals a "backward" approach grabs headlines, albeit buried well inside.

On various supply runs to go after chicken, marshmallows, and other edibles, I picked up the Labour-leaning Guardian on two occasions and the Murdoch-owned Sunday Times once. And twice in the Guardian, correspondent, columnist and editor alike hammed up rather condescendingly the religious aspect of each story. For starters, this Guardian piece on the Texas Board of Education considering a proposal to emphasise Christian influence on the founding of the United States. That same day in their Sport section, Lawrence Donegan commented on Stewart Cink's celebratory speech, at first lamenting the concept of athletes giving thanks to God for their performance in their sport (including identifying Kurt Warner as still with the St. Louis Rams when he led Arizona's Cardinals in the most recent Super Bowl), but credited Cink with invoking the Almighty in a succinct, but not bragging manner.

Then comes the final commentary from BBC's Justin Webb, who after eight years of reporting from Washington is returning to the British Isles. In his generally glowing commentary of his adopted home (and his kids' native land), his echoing the in-bred optimism of the U.S. comes to a screeching halt when referencing the case of two Wisconsin parents convicted of reckless homicide for refusing to take their 11-year-old diabetic daughter to a doctor. Until she stopped breathing those parents believed that having their child treated with regular insulin shots was putting a doctor's word above God's.

Now I can't doubt the existence of the fervently religious back home. Quite often I find myself able to relate closer to them than secularists that dominate Western Europe. But as growing numbers suggest that the way to curb poverty, abortion, illegal immigration, socialism, fascism, racism, etc. etc. is to emphasize a narrow strand of Christian thought, to isolate their communities from outside influence, and to latch onto any far-fetched idea to satisfy their conviction, I find myself leaning in the opposite direction.

Seriously, if the Founding Fathers were truly devout Christians, then why would the First Amendment ban Congress from establishing a state religion before banning them from prohibiting its free exercise? Why would Thomas Jefferson have a Koran on his book shelf? Why would the words of an avowed religious critic, Thomas Paine, be the very call to bring America to revolt against the tyranny of King George III (who, as pointed out last month, was head of the Church of England)?

But at the same token, for every nut who attempts to end an argument with an impromptu mass recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, there are genuine, devout, and open-minded followers of Christianity and the many other faiths that have flourished in the States. And for secular media to assume that any religious person from the U.S. must believe that God directed U.S. troops to pillage Toronto (then known as York) in 1813, Obama was born in Kenya, and the capital of Wisconsin is Green Bay, evokes a dangerous tendency to condescend.

And more often than not, pride comes before the fall.