Koster Defends Himself in Conflict Hearing December 8, 2014

(AP) – A law enforcement interview with a key witness doesn’t appear to be included with thousands of pages of documents released after a grand jury decided not to indict a Ferguson police officer in the fatal shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown.

The Associated Press reviewed more than 5,700 pages of documents released by St. Louis County prosecutors. It doesn’t appear that the documents include a transcript or a recording of a two-hour FBI and county police interview with Brown’s friend, Dorian Johnson, who was with Brown when he was shot. The discrepancy was first reported by KSDK-TV.

The documents include seven video clips of Johnson’s media interviews, as well as a transcript of his testimony to the grand jury that investigated the shooting. The transcript notes that jurors listened to a recording of an Aug. 13 interview of Johnson by the federal and county investigators, but documents released to the public don’t appear to include a separate transcript of that August interview.

“If it’s not there, it’s not there,” Ed Magee, a spokesman for St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch, said Monday. “I don’t know what was released.”

Pat Roberts Staff Says NYT Residence Report is a ” Hit Piece” February 8, 2014

Politico:

Sen. Pat Roberts’s office lashed out Friday at The New York Times over a story that questioned the nature of the Republican’s residence in Kansas, calling it a “hit piece” and stressing that the lawmaker does own property in the state, even if he doesn’t live in it.
In an interview with the paper published Friday, the three-term senator is cited as acknowledging “that he did not have a home of his own in Kansas.” The address where he is registered to vote, a red-brick house on a golf course where neighbors say they’ve rarely seen him, belongs to longtime supporters C. Duane and Phyllis Ross, the paper reported.

(http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/08/us/senator-races-to-show-ties-including-an-address-in-kansas.html?_r=1)

Roberts faces a primary challenge this year, and tea party activists trying to oust him quickly pounced on the information in the article as the latest example of him being out of touch with Kansans. The Times said Roberts is “now desperate to re-establish ties to Kansas and to adjust his politics to fit the rise of the right in the state.”
Shortly after the Times story was posted, Roberts’s office pushed back. An aide to the senator emphasized Friday that Roberts owns a property that he rents out to others in Dodge City, Kansas.
The Times piece noted at one point that, “Mr. Roberts moved his address from a rental property he owned in Dodge City but had long since leased to tenants, and got a new driver’s license giving the golf course home as his address.”
The senator’s office insisted, however, the piece was nonetheless vague on that rental matter and left the impression Roberts had no property in the state.
According to his 2013 financial disclosure form, Roberts owns a Dodge City residence valued between $100,000 and $250,000. The same form indicates he brings in between $5,001 and $15,000 in annual income from the property, which his office said he has owned since 1992.
In a statement, Roberts’s Senate communications director Sarah Little also criticized the reporter on the Times piece, Jonathan Martin, as having a “clear agenda.”
Roberts “rents a room from friends in Dodge City because he cannot stay in the house he rents out,” Little told POLITICO.
An earlier version of POLITICO’s story on the Times piece interpreted it as suggesting that Roberts did not own a house in Kansas.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/pat-roberts-kansas-home-103268.html#ixzz2sk5Wk8r4

NYT: McCaskill Part of Women of the Senate Pushing the Sexual Abuse Issue to Headlines June 3, 2013

McCaskill

WASHINGTON — Senator Claire McCaskill wandered down the dais at the Senate Armed Services Committee’s first hearing of the year and noticed a startling tableau: women to the left, women to the right.
Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a veteran Republican member of one of the Senate’s most testosterone-driven panels, was now flanked by them on both sides, including by two Republican colleagues, Senator Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska.

“You’re toast, Graham,” cracked Ms. McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat.

Ms. McCaskill’s joke reflected the seven women now on the Armed Services Committee, a high, and the role that a record 20 female senators are playing on powerful committees. Of the four most prestigious Senate panels — Appropriations, Armed Services, Finance and Foreign Relations — women now hold 18 spots, an increase of nearly 65 percent over the last decade.

But nowhere is the presence of so many women more pronounced than on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where the women on the 26-member panel have forced the long-simmering issue of sexual assault in the military to the forefront on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers have tried to pursue the sexual assault problem for years, with little impact. But now a slew of attention-grabbing bills — most written by women — are intended to end what senior military officials say is a crisis and President Obama has called a disgrace.

“When I raised the issue of rape in the military seven years ago, there was dead silence,” said Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat and member of the committee. “Clearly they are changing things around here.”
More:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/us/women-in-the-senate-gain-strength-in-rising-numbers.html?hp

Handicappers Now Dropping Missouri Senate Race Off The ‘Flip” List September 24, 2012

P-D via Johncombest:
Republicans had big plans this fall to takeover the U.S. Senate — that is, until Todd Akin’s controversial comments on rape.
This summer, it appeared the GOP had a shot of winning four seats in the U.S. Senate and pushing Democrats aside from majority control. But now, a New York Times election forecast predicts the Democrats have a 70 percent chance of keeping the august chamber.
Missouri was once the GOP’s main pickup target, with national Republicans pouring money into the state to defeat incumbent Claire McCaskill, a Democrat running in a red-leaning state. But McCaskill’s opponent, Akin, has been weakened after saying women can avoid pregnanacy after rape. National Republicans have pulled support and cash. Now, they are focusing their attention on states like Mass
Akin was once the clear favorite with a significant polling advantage. Current telephone polls show a tight race, but The New York Times analysis now lists the state as “lean Democratic,” saying McCaskill has a 72 percent shot of winning.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post has removed Missouri from it’s list of state most likely to flip control of the U.S. Senate. The state had previously been ranked in the top five.
The National Journal ranks the state as 9th most likely to change partisan control of the Senate. It was ranked 3rd before the Akin comments.
The Journal wrote on Wednesday: “GOP Rep. Todd Akin is perilously low on money, and he’s not getting any support from the outside Republican groups. He also shows no signs of dropping his bid — the best news McCaskill could get these days. Once the deadline for dropping out passes next week, watch McCaskill carpetbomb her rival to try to put this race away.”

NYT Remembers Missouri’s Senator Eagelton as Veep, a Cautionary Tale for VP Vetting July 24, 2012

Scott Lilly was a young member of Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign staff in the summer of 1972, and he remembers the satisfaction he felt when Mr. McGovern chose Mr. Lilly’s home-state senator to be the Democratic Party’s vice-presidential candidate.
But a few days after the convention that nominated Mr. McGovern and his running mate, Senator Thomas F. Eagleton of Missouri, Mr. Lilly said, he came to a realization. “It suddenly struck me out of the blue that they didn’t know,” he said, that the decision to pick Mr. Eagleton had been made without some crucial facts.

And he was right. The information he had felt obligated to share with a top campaign aide several weeks before — that Mr. Eagleton had been hospitalized for mental health issues — had never been passed on. Mr. Lilly’s tip “did not register,” the aide, Frank Mankiewicz, said in an interview this year. “It was a very hectic time. I must have had not two things on my mind, but maybe 80.”

Today, one of the lasting legacies of Mr. McGovern’s choice of Mr. Eagleton — and the tumult it caused in his campaign — is the microscopic examination of the lives and records of potential vice-presidential candidates, a ritual involving teams of lawyers and consultants and reams of medical and financial records that the candidates are obligated to produce.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/24/us/politics/eagleton-pick-in-1972-colors-todays-vice-president-hunt.html?hp