McClatchy Drops Bomb At Bottom Of Story

For months it has been suspected that Thomas Heffelfinger was pushed out of the Minnesota US Attorney job to make way for Rachel Paulose. Heffelfinger has insisted he left for personal reasons. Tonight Marisa Taylor and Margaret Talev, of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, offhandedly report at the bottom of a somewhat related story that

a U.S. attorney in Minnesota, who disagreed with the Justice Department on a case involving voting rolls, was asked to resign early last year.

Minnesota only has one US Attorney.

My guess is they confused Minnesota with Missouri. Todd Graves was pushed out in part because he disagreed with Brad Schlozman about a voting rolls case. If not, it is the biggest dropped lede in years. I can't wait to see the later additions.

Hey, the reporters live in Washington. Missouri, Minnesota, all those flyover states look alike.

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Kansas City Star Denies It Should Have Disclosed Ties To Powerful GOP Law Firm

As you might recall a couple of weeks ago the Kansas City Star, a McCLatchy Newspaper, found itself at ground zero of the Brad Schlozman story, but for two days refused to run Greg Gordon's excellent piece on Schlozman's role in the 2006 election. Critics complained that when the Star finally did run the story, it was edited to soften criticism of the local GOP and several of it's players including Governor Matt Blunt and St. Louis lawyer Mark "Thor" Hearne, national counsel to Bush's 2004 re-election campaign, who set up a nonprofit group to publicize allegations of voter fraud. It turns out that Hearne is a member of the very powerful Missouri Law Firm, Lathrop & Gage. Both the Kansas City Star and Governor Blunt are Lathrop & Gage clients.

Chris Tackett guest blogging at Brad's Blog recently interviewed The Star's Deputy National Editor, Keith Chrostowski hunting for answers. Long story and a lot of mealy mouthing short, Chrostowki says the Star couldn't find space for the story on the day it was released by McClatchy, denies it consulted with Lathrop and Gage about the story, denies the edits changed the story in any material way, and denies the Star had any ethical obligation to report that both the Star and Matt Blunt are clients of Lathrop & Gage, who is the employer of one of the people at the heart of the story, the heart hidden from the public by the Star's edits.

Interesting story within a story. Without Brad's Blog and the Internet, how many folks would ever be aware that the Star had a dog in the fight it was covering.

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