I was unknowingly understating myself a few weeks ago when I said I was really looking forward to Joe Miller's deposition in the mayor's case. Little did I know.
Now then, boys and girls: after listening to Bill Grady scooping the rest of KC media with his Miller interview, let's summarize what we know:
1. The mayor and his staff violated campaign ethics laws. (Ignorance is not a defense.)
2. The mayor's wife did in fact serve as staff - she set the mayor's schedule and directly influenced policy.
3. The mayor deliberately ordered staff to violate the state's Sunshine Law.
4. The mayor, instead of devoting himself to his full-time job, has been quietly working on our dime to build up his outside consulting business.
5. Gloria needs Lexapro. Or Prozac. Or valium. Something.
I met Joe Miller briefly early on in the mayor's administration. Seemed like an earnest young man who had definitely drunk the Mayor's Kool-Aid. After listening to his interview with Bill Grady, it's obvious the Kool-Aid has soured.
Miller has obviously been greatly disillusioned, and no wonder. What an irony - a former zealous journalist who - a month or so into the so-called Orange Revolution finds himself violating a principle he once held dear: Sunshine and freedom of information.
His publicly-stated reason for resigning was incomplete - privately he was appalled by the violations of state law and the behavior of the mayor's wife. Now he's gone public in a big way. So perhaps we should add the word "integrity" to the earlier descriptor "earnest." (Or maybe this is a convoluted way to promote his next book? God, how DID I become so cynical?)
Note to Chris Koster, incoming attorney-general: surely there's something actionable in all this? A recall takes too much and takes too long - can't you do something on our behalf?
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