Md. AG Doug Gansler has sued a Baltimore Judge for illegally dumping hundreds of tons of buidling debris that includes truckloads of drywall, cinderblocks, broken bathroom fixtures and other landfill rubble along the waterfront of his Riviera Beach house.  The Judge is not happy.

I did this once myself.   Almost thirty years ago I forced a Maine judge to actually tear down a house he had illegally constructed on a sand dune.   That Judge wasn't very happy either.

He said I was persuing a political agenda.

On the one hand, it is a very simple question with a very simple answer.

A fired state employee becomes a whistleblower by going to the Office of Attorney General with a claim that the boss illegally destroyed public records.  The career AAG who prosecutes violations of the state sunshine law assigns an investigator and makes a decision.  

Yawn......

On the other hand, it is a very complex question with no answer.

In the State of Missouri, GOP Governor Roy Blunt, a scion of the state's most prominent political family, fires a lawyer in his office who then goes to Dem. Attorney General, Jay Nixon, who is running full tilt against Blunt in the 2008 election, and says Blunt rejected legal advice and illegally trashed an unknown number of emails.

AG Nixon hasn't been in office for twenty years (sixteen as AG) for nothing, so he  appoints two prominent Republicans as Special Assistants - one to investigate the charge and another to make prosecutorial decisions.   His efforts at blunting the Blunt onslaught, of course, go for naught.   Blunt declares the appointment of the special prosecutors "political" and his counsel says it is "unprecedented."

For the people of Missouri, the issue is one of access to public information, character and fairness.

For the rest of us, it is still a yawn.