JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) – Missouri is being sued for allegedly not following federal voter registration laws.
American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri Legal Director Tony Rothert in a Tuesday statement said Missouri violated its duty to protect voting rights. The group is representing the League of Women Voters of Missouri and the Kansas City-area chapter of the AFL-CIO constituency A. Philip Randolph Institute in the lawsuit.
The federal lawsuit claims the Department of Revenue doesn’t automatically update voter registration after address changes and is not providing all required registration information to voters. It says the secretary of state is not ensuring laws are followed.
Secretary of state spokeswoman Maura Browning says the office received the lawsuit but hasn’t reviewed it. Department of Revenue spokeswoman Anne Marie Moy says she can’t comment on pending lawsuits.
TOPEKA — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a suspect for alleged burglary.
Mahkuk-photo Shawnee Co.
Just after noon Tuesday, officers began working a call with a subject who was found to be a suspect in an aggravated burglary.
While working the call, information was learned that he had arrived at a house in the 1800 block of SE 22nd Street in Topeka, according to Lt. Kelvin Johnson. Officers located the suspect vehicle in the back yard and made contact at the house.
Three occupants of the house were called out and spoke with the officers. They denied any knowledge of the suspect identified as 36-year-old Nathaniel Mahkuk and allowed officers to enter the house and confirm he was not inside. While inside, officers noticed evidence to suggest the suspect had entered the attic space of the home. Officers were able to eventually locate the Mahkuk hiding in the attic and take him into custody.
Mahkuk faces aggravated burglary, felony obstruction, and warrants.
SHAWNEE COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before midnight Tuesday in Shawnee County.
First responders on the scene of the accident. Photo by A.J. Dome Courtesy WIBW TV
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2006 Nissan truck driven by Theresa L.. Greig, 52, Coppell, Texas, was northbound on Fairlawn. The vehicle was traveling too fast for the turn onto Interstate 70 eastbound.
The driver lost control of the vehicle. It ran traveled off the road, hit a tree, rolled several times, and the driver was ejected.
Greig was pronounced dead at the scene. She was not wearing a seat belt, according to the KHP.
KANSAS CITY (AP) – A Kansas City woman who told police that threatening schools is her “go-to joke” has been charged with making a terroristic threat.
Snell -photo Clay Co.
22-year-old Asia Snell was arrested Sunday, a day after texting a friend that she planned to shoot up an elementary school near her house and asking, “Can you drive me?” Court records say she ended the text with “Lolololol,” short for laugh out loud.
The friend told police that Snell had made similar comments before, but not in writing. The friend said he didn’t think Snell was serious but didn’t want to take a chance.
Snell told police she had no plans to carry out the threat and didn’t own a gun. No attorney is listed for her in online court records.
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Latest on allegations against Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (all times local):
7:40 p.m.
Missouri’s Republican legislative leadership is calling for fellow GOP Gov. Eric Greitens to resign, but the governor says he won’t quit.
Senate President Pro Tem Ron Richard, House Speaker Todd Richardson and other House leaders called on Greitens to step down Tuesday after the state’s attorney general found evidence that Greitens may have committed a felony in his use of a charity donor list for political purposes.
Richard also called for impeachment proceedings to begin immediately.
Greitens issued a statement Tuesday saying he won’t resign.
Greitens already faces a felony invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom Greitens said he had an extramarital affair.
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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, already facing a felony charge related to an extramarital affair, could soon face another felony count after the state’s top prosecutor cited evidence Tuesday suggesting that Greitens’ use of a charity donor list for political purposes may have broken state law.
Attorney General Josh Hawley said an investigation by his office shows that Greitens took computer data listing the top donors to The Mission Continues without the consent of the veterans’ charity he had founded and used it to raise money for his gubernatorial campaign.
Hawley said he referred the matter to St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, who has jurisdiction to decide whether to charge Greitens with a crime. He also referred his findings to a special House investigatory committee that is considering whether to recommend impeachment proceedings to try to remove Greitens from office.
“We believe that the evidence we have will support a finding of probable cause that the governor obtained the list, used the list (and) transmitted the list without the permission of The Mission Continues and he did so for political fundraising purposes,” Hawley said at a news conference.
The Republican governor quickly issued a rebuttal statement questioning the legal skills of the Republican attorney general and lambasting him for working with Gardner, a Democrat. Greitens and Hawley both won election in 2016 as maverick political outsiders. Hawley now is challenging Democratic U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill and has faced an onslaught of Democratic ads trying to link him to Greitens.
“Anyone who has set foot in a Missouri courtroom knows these allegations are ridiculous,” Greitens said. He added: “We will dispense with these false allegations.”
Greitens has been fighting for his political survival amid mounting calls to resign, including from Hawley.
He is to go to trial May 14 on a felony invasion-of-privacy charge in St. Louis for allegedly taking and transmitting a nonconsensual photo of a partially nude woman with whom he had an affair in 2015. The separate House investigatory panel released a report last week containing testimony from the woman alleging that Greitens restrained, slapped, grabbed, shoved and threatened her during a series of sexual encounters that at times left her crying and afraid.
A spokeswoman for Gardner said St. Louis prosecutors met with officials from the attorney general’s office Monday and are “reviewing the evidence” related to The Mission Continues donor list.
Hawley indicated that the legal deadline is fast approaching to charge Greitens with a crime of tampering with computer data. He said Greitens could be charged with a felony because the donor list produced a gain to Greitens’ campaign of more than $500.
Federal law bars 501(c)(3) charities such as The Mission Continues from intervening in political campaigns on behalf of candidates. The Internal Revenue Service has ruled charities cannot give donor lists to politicians but can rent them at fair market value if made available to all candidates.
The Associated Press first reported in October 2016 that Greitens’ campaign had obtained a Mission Continues spreadsheet showing the names, email addresses and phone numbers of donors who had given least $1,000. The spreadsheet properties show it was created by a Mission Continues employee in 2014, shortly before Greitesn stepped down as CEO, and had last been saved in March 2015 by Michael Hafner, who had been working for Greitens’ gubernatorial exploratory committee. The AP reported that Greitens had raised nearly $2 million from donors who previously gave significant amounts to The Mission Continues.
The Mission Continues has said it did not provide its donor list to Greitens’ campaign.
In October 2016, Greitens initially denied using the list for his campaign. He told the AP: “No, we were not working off of a Mission Continues donor list.” But he added: “We were calling people who had become friends and gotten to know me over the course of seven years, who invested in The Mission Continues, and got to know me as a leader.”
In April 2017, Greitens agreed to pay a small fine to the Missouri Ethics Commission for failing to report that his gubernatorial campaign had, in fact, received the charity’s donor list. Greitens campaign filed amended finance reports valuing the list as a $600 in-kind contribution received March 1, 2015, from Danny Laub, who was listed as Greitens’ campaign manager at the time.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported in February 2018 that it had obtained a copy of an email indicating that a Greitens employee had shared The Mission Continues donor list with Hafner and Laub in January 2015.
HOUSTON (AP) — Barbara Bush, the snowy-haired first lady whose plainspoken manner and utter lack of pretense made her more popular at times than her husband, President George H.W. Bush, died Tuesday, a family spokesman said. She was 92.
Photo courtesy courtesy George Bush Presidential Library
Mrs. Bush brought a grandmotherly style to buttoned-down Washington, often appearing in her trademark fake pearl chokers and displaying no vanity about her white hair and wrinkles.
“What you see with me is what you get. I’m not running for president — George Bush is,” she said at the 1988 Republican National Convention, where her husband, then vice president, was nominated to succeed Ronald Reagan.
The Bushes, who were married Jan. 6, 1945, had the longest marriage of any presidential couple in American history. And Mrs. Bush was one of only two first ladies who had a child who was elected president. The other was Abigail Adams, wife of John Adams and mother of John Quincy Adams.
“I had the best job in America,” she wrote in a 1994 memoir describing her time in the White House. “Every single day was interesting, rewarding, and sometimes just plain fun.”
On Sunday, family spokesman Jim McGrath said the former first lady had decided to decline further medical treatment for health problems and focus instead on “comfort care” at home in Houston. She had been in the hospital recently for congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. In 2009, she had heart valve replacement surgery and had a long history of treatment for Graves’ disease, a thyroid condition.
“My dear mother has passed on at age 92. Laura, Barbara, Jenna, and I are sad, but our souls are settled because we know hers was,” George W. Bush said in a statement Tuesday. “Barbara Bush was a fabulous First Lady and a woman unlike any other who brought levity, love, and literacy to millions. To us, she was so much more. Mom kept us on our toes and kept us laughing until the end. I’m a lucky man that Barbara Bush was my mother. Our family will miss her dearly, and we thank you all for your prayers and good wishes.”
The publisher’s daughter and oilman’s wife could be caustic in private, but her public image was that of a self-sacrificing, supportive spouse who referred to her husband as her “hero.”
In the White House, “you need a friend, someone who loves you, who’s going to say, ‘You are great,'” Mrs. Bush said in a 1992 television interview.
Her uncoiffed, matronly appearance often provoked jokes that she looked more like the boyish president’s mother than his wife. Late-night comedians quipped that her bright white hair and pale features also imparted a resemblance to George Washington.
Eight years after leaving the nation’s capital, Mrs. Bush stood with her husband as their son George W. was sworn in as president. They returned four years later when he won a second term. Unlike Mrs. Bush, Abigail Adams did not live to see her son’s inauguration. She died in 1818, six years before John Quincy Adams was elected.
Mrs. Bush insisted she did not try to influence her husband’s politics.
“I don’t fool around with his office,” she said, “and he doesn’t fool around with my household.”
In 1984, her quick wit got her into trouble when she was quoted as referring to Geraldine Ferraro, the Democratic vice presidential nominee, as “that $4 million — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich.”
“It was dumb of me. I shouldn’t have said it,” Mrs. Bush acknowledged in 1988. “It was not attractive, and I’ve been very shamed. I apologized to Mrs. Ferraro, and I would apologize again.”
Daughter-in-law Laura Bush, wife of the 43rd president, said Mrs. Bush was “ferociously tart-tongued.”
“She’s never shied away from saying what she thinks. … She’s managed to insult nearly all of my friends with one or another perfectly timed acerbic comment,” Laura Bush wrote in her 2010 book, “Spoken from the Heart.”
In her 1994 autobiography, “Barbara Bush: A Memoir,” Mrs. Bush said she did her best to keep her opinions from the public while her husband was in office. But she revealed that she disagreed with him on two issues: She supported legal abortion and opposed the sale of assault weapons.
“I honestly felt, and still feel, the elected person’s opinion is the one the public has the right to know,” Mrs. Bush wrote.
She also disclosed a bout with depression in the mid-1970s, saying she sometimes feared she would deliberately crash her car. She blamed hormonal changes and stress.
“Night after night, George held me weeping in his arms while I tried to explain my feelings,” she wrote. “I almost wonder why he didn’t leave me.”
She said she snapped out of it in a few months.
Mrs. Bush raised five children: George W., Jeb, Neil, Marvin and Dorothy. A sixth child, 3-year-old daughter Robin, died of leukemia in 1953.
In a speech in 1985, she recalled the stress of raising a family while married to a man whose ambitions carried him from the Texas oil fields to Congress and into influential political positions that included ambassador to the United Nations, GOP chairman and CIA director.
“This was a period, for me, of long days and short years,” she said, “of diapers, runny noses, earaches, more Little League games than you could believe possible, tonsils and those unscheduled races to the hospital emergency room, Sunday school and church, of hours of urging homework or short chubby arms around your neck and sticky kisses.”
Along the way, she said, there were also “bumpy moments — not many, but a few — of feeling that I’d never, ever be able to have fun again and coping with the feeling that George Bush, in his excitement of starting a small company and traveling around the world, was having a lot of fun.”
In 2003, she wrote a follow-up memoir, “Reflections: Life After the White House.”
“I made no apologies for the fact that I still live a life of ease,” she wrote. “There is a difference between ease and leisure. I live the former and not the latter.”
Along with her memoirs, she wrote “C. Fred’s Story” and “Millie’s Book,” based on the lives of her dogs. Proceeds from the books benefited adult and family literacy programs. Laura Bush, a former teacher with a master’s degree in library science, continued her mother-in-law’s literacy campaign in the White House.
The 43rd president was not the only Bush son to seek office in the 1990s. In 1994, when George W. was elected governor of Texas, son Jeb narrowly lost to incumbent Lawton Chiles in Florida. Four years later, Jeb was victorious in his second try in Florida.
“This is a testament to what wonderful parents they are,” George W. Bush said as Jeb Bush was sworn into office. He won a second term in 2002, and then made an unsuccessful bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016.
Sons Marvin and Neil both became businessmen. Neil achieved some notoriety in the 1980s as a director of a savings and loan that crashed. Daughter Dorothy, or Doro, has preferred to stay out of the spotlight. She married lobbyist Robert Koch, a Democrat, in 1992.
In a collection of letters published in 1999, George H.W. Bush included a note he gave to his wife in early 1994.
“You have given me joy that few men know,” he wrote. “You have made our boys into men by bawling them out and then, right away, by loving them. You have helped Doro to be the sweetest, greatest daughter in the whole wide world. I have climbed perhaps the highest mountain in the world, but even that cannot hold a candle to being Barbara’s husband.”
Mrs. Bush was born Barbara Pierce in Rye, New York. Her father was the publisher of McCall’s and Redbook magazines. After attending Smith College for two years, she married young naval aviator George Herbert Walker Bush. She was 19.
After World War II, the Bushes moved to the Texas oil patch to seek their fortune and raise a family. It was there that Bush began his political career, representing Houston for two terms in Congress in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In all, the Bushes made more than two dozen moves that circled half the globe before landing at the White House in 1989. Opinion polls taken over the next four years often showed her approval ratings higher than her husband’s.
The couple’s final move, after Bush lost the 1992 election to Bill Clinton, was to Houston, where they built what she termed their “dream house” in an affluent neighborhood. The Bush family also had an oceanfront summer home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
After retiring to Houston, the Bushes helped raise funds for charities and appeared frequently at events such as Houston Astros baseball games. Public schools in the Houston area are named for both of them.
In 1990, Barbara Bush gave the commencement address at all-women Wellesley College. Some had protested her selection because she was prominent only through the achievements of her husband. Her speech that day was rated by a survey of scholars in 1999 as one of the top 100 speeches of the century.
“Cherish your human connections,” Mrs. Bush told graduates. “At the end of your life, you will never regret not having passed one more test, winning one more verdict or not closing one more deal. You will regret time not spent with a husband, a child, a friend or a parent.”
A Cainsville man was killed in a rollover crash in Mercer County Monday night.
According to the Missouri State Highway Patrol, around 10:45 p.m., 49-year-old Michael L. Famuliner was driving a 1988 GMC Sonoma north on Route CC about 10 miles west of Princeton. Famuliner’s vehicle began skidding and went off the west side of the road. The vehicle went airborne and rolled once, ejecting Famuliner.
Famuliner was pronounced deceased at the scene at 8:15 a.m. Tuesday.
According to the crash report, he was not wearing a seatbelt.
Northwest Missouri State University President Dr. John Jasinski. Photo courtesy Northwest.
MARYVILLE, Mo. – Northwest Missouri State University President Dr. John Jasinski is among a select group of leaders chosen to engage with senior military officials during the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference (JCOC) hosted by the U.S. secretary of defense.
JCOC, the oldest and most prestigious public liaison program offered by the U.S. Department of Defense, is a hands-on, immersive tour of military installations representing the Navy, Army and Air Force branches of the U.S. Armed Forces in the Norfolk, Virginia, area.
According to a press release from Northwest, Jasinski will spend April 22-25 at military installations, engaging with senior military officials and U.S. service members. In addition to participating in tactical training exercises, he will gain an understanding of the roles and mission of the U.S. Armed Forces, their skills, capabilities and equipment employed in defense of our nation.
“It is an honor to have been nominated and then selected from a competitive field of candidates to participate in this program,” Jasinski said. “We are indebted to the people who protect our country on a daily basis, and Northwest is indeed proud to be a military-friendly school. It will be a full three days of immersive learning across the military installations, and I am looking forward to getting to know some of the senior leaders who lead our military and talking with them about their roles, mission and experiences.”
For more information about JCOC, visit the Joint Civilian Orientation Conference website. To learn more about Jasinski, click here.
JOPLIN, Mo. (AP) – Missouri Southern State University officials are working to help cover medical expenses for the family of a 7-year-old who was severely injured while watching a baseball game.
The Joplin Globe reports that Dawson Hirshey of Diamond was struck in the head by a line-drive foul ball Friday while sitting in the stands at Joe Becker Stadium.
University spokeswoman Cassie Mathes says Dawson was immediately taken to a Joplin hospital and later transferred to a children’s hospital in Kansas City, where he underwent brain surgery. She says the boy’s mother is a university employee.
University administrators will visit the family at the hospital.
Mathes says the school wants to find the best way to financially support the family.
CASS COUNTY — One person died in an accident just before 8:30p.m. Monday in Cass County.
The Missouri State Highway Patrol reported a 2014 Ford Fusion driven by Alec B. Rush, 20, Lee’s Summit, was southbound on MO 291 just north of Kidwell Road.
The vehicle hit a deer, crossed the center line and struck the front of a northbound 2016 Ford Fusion driven by Nathaniel E. Slaughter, 28, Lee’s Summit.
Rush was transported to Research Medical Center where he died. Slaughter was transported to Centerpoint Hospital with moderate injuries.
Both drivers were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the MSHP.
