In the past few months, Gov. Matt Blunt and his office have come under increasing fire for their policy on saving e-mails that go through the office as a part of handling government business. The issue has led to the appointment of an investigative team.

According to our story on STLtoday right now, “Attorney General Jay Nixon appointed the independent team last November to investigate accusations that Blunt’s staff has destroyed e-mails that should be preserved under state laws mandating open records and record preservation.”

The story starts with:

Gov. Matt Blunt’s private lawyer has told a investigative team that it will cost $540,940…

In a series of stories in the Post-Dispatch, we write about the practice of midwifery, in which trained lay people attend to the delivery of a child. This is typical in low-risk pregnancies and deliveries, where mothers are interested in delivering in a familiar and non-medical environment.

In Missouri, non-nurse midwives cannot practice without a doctor in attendance, though midwives are trying to have that law changed. Surrounding states allow non-nurse midwives to practice. According to one of our stories:

Many birth centers are staffed with non-nurse midwives … They are direct-entry midwives, those who learn midwifery through apprenticeship or a midwifery…

In a Post-Dispatch story out today, we reveal that a member of the death-row execution team for the Missouri and the federal prison system has a criminal past. In fact, the licensed practical nurse from Farmington had to get special permission from top state and federal prison officials to travel to the lethal-injection execution of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh because at the time he was on supervised probation as a convicted stalker.

The nurse had pleaded no contest in St. Francois County to misdemeanor counts of stalking and tampering with property of a man who had a relationship with the…

A five-foot-tall wooden cross scribbled with racial epithets was burned early Dec. 8 in front of a Belleville home owned by a black man in a racially mixed neighborhood.

Monday’s story, Cross burning recalls Belleville’s past racial divide, explains that just days earlier, newsletters referencing the Ku Klux Klan were thrown in the driveways and lawns of several Belleville and Shiloh neighborhoods.

Racial strife has run deep throughout the Belleville area in the past. But things seem to be changing — or is it?

“Belleville has made so much progress, this won’t stand in our way,” said Bill Clay, who became Belleville’s first…

From our story on the site today (and note, here’s a more updated story):

Seven grainy images of a teacher at her desk in a Lafayette High School classroom are at the center of a lawsuit filed by the student who took the photos and posted them on the Internet.

The lawsuit alleges that school officials violated constitutional rights of free speech and free expression when they disciplined the student, a sophomore, after learning of the incident.

The Rockwood School District, however, claims the student was suspended for disruptive behavior that violated school rules. They assert the boy and two fellow classmates scammed the…