Reconstruction work in Iraq in 2007. (AP/Getty Images)
In 2003, as $50 billion of U.S. reconstruction money began flowing into Iraq, the Parsons Co., a huge engineering and construction management firm based in Pasadena, Calif., got a $3 million contract to renovate…
Photo by Bob Schorfheide
Ken Salazar was among the tourists who visited the Gateway Arch for the first time in July. He got the deluxe tour, inasmuch the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial is a national park and Mr. Salazar, a former Democratic…
Sen. Claine McCaskill at a town hall meeting at Jefferson College.
Our friend Michael Sewall from the Columbia Missourian reported on a town hall-style meeting held this week by Sen. Claire McCaskill in Jefferson City. You can find his full story here.
Ms.…
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in front of Post-Dispatch Platform. Eddie Roth/Post-Dispatch
U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was in town yesterday afternoon, ostensibly to talk about federal spending for job creation and economic recovery. But it turns out he had monumental plans,…
Citigroup execs canceled an order for a French-made Dassault Falcon 7X only after it was shouted in their tin ears that taxpayers were irate at being stuck with the tab.
Every day in the lobby of the Charles F. Knight Executive…
AP photo
President Barack Obama is moving swiftly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. He cleared the way this week for California to set strict new carbon-dioxide standards for cars and trucks. A dozen other states are poised to adopt the standards once…
A shot from the"Lobstercam," a project of Maine Lobster Institute, beneficiary of a $188,000 federal earmark.
As we have noted before, one person’s “wasteful earmark project” is another person’s “vital public investment.” Nonetheless, any time two U.S. senators of such vastly different…
On the evening of Nov. 2, 2004, when it became apparent that Republican Matt Blunt had defeated Democrat Claire McCaskill in the race for Missouri governor, Jeremiah W. “Jay” Nixon began laying claim to the Democratic nomination for governor in 2008.
He…
Obama seeks support from Hillary Clinton’s donors, gets the cold shoulder (via TPM media).
And he takes heat from the netroots about his support of telecom immunity (via Huffington Post).
It doesn’t get much funnier: Karl Rove is spearheading an effort to label Obama…
Actress Melanie Griffith rolled up her sleeves last Friday, but not so she could leave handprints in the concrete outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She was in St. Louis, hoping to use her celebrity to make a different kind of…
Above (Left to right): Sarah Steelman, Lisa Madigan and Claire McCaskill.
The New York Times Week in Review has an interesting look at what our first female president (if not Hillary Clinton) would like like. Read it here.
Women mentioned include Missouri’s…
My Wednesday column contrasted the solicitous treatment the government gives to retired senior officers moonlighting as on-air military analysts with the years of continuing struggle faced by active-duty troops and veterans to get decent care for mental problems, including post-traumatic…
Back before things got so polarized, it was said that American politics stops at the border. Democrats and Republicans might squabble at home, but they’d present a united front abroad.
Every now and then, there are signs that the good old…
The pork-busters who work for Citizens Against Government Waste were against earmarks back in the mid-1980s, before being against earmarks was cool.
A familiar pattern emerged: The fiscal watchdog organization’s annual spring release of its “Pig Book” would result in a…
