Josh Hawley was elected as Missouri’s Attorney General in 2016 and Hawley is now making a run for the U.S. Senate. Hawley hopes to win the Republican primary and challenge incumbent Democrat Claire McCaskill in November. While the tide appears to have turned against the president in many parts of the country, in a state won by Donald Trump by 500,000 votes or nearly 20 points, a reasonable Republican candidate (remember Todd Akin?en.wikipedia.org/...) has a good chance to unseat McCaskill — and flip what is sure to be a crucial vote in the closely divided US Senate.
Hawley is a constitutional lawyer and former MU law professor. Educated at Stanford and Yale, he is outwardly perhaps the party’s perfect vision of a young conservative Republican — he is of course ‘a He’ — trim, tall, handsome, well groomed, has a pretty wife, is well spoken and of course Hawley is seriously ‘conservative.’
Hawley’s main claim to political fame has been his legal work on the Hobby Lobby case en.wikipedia.org/....— decided 5-4 by the Supreme Court in 2014 in favor of his clients, the owners of the Hobby Lobby stores — who argued that their religious freedom was unfairly abridged by the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that their employee health plan provide birth control as part of the plans coverage. — because birth control is contrary to the employer’s religious beliefs. Time will tell if the Missouri voters think they should be represented by a senator who believes our employer’s religious freedom is more important than ours — or our health.
This week Hawley had to do some high profile work as Attorney General — and his conclusions are laughably partisan and nonsensical.
Missouri's attorney general said Thursday it didn't appear that fellow Republican Gov. Eric Greitens's staff violated records laws by using a messaging app that deletes messages after they are read.
According to a report released by Greitens's office, Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) “has not identified any basis” to believe Greitens or his staff broke state public records laws by sending or receiving texts on the Confide app, which has an auto-delete feature for messages, The Associated Press reported.
Five Greitens staffers told the attorney general's office that they used the app for "logistics and scheduling" purposes, messages which the attorney general's office considers "extremely non-substantive" and not protected by public records laws.
The report noted that no evidence to the contrary could be found, due to the nature of the app.thehill.com/...
So, if you were shopping for an App that you wanted to use only to schedule meetings and for logistics — and you were not a drug dealer, spy or some other flavor of crook (or Eric Greitens). Who would choose Confide, an App that automatically erased the messages once you had read them, requiring you to either write down the details or commit the particulars of planned meetings to memory.
I mean, if you were trying to get people to remember to attend a meeting or show up at the same place at the same time, wouldn’t it be reasonable to use a tool that would help you remember — OH I dunno — I didn’t graduate from Stanford or Yale like Mr Hawley — but when I want to keep track of important dates times and places — I don’t want the invitations to disappear.
It is completely and utterly absurd and unbelievable that Gov. Greitens and his staff used the Confide app exclusively in the way they have claimed — only for logistics and scheduling. It is equally absurd to believe that Hawley believes that explanation. He really is smarter than that.
In this, Hawley has proved himself to have another of the party’s key qualifications for high office — one the donors and leadership values above all others — a willingness to place the party first and foremost, before the law, before the truth, before the people. Hawley is willing to suspend rational reasoning when the conclusions reflect negatively on a fellow party member.
This decision by AG Hawley reveals him to be a perfect party specimen. He would be an unmitigated disaster in the US Senate. Working for the reelection of Sen. McCaskill should be one of our highest priorities in the coming election.