Oddities

The Public’s Business

Residents of Iowa can feel confident that their state ethics officials are on the case:

At a time when he was supposed to be looking into apparent misconduct by Cass County Attorney James Barry, the head of the statewide group that polices the ethics of Iowa prosecutors suggested that someone needed to investigate the driving record of the journalist who first disclosed Barry’s questionable practices.

E-mails obtained by the Des Moines Sunday Register show that Corwin Ritchie, a lawyer in the Iowa attorney general’s office who oversees investigations for the state’s prosecutorial standards and conduct committee, had received at least partial reviews of the driving record of Des Moines Register reporter Clark Kauffman from two county attorneys.

Pesky reporters. I don’t know what’s worse, the fact that these brainiacs even discussed this tactic or that they did it using official state e-mail accounts. Iowa’s open records law makes the contents of state e-mails available to the public.