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St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)

September 12, 2007 Wednesday

THIRD EDITION

Ed-ifying
SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. C10

LENGTH: 567 words

In just one year as Missouri Gov. Matt Blunt's chief of staff, Ed Martin has demonstrated a remarkable knack for embarrassing
the state. He tried to use the Highway Patrol as a campaign tool; used his state e-mail account to conduct political business;
harangued the chief justice of the state Supreme Court; hosted a secret and improper meeting between the chairman of the state
Public Service Commission and a utility company involved in a rate case and, most recently, managed to insult thousands of
hard-working Mexican-American citizens.

The most recent outburst of the 37-year-old St. Louis lawyer took place Aug. 17 at a meeting of the Missouri Housing
Development Commission. The commission was investigating allegations that a contractor working on a housing project in St.
Charles County had hired illegal immigrants. According to the official transcript of the meeting, the contractor's lawyer was
explaining that his client had tried to check the immigration status of his workers by checking a new federal database. Mr.
Martin interrupted, chiding the lawyer for complaining about the database's availability.

"I'll tell you what's available, is every frigging developer can figure out who is illegal, and when he says - like he told them -
there's a bunch of Mexicans out there, I guess some of them are probably not legal."

Thus, the Truth According to Ed says that wherever two or more brown-skinned people are gathered, some of them should be
assumed to be illegal immigrants.

Jim Torres, the MHDC's lobbyist, resigned his job Friday in protest, telling Gov. Blunt in a letter that Mr. Martin's "table-
thumping tirade" had been offensive to him as the "proud grandson of Mexican immigrants." He asked Mr. Blunt to order Mr.
Martin to make a public apology.

Instead, the governor defended his chief of staff, saying Mr. Martin was responding to a developer "he thought was making
excuses." The governor suggested that the uproar was a response to new policies calling for random inspections of
construction sites for undocumented workers and immigration screenings of people arrested by the Highway Patrol.

Why bother checking? If Mr. Martin is correct, the state simply may assume that any group of Hispanic-looking people
includes at least some people whose presence in the United States is illegal.

Immigration, legal and il-, has become a potent political issue. Politics also was involved in Mr. Martin's request that the
Missouri State Highway Patrol criticize Democratic Attorney General Jay Nixon for his handling of the collapse of AmerenUE's
Taum Sauk Dam collapse. Politics played a part in Mr. Martin's summoning of PSC Chairman Jeff Davis to his office to meet
with Ameren officials, even though the PSC was considering an Ameren application for a rate increase. Political pressure was at
play in Mr. Martin's arrogant demands of Supreme Court Chief Justice Laura Denvir Stith regarding the judicial selection
process and in the use of his government e-mail account to gin up support among pro-life groups to exclude Mr. Nixon's office
from the defense of a state law imposing new standards on clinics where abortions are performed.

Mr. Martin was a fierce political operative for conservative causes before going to work for Mr. Blunt. If he wants to pursue

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that line of work, by all means he should. But first he should bid adios to his cushy $116,850-a-year taxpayer-funded job.

LOAD-DATE: September 12, 2007

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

NOTES: OUR VIEW | IMMIGRATION OPINION

DOCUMENT-TYPE: EDITORIAL

PUBLICATION-TYPE: Newspaper

Copyright 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.

All Rights Reserved

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