Hats off to Talk Business for this little nugget. You may remember how the Republican Party of Arkansas submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the UALR Law Library in an attempt to catch former Blue Hog Report contributor Jeff Woodmansee writing political posts on state time. The request produced a massive 6,000 pages of emails and other documents that, for weeks, the RPA didn’t even bother picking up. Now RPA spokeswoman Katherine Vasilos tells Talk Business:
“On July 5, we reviewed documents provided by our FOI request and retrieved only specific items of interest which dealt with partisan political activity. At this time, we do not plan to move forward with any action as it appears political activity on state time has stopped.”
Of course, the implication is that because something has stopped, it was going on in the first place. When asked for documentation to back up their claims, Vasilos said that certain emails “suggested political activity could be occurring on state time,” but then refused to produce those documents. RPA Executive Director Chase Duggar told Jason Tolbert, “We could provide the documents but we are choosing not to.”
What? The state Republican Party levels a charge against an individual citizen and then offers no proof. I emailed Vasilos to give her and the RPA another chance to explain themselves. She said their response remained the same.
It seems as if Republicans are trying to put a little bit of a positive spin on this – an issue that has been terrible for them – by, one last time, dragging someone’s name through the mud for no good reason. Unbelievable.