After this story published an elected county prosecutor attacked me personally, smeared my family, claimed I was “bought and paid for,” suggested that I was a drunk, and analogized me to Hitler while calling all of my Twitter followers Nazis. A lawyer friend on Twitter observed that it seems like a violation of the rules which govern Missouri’s Bar. But I digress.

I was accused of being “fed” information by “Kinder cronies” because another talker discussed different informationrelated to Brad Lager’s campaign on the same day. Except it wasn’t what I was discussing. The info in question concerns Missouri Cellular, a company Lager is said to have started and then left. I was unaware of this at the time of our interview, otherwise I would have asked him about it and included it in my piece. The interview he gave right after speaking with me apparently contradicted what was said to me about jobs during our interview. What I discussed originated from a Forbes article, an issue that I actually purchased some months ago while on a flight because Cerner is a home state company and their CEO was on the cover under the headline: “Obamacare Billionaire.”

I didn’t make the connection with State Senator Brad Lager and Cerner until I saw some local politico Tweets on it. A simple Google search yielded a “40 Under 40” (I myself made “30 Under 30” for St. Louis) story which included a short on Lager and how he had a pretty high-up job at Cerner. Companies with high-up employees who run for office often donate to said employees. It took all of … however fast my Internet is to pull up the Cerner PAC’s 2008 Lager donations and the individual donations made in 2012 to his campaign by the CEO’s wife via Open Secrets. Individual donations from employees at self-sustaining companies are irrelevant to me as a conservative. What made the Patterson donation different in my mind (they have that money to donate at all) is because their company, again, according to Forbes, took stimulus cash for Obamacare implementation and made bank. As I noted in my piece, Cerner praises both the stimulus and Obamacare on their website.

I asked about lobbying because if Lager still continues working for Cerner while serving as LG, it deserves to be clarified.

Lager said in our interview that he called a special session for Missouri legislature on Obamacare which is great, but is it bad that my concerns and the concerns of Missouri voters aren’t yet assuaged? Are we to be crucified for asking and discussing it? It’s odd to me that a man manifests from nowhere to spend his entire weekend attacking me and my family in offensive, progressive ways because he takes issue with my story—not the facts in the story, but that I reported on it at all.

If this was campaign-directed that’s a terrifying notion and I genuinely hope that it wasn’t. I think I have a right to pose these questions and Missourians have a right to ask as well, without being smeared and called Nazis—especially by someone who calls themself a Republican.