Well, we accomplished one thing, at least...

We don't go around promoting or spamming our blog or its contents on other blogs. We figure we'll just put the truth out there and let people find their way to it if they are so inclined.

One of the truths we have repeated with frequency is that the entire investigation into the Fletcher administraton's hiring practices was bogus on several fronts. It was overkill, it was unprecedented, it was politically motivated, it bypassed the established protocol and past practices for dealing with this type of accusation, and it was not conducted by unbiased or disinterested parties with pure motives. That extends all the way from the person who originally blew the whistle, to those who prosecuted the case, and to the members of the grand jury that issued the indictments.

Mainstream media have discussed Greg Stumbo at length because he is a career politician, and they have at least mentioned Scott Crawford-Sutherland's ties to 2003 Fletcher opponent Ben Chandler, but they have completely glossed over Doug Doerting and the 12 members of the grand jury. The media would have us to believe that Doerting was merely a dedicated and loyal employee interested in seeing the right thing done, and the members of the grand jury as 12 "ordinary Kentuckians" who reviewed all the evidence and came to a noble decision when it came down to indicting the governor and members of his staff.

We had to read David Hawpe use that phrase to describe the grand jury today, and quite frankly, if we hear that term used too many more times we may vomit. There was nothing ordinary about the composition of that grand jury.

We have knowledge that the majority of the grand jury's members were registered Democrats. Who were the alleged victims in this whole deal? Yep, Democrats. We also know there were several merit system employees on that panel, and goodness knows that merit employees as a group have not been supportive of this administration. They have been insubordinate and often downright mutinous.

With a few simple open records requests and some investigation, the press could very easily have done an investigation into the grand jury and even if they weren't able to discern motives, they could have simply put the truth out there and let the public draw its own conclusions.

Given just one name -- that of the panel's forewoman -- we were able to find out enough information about her to find out that she missed out on about $12,000 over the past four years because she didn't get the traditional 5 percent annual raise.

Anyone who says grand juries can't be influenced is delusional. We know of an instance where a county judge was indicted simply because he refused to blacktop a private driveway belonging to a local activist of the opposite party. She had influence with the sitting grand jury in that county at that time, and she was able to prod the grand jury into indicting the county judge on a bogus charge, at the same time that a similar charge against someone else in Central Kentucky was being dismissed in a very high profile case. (Think "Watergate" and see if a name and the incident doesn't come back to you).

But we digress. As we said, we don't spam our little blog, we just put the truth out there and trust that people will find their way to it. Apparently someone did. After we posted the information about Rachel Auxier last week, someone obviously read it and raised the issue on the Herald-Leader's Pol Watchers blog. (It wasn't us, we promise).

And while that didn't and won't translate into a Herald-Leader investigative report, at least it puts that information in front of the eyes of John Stamper and the other Herald-Leader reporters. Now they will know it and they will know that other people know it too. We have at least made them aware that this is a legitimate issue in the minds of many Kentuckians who question the whole merit system persection of Ernie Fletcher.

If Fletcher does lose, perhaps the Doertings, Auxiers, Stumbos, Crawford-Sutherlands and the Herald-Leader and Courier-Journal staffs can all get together and have one big victory party, for they will have succeeded in what they set out to do.