St. Louis News Blog

Interstate 64, a.k.a. Highway 40, will open December 7 -- a month before the deadline to complete the massive rebuilding of the roadway

At a press conference this morning near the intersection of Hanley Road and the highway, Missouri Department of Transportation (MODOT) director Pete Rahn said the project would also come in at $11 million under budget.

A stretch of Highway 40 in Richmond Heights as viewed in August.

​

www.randomhouse.com

Judge Robert Dierker

​Last week St. Louis Circuit Court Judge Robert Dierker was denied a court motion to dismiss a red-light camera ticket issued against him, but the magistrate is undeterred.

Dierker is convinced he'll win when the case when it finally goes to trial.

On October 29 visiting judge Ralph Jaynes over-ruled Dierker's motion that the case be dismissed on constitutional grounds. Dierker contends that the red-light camera system violates due process of the law by presuming guilt. The judge says that he can't say for sure whether he was the person driving his car when it was ticketed on Kingshighway last December for running a red light.

Instead of simply paying the $100 fine for the ticket or trying to argue it in traffic court, Dierker demanded a jury trial in circuit court. It's believed that his case would be the first to reach a jury in St. Louis. (A pre-trial conference is schedule for later this month.)

Dierker says he may represent himself at trial, where he'll argue three key points:

Wikimedia Commons

If they're gonna build a canal, why not a mountain, too? Just like in the real San Carlos, Mexico!

​St. Chuck, apparently.

Mike Sellenschuetter, president of Dean Homes, has a $1.5 billion plan to erect the Harbor San Carlos not far from the Family Arena.

The developer hatched the partly-public-subsidized idea more than four years ago, but it'd been nearly swamped because of the economic mess. Until this week, that is.

The St. Louis Business Journal's Kelsey Volkmann reports that on Tuesday night, Sellenschuetter was officially designated developer of the 300-acre site by the St. Charles County Council.

According to Volkmann's story, "The plan calls for a hotel, shops, condos, marina, restaurants and pedestrian walkway on the city's largest undeveloped swath of land. The plan also requires dredging sand in a canal to allow for boating between the shore and Bangert Island, a St. Charles County park."

Contractors who've done work for Sellenschuetter are pissed.
 

www.stevestenger.com

​By now you've probably heard how St. Louis County Councilman Steve Stenger was flabbergasted Tuesday when a casino executive "muscled" him prior to a council meeting.

As Stenger told the Post-Dispatch yesterday, the chairman and chief executive of Pinnacle Entertainment, Daniel Lee, and his entourage cornered Stenger (D-Affton) on Tuesday night just before the council was set to vote on a controversial casino proposal for north county.

The Las Vegas-based Pinnacle is finishing up a $357-million casino in Stenger's south county district and the casino boss didn't want Stenger to vote in favor of yet another casino in the St. Louis area.

Trouble is, Stenger just can't say no to casinos -- any casinos.

Image Via

​While thousands of St. Louis county voters took to the polls yesterday to decide important issues like a smoking ban and increased 911 funding, the fate of the largest stretch of undeveloped Mississippi River waterfront in the St. Louis region was left in the hands of six members of the St. Louis County Council.

They voted 4-2 in favor of re-zoning 376 acres of wetlands south of the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area for commercial development, specifically a massive casino and resort that includes 8,000 parking spots, a golf course, and a wind farm.

Hazel Erby, Kathleen Burkett, Michael O'Mara, and Steven Stegner voted in favor of the re-zoning.

Greg Quinn and Barbara Fraser were the nay votes. Colleen Wasinger, a Republican expected to vote no, was absent.

The decision was, by all accounts, controversial. The meeting was picketed by environmental groups and a Spanish Lake neighborhood association. One attendee estimated that more than 50 people spoke up at the meeting, offering a myriad of reasons why the development should not go forward.

The  casino development still faces several hurdles, including obtaining a gaming license, before construction can begin.

​Any good cop TV show has the same line. Just as the criminal is being placed in shackles, the police officer states: "You have a right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, the state will provide you one."

Did you know, though, that that line isn't necessarily true? At least not in Missouri where the state's overburdened public defenders have adopted rules allowing them to deny counsel to two types of criminals:

1. Those who first hire a private attorney and then drop that initial lawyer for a public defender
2. Those accused of violating the terms of their probation.

But shouldn't public defenders be compelled to provide legal counsel to any and all accused criminals?

That's the question being weighed in Jefferson City as the Missouri Supreme Court yesterday heard arguments on both sides of the debate.

​ ​A Southwestern High School teacher in Piasa, Illinois, (outside of Alton) is back in the classroom today after a multi-day suspension for an assignment about homosexual behaviors in animals.

English teacher Dan DeLong was placed on paid leave last week after someone complained about the optional homework assignment he provided his sophomore students.

The homework had students read an article that challenged Darwin's theory of sexual selection by documenting hundreds of animals species that engaged in seemingly homosexual acts. 
 

obgyn.wustl.edu

​We shall let the New York Times' international wanderer-columnist Nicholas D. Kristof open this blog post with a description of obstetric fistula, a truly grotesque condition suffered by women mostly in the global south. Such a woman, writes Kristof,

suffers obstructed labor, has no access to a C-section, and endures internal injuries that leave her incontinent -- steadily trickling urine and sometimes feces through her vagina.

She stinks. She becomes a pariah. She is typically abandoned by her husband and forced to live by herself on the edge of her village. She is scorned, bewildered, humiliated and desolate, often feeling cursed by God.

But "the happiest thing" that could happen to such a woman, according to the column published in the NYT by Kristof on Saturday, is meeting Dr. Lewis Wall from Washington University's School of Medicine.

Wall launched the Worldwide Fistula Fund in 1995 and continues to do all kinds of medical work in Africa. He's also a Rhodes scholar and Fulbright recipient. Frankly, Daily RFT is disappointed that he's not more impressive. Check out Kristof's column here.

The construction of a sprawling 376-acre resort and casino next to the Columbia Bottom Conservation Area in North St. Louis County faces it's most critical vote yet tomorrow night.

The St. Louis County Planning Commission already gave the initial go ahead to rezone the massive swath of land in a flood plain immediately south of wetlands that border the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, despite the protests from multiple environmental and community groups.

If you've never been, here's what the Conservation Area looks like:

Photo of Columbia Bottom Conservation Area by Ozark Bill via Flickr

​Now, the full County Council will decide whether the area should be rezoned for commercial use.

This time around, a new environmental heavyweight is stepping in and trying to rally its troops against the project.

Pop singer John Oates has re-grown his world famous mustache after a two-decade hiatus.

Oates, part of the super group Hall and Oates, debuted his new lip hair today in St. Louis where he'll headline tonight's "Stache Bash" party presented by the American Mustache Institute.

Photo: Chad Garrison

A big thumb's up to Oates' new handlebar mustache.

​

Oates tells Daily RFT he vividly recalls the day he shaved off the mustache he had worn throughout his meteoric rise up the pop charts in the 1980s.

Oates' vintage '80s 'stache.

​"We were playing a concert in Tokyo in 1989 that Yoko Ono had arranged to commemorate the anniversary of John Lennon's death," says Oates. "I was going through a lot of personal stuff then, and after the show I was back in the hotel and just looking at myself in the bathroom mirror. I looked down toward the sink and there was a razor sitting there, and with that I shaved off the mustache and haven't look back."

Until now.

So why did Oates decide to re-grow his famous lip hair after so many years?

flickr.com/sterlinglupine

​For nearly three weeks, a pantless man in a black four-door sedan with silver streaks (or stripes) running down its side has been on the prowl in Webster Groves.

The most recent incident took place Wednesday, October 28, at the corner of Fairview and Cornelia, when an eighth grader at Hixson Middle School was approached by a man who asked her directions to Elm Avenue, a major north-south thoroughfare in Webster.

The student quickly ran away when she noticed that the suspect, described by police as a white man in his late twenties or early thirties, was naked from the waist down.

On at least two other occasions, the man -- again, trouserless, sought out female students at Avery Elementary -- once at the corner of Margaret and Atalanta, and another time off Providence, near Tuxedo, Webster Groves Police Lt. Andy Miller told the Daily RFT on Thursday.  

In all cases, the initial one taking place October 13, Webster police immediately notified the school that the student attended, said Miller.

Cynthia Davis

​A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought on by some 40 "birther" conspiracy-theorist (including two Missouri state representatives) who believe Barack Obama was born overseas and therefore should be ineligible to serve as president of the U.S.

The Missouri reps are Cynthia Davis (R-O'Fallon), who made headlines back in July for suggesting that hunger can be a "powerful motivator" and that the poor should get jobs at McDonald's where they could get free or reduced-price meals, and Tim Jones (R-Eureka).

Timothy Jones

​Today Judge David O. Carter in the Central District of California (where the case was filed) dismissed the claims against the defendants, including Obama, vice-president Joe Biden and other federal officials.

Stated the judge:

Interpreting the Constitution is a serious and crucial task with which the federal courts of this nation have been entrusted under Article III. However, that very same Constitution puts limits on the reach of the federal courts. One of those limits is that the Constitution defines processes through which the President can be removed from office.

Not all ladies are so wild on about Budweiser.

​Francine Katz thought her 2002 promotion to Vice President of Communications and Consumer Affairs at Anheuser-Busch was her ticket to untold riches as an executive of a major corporation.

Instead, Katz claims she received compensation worth just a fraction of what A-B paid her predecessor. The pay disparity continued despite complaints she made to the brewer's top executives, including August Busch III and August Busch IV.

In a discrimination lawsuit filed today in St. Louis Circuit Court, Katz alleges that a corporate culture akin to a "locker room and frat party atmosphere" at Anheuser-Busch (now AB-InBev) adversely impacts female managers such as herself.

Katz is seeking hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost wages she claims she's entitled to as a result of the alleged discrimination.

In the suit, Katz maintains she was paid just $500,000 in compensation when she was first promoted to the job. Meanwhile, her predecessor -- John Jacob -- earned $1.25 million prior to his retirement.

​Good news for all you good witches. Bad ones, too. The popularity of your belief has more than doubled in recent years.

Yes, according to the American Religious Identification Survey, the number of people identifying as "other religion" or "new religious movements" grew from 1.8 million in 2001 to 2.8 million in 2008.

During that same time period the number of Americans who say they're Wiccan (the religion to which many -- but not all -- witches subscribe) more than doubled from 134,000 in 2001 to 342,000 in '08. The same held true for pagans, whose numbers grew from 140,000 in 2001 to 340,000 in 2008.

Some experts credit the growing numbers of pagan or neo-pagan religions to the Internet, which allows followers to become more connected. Others just say its just a matter of society becoming more tolerant. (When was the last time you heard about a witch being burned at the stake?)

Regardless, here's some interesting factoids on the popularity of these beliefs, courtesy of ReligionLink.com...

The report from the Environmental Protection Agency is hardly shocking. Yesterday the agency released test results indicating that as many as one-third of properties situated within a mile of the company's lead smelter in Herculaneum contain lead at levels exceeding 400 parts per million (ppm) -- the EPA's threshold for removing and replacing such soils.

Photo: Jennifer Silverberg

Doe Run smelter in Herculaneum.

​The Doe Run smelter has long history of poisoning iits neighbors, so much so that the company has been forced to buyout and/or clean up much of the property surrounding the facility.

Now the EPA warns that waste and runoff from the smelter continue to pollute.

Of 372 properties sampled recently in Herculaneum, 129 had at least one area exceeding the 400 ppm action level for lead. A total of 104 of those 129 "action level" properties have already undergone soil remediation within the past nine years, under work previously ordered by EPA.

"While Doe Run has taken some steps in recent years to reduce lead emissions, those efforts clearly fall short of what was necessary," said William Rice, acting regional administrator. "The re-contamination we are seeing in Herculaneum is unacceptable. EPA intends to work with the Missouri Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) to correct this problem by requiring Doe Run to implement a comprehensive, permanent solution to address this persistent problem." 

Katie White Snow via Flickr

​Last Friday, October 23, was an exciting day for St. Louis weatherwatchers: 1.91 inches of rain landed at Lambert Airport, giving October, 2009, the final boost to become the wettest October in recorded St. Louis weather history, soundly beating 1919 by .3 inches. (It was also the wettest October 23 since 1874 when scientists started keeping track of such things.)

Maybe it's a case of the pathetic fallacy, what with the Cardinals' rapid post-season collapse and all.

As of yesterday, October 25, 8.84 inches of rain had fallen in St. Louis this month. Observant readers will note that there is nearly a week left in October. Those same readers will also note that it is raining right now.

I thought I was still slumbering this morning when I opened up the paper to read that Cardinals manager Tony La Russa is expected to sign a new two-year deal with the club on the condition that the Redbirds also sign tainted slugger Mark McGwire as hitting coach.

A triumphant return for Mr. McGwire?

​According to the Post-Dispatch, La Russa will sign a two-year, $8.5-million extension today with the Cardinals and lay out his plans for replacing hitting coach Hal McRae with McGwire.

La Russa and McGwire are old friends dating back to their days with the Oakland A's in the 1980s and early '90s. It was with the Cardinals, though, that McGwire's homerun swing took off with the first-basemen hitting 70 dingers in 1998 to smash Roger Maris' longtime record of 61. La Russa has also remained a staunch McGwire apologist following allegations that the slugger's hitting prowess was aided by steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs.
 

Today's meeting was a lesson in how sausage -- and cigarettes -- are made.

​As mentioned on this here blog earlier today, the St. Louis Board of Aldermen approved by a 20-7 vote a bill that would prohibit smoking in most bars and restaurants should voters in St. Louis County also approve a smoking ban on November 3.

The nearly-four-hour debate inside the board chambers was one of the longest in memory with aldermen attempting to attach no less than five separate amendments to the bill.

Doing their best to hold up passage of the bill was a block of south city aldermen -- Ken Ortmann (Ward 9), Stephen Gregali (Ward 14) and Stephen Conway (Ward 8) -- who did everything but read out of the telephone book in their attempt to delay a vote.

In the end, though, the bill passed with the addition of one amendment designed to aide small taverns defined as those establishments whose customer space (all areas besides kitchens, bathrooms and storage rooms) measures less than 2,000 square feet. Taverns under that size would have five years to adhere to the ban once it goes into effect.

As it stands now, the city ordinance would become law on January 1, 2011, but only if voters in St. Louis County approve a smoking ban at the ballots on November 3.

The board debate was sparked by much grandstanding and hyperbole, but none more entertaining than a speech by Freeman Bosley Sr. (Ward 3) who explained to his colleagues how tobacco is processed. According to the alderman, tobacco is left to dry in barns where it attracts all types of vermin including "oppossums, rats, waterbugs and cockroaches."

"Then they come up and scoop up all that tobacco and grind it up with the insects and animals in there and then they spray it with formaldehyde," said Bosley. "When you smoke and you hear something pop and crackle in the cigarette, that's rat's eyeballs burning up!"

Other highlights of the morning included:

The St. Louis Board of Aldermen ended a three-and-a-half hour debate this afternoon and approved 20-7 a bill to ban smoking in most bars and restaurants in St. Louis.

The amended bill excludes casinos and bars smaller than 2,000 square feet in size.

Those voting against that ban were:

• Ken Ortmann - Ward 9
• Fred Wessels - Ward 13
• Stephen Gregali - Ward 14
• Frank Williamson - Ward 26
• Samuel Moore - Ward 4
• Bill Waterhouse - Ward 24
• Matt Villa - Ward 11

More details to come later...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/zoonie/ / CC BY 2.0

​A chilling scenario: you buckle your two-year-old in her car seat, then leave for a minute. You return to find a shabby-looking man pulling her out. What would you do?

This happened to a mother in LaGrange, Missouri at about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Hannibal Courier-Post. She dropped off her older child at daycare, but realized the child had forgotten a backpack. She made sure her two-year-old daughter was buckled in her Jeep Cherokee, then ran up to the building with the backpack.

When she came back, she says, the car door was open. A man in his mid-fifties with shoulder-length white hair and a white scraggly beard was leaning inside. He had the daughter unbuckled and in his hands.

Lt. Don Cibert of the LaGrange Police Department tells the Daily RFT that the mother says she then slammed the car door on his fingers but he got free. He turned and yelled at the woman for hurting him, then ran off.

Cibert says that in his ten years as a law enforcer in the area, he's never encountered an attempted kidnapping. The man was last seen in blue jeans and a long-sleeve, dark-blue t-shirt. Contact the LaGrange police at (573) 655-4611.

Monkey may be a "Dick" but it's no service animal.

​Remember the story of Debby Rose?

She's the woman from Springfield, Missouri, who claims she suffers a social-anxiety disorder and needs monkeys -- 26 of 'em at last count -- to help ease her pains.

The monkeys are the bane of her neighbors who claim the critters have a tendency of escaping and scaring the bejesus out of them when they show up outside their windows bearing their fangs.

The animals have also caused the consternation of the local health officials and Wal-Mart, which prohibited Rose from entering its store with one of her pet primates -- a Bonnet Macaque named "Richard."

Rose, in turn, sued Wal-Mart and the Greene County Health Department claiming discrimination against her and that Richard is a service animals.

Yesterday, the case had a hearing in federal court. And the judge, he don't tolerate no monkey business. 

The New York Times just posted an obituary of Theodore R. Sizer, founder of the Coalition of Essential Schools, who reportedly died yesterday at his home in Massachusetts.

Sizer was best known as the father of the Essential Schools movement, which he founded in 1984. The movement's umbrella organization, the Coalition of Essential Schools, spans a diverse array of public and private schools united by their adherence to a set of common principles.

The principles hold, among other things, that a school is an egalitarian community and that the student is a valued worker in that community, with the teacher in the role of mentor or coach. Depth of knowledge is emphasized over breadth, with the mastery of a few core subjects preferred over the scattershot spate of electives the modern high school seems to favor.

photo of Sunny Swanson via www.bnd.com/news/crime/story/972782.html

​The story of Sunny Swanson is a sad, strange one and George Pawlaczyk of The Belleville News-Democrat does a damn fine job telling it.

If you missed the tale in today's BND, here's the Cliff's Notes version:

Swanson, 38, was homeless in St. Clair County. She liked to drink and squat in abandoned houses. So much so, in fact, that she'd been arrested 63 times since 2004 for those two offenses.

Last Friday, after her latest drinking and trespassing arrest, she passed out in the Belleville City Jail and died.

Shockingly, police do not suspect foul play and the county coroner says Swanson had "underlying medical conditions" including "a liver that was shriveled up like a California raisin."

(Ok, that last part is made up)

There's also Swanson's mysterious boyfriend known as "The Shadow," who liked to give her black eyes before police took her mugshot photos.

(That part is not made up)

www.cocastl.org

Stephanie Riven

​The Arts and Education Council yesterday announced the recipients of its annual arts awards. 

http://www.flickoff.org/system/files/u8/methane.jpg

​St. Louis has a meth problem. Methane, that is.

The highly flammable greenhouse gas, most famous in the form of cow flatulence (hence the lovely picture above), is causing a scare for a handful of North St. Louis residents.

The St. Louis Demolition Landfill, located just east of Hall Street adjacent to the Mississippi River, has "potentially explosive levels" of the gas seeping out of the ground.

The Missouri Department of Natural Resources was working with the City to close the dump when testing revealed more than 18 times the allowable levels of methane present in the air.

Details after the jump...

www.myspace.com

Nathan Halbach, reportedly the son of a St. Louis priest, is now ill with brain cancer and asking for help from the Roman Catholic Church

​The St. Louis chapter of SNAP (Survivors' Network of those Abused by Priests) is on the lookout for girls or women who may have been abused by a Roman Catholic priest named Fr. Henry Willenborg, following a revelation last week that an O'Fallon resident fathered a child with Willenborg two decades ago.

"Willenborg lived and worked here [for eight or nine years] and we want to know if anyone was hurt by him," says Barbara Dorris, spokeswoman for SNAP's St. Louis chapter.

Pat Bond, of O'Fallon, told the New York Times that she and Willenborg were lovers for five years in the 1980's and that she conceived two children by him. The first pregnancy resulted in a miscarriage (Bond told the NYT that Willenborg urged her to abort). The second pregnancy resulted in the birth of Nathan Halbach.

(Halbach got the last name of Bond's first husband, apparently to hide the fact he'd been fathered by a priest. After Bond and Willenborg split, Bond remarried and divorced two more times.)

Halbach is now 22. Three years ago he had to quit his studies at Mizzou when he learned he has brain cancer. For many years, and until Halbach turned 21, according to the Times, the Church paid Bond hush-money. But now Bond and Halbach both have cancer and are struggling to make ends meet. Bond wants the Church to help with expenses.

​I subscribe to an email list-serve for immigration issues. The email thread can -- at times -- be helpful for discovering news bits on legislative concerns, law enforcement initiatives and social matters important to the foreign-born community. 

An offensive "illegal alien" costume is being sold at Toys R Us and Amazon.com as well as other stores.
According to these websites, for just $39.99, you can now dress up as an "illegal alien" for Halloween. These stores are selling the costume made up of an orange jumpsuit with the words "illegal alien" written across the chest. The costume even comes with a mask of a space invader with big eyes, and a green card.

Crystal City Mayor Tom Schilly

​The residents of Crystal City opposed to an iron-ore smelter in their community had one of their wishes come true last week. State Auditor Susan Montee finally released her audit of City Hall. 

Fred Teutenberg

​As devoted readers of Daily RFT discovered in a related post this week, Fred Teutenberg (he of the brilliant/politically-incorrect Dirt Cheap Cigarettes & Beer commercials) is no longer with his old employer. 

Julius Moore

​St. Louis police officer Julius Moore died yesterday as a result of injuries sustained during an on-duty vehicle accident on October 6. He was 23 years old.