The big news story for the week, Ted Cruz is running for Prez, has passed. The dems and the GOP establishment (i.e., RINOs) are in a panic. For many, however, the future, contemplating a Cruz Presidency, suddenly looks brighter.

With no big headlines, local issues are coming to fore. One such issue is Jackson County Missouri Sheriff Mike Sharp. It appears that Sheriff Sharp is deliberately violating the spirit of Missouri’s CCW statutes if not the letter. How? By deliberately impeding new CCW licenses and renewals.

Sheriff Sharp has posted regulations on his website governing the process for CCW applications and renewals. If you read the instructions, nothing extraordinary pops out. The state statutes governing CCW issue and renewal process can be found here. The Missouri statues make issuing CCW a “shall issue” process, that is, if nothing detrimental is found about the applicant for CCW, the Sheriff must issue the license, AND, if no issue is found within forty-five days of the filing of the application, the Sheriff must issue the license immediately.

In most counties, the process runs smoothly and quickly. Not so, in Jackson County. According to his website, a Jackson County resident must make an appointment. You can call for an appointment sixty days in advance for renewals and the appointment cannot be any earlier than thirty days prior to the expiration of your license. If you fail to have all the documentation as required according to the Sheriff’s website, you must start the process all over again—you go to the back of the line.

What’s the problem with this?

Getting an answer when you call for an appointment. Apparently the number you must call for an appointment goes directly to voicemail. The applicant is instructed to leave a number and his call will be returned. According to many complaints, those voicemail messages are never returned. Neither can you just drop by the CCW processing office for an appointment. The office moved recently to a smaller building that is shared with another county office. When a recent applicant arrived, there was no parking available. The employees of the other office took all the parking spaces. If parking is available, applicants are turned away if they do not have an appointment.

It seems to be a chapter out of Catch-22. You can’t renew or apply for CCW without an appointment, but your calls to get an appointment are never returned. This often continues until an appointment cannot be made before the licensee’s permit expires—then a $10 fine is tacked on because the applicant failed to renew before his license expired. In addition, the forty-five day clock for issuance doesn’t start until the application for CCW is made. If an applicant can’t get an appointment, the issuance is delayed further.

A right delayed is a right denied.

Sheriff Sharp says he is underfunded and understaffed. Many find that response unbelievable when funds were found for Sheriff Sharp’s new offices and their subsequent upgrades. It seems Sheriff’s Sharp’s priorities are not toward serving the public. It will take an lawsuit to force him to comply to the spirit of state law instead of impeding it.

Any Jackson County CCW applicant have a 55-gallon drum full of $100 bills? Because that will be needed to force Sheriff Sharp to change his ways.

Compare the difficulty in Jackson County with other counties. I renewed my CCW a year or so ago in Cass County, Missouri. I walked in with cash and walked out, renewed, ten minutes later and I didn’t need an appointment. My renewal was handled by one of the office staff. That’s how CCW applications and renewals are processed in the rest of Missouri—except for Jackson County.

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The Missouri Legislature is taking a close look at the freebies illegal aliens are receiving in Missouri. A bill has been filed to block financial aid to illegals, financial aid paid for by Missouri’s taxpayers.

‘Missouri lawmakers seek to ban college aid to undocumented students,’ St. Louis Post-Dispatch: “Legislative leaders propose making it more expensive for undocumented students to go to college even as school leaders say they want to offer access to promising students regardless of their immigration status. With public colleges limited by state and federal law in how much help they can offer to undocumented students, a number of the state’s private institutions have picked up the slack, offering scholarships and other financial help to noncitizens.

“Missouri’s fight over undocumented students stretches back to last year when current House Budget Committee Vice Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick, R-Shell Knob, successfully included language in the state’s higher education budget barring public colleges and universities from offering in-state tuition to “unlawfully present” students. His reasoning: Students who are in the country illegally should not receive better tuition rates than legal residents. This year, legislators are trying to go further. One measure that recently passed the House is a Fitzpatrick-sponsored bill that would require colleges and universities to charge undocumented students the same tuition charged to international students — generally much higher than in-state tuition rates.” — PoliticMO Newsletter, Marcy 25, 2015.

The St Louis Post-Dispatch cherry-picked one ‘undocumented’ college student to protest this bill.

Missouri lawmakers seek to ban college aid to undocumented students

The Post-Dispatch chose carefully who they used in their article. No, they couldn’t use Jose who illegally slipped across the border and now wants the US taxpayer to pay for his education. No, that was too easy. I wonder how long it took those two reporters to find their Pakistani?