TEMPEST IN TEAPOT OVER TRIFLES

De minimis non curat lex. "The law does not concern itself with trivialities." -- Cole County prosecutor Richard Callahan, a Democrat, commenting on allegations that State Auditor Margaret Kelly, the Republican nominee for governor, had a state employee make arrangements for her campaign's announcement rally, held in the Capitol rotunda.

Talk about a tempest in a teapot. So Margaret Kelly had an employee in her official office fax over a registration form to reserve the Capitol rotunda for her campaign announcement last month. We'd say that Cole County's prosecutor, Rich Callahan, gets it about right. An estimate offered by the Kelly campaign, which went undisputed by Democratic spokesmen who spent a couple of days sniping at Kelly, was that the entire transaction amounted to less than $5 of state time.

All elected state officials walk a fine line in making judgments of this nature. In the Kelly case, her official office is located in the same state capitol in which the Office of Administration is located. This truly is, as the Latin phrase has it, de minimis. Still, it may well be that Gov. Mel Carnahan and others transgress even more when they take state airplanes to fly around the state visiting schools, cutting ribbons and the like. Elected state officials who delight in making charges of this nature had better watch their own shops and their own expenses. Taxpayers and voters can tell the difference.