Smokey and the Branstad II -- Editorial boards join the chase

Our high-velocity governor is faring worse with the state's daily newspapers than he did with the trooper who pursued his speeding SUV back in April.

The trooper let Gov. Terry Branstad's vehicle off the hook. Editorial boards have been far less forgiving.

The home team here at The Gazette says the Branstad administration's changing excuses don't add up to a license to speed:

The Register of Des Moines, where this long, strange Tahoe trip first broke, points out that, in this case, the governor's driving trooper was not free to speed:

The Quad City Times tosses a "sloppy," "inexplicable," "recklessly" and "unfathomable" into its diatribe:

The Sioux City Journal says no one is above the law:

But the Mason City Globe-Gazette says we need to put this whole thing behind us:

When this story broke, I figured it would be enough said by now. But I was wrong.

In the last few days, while out and about, at restaurants and stores and softball games, I've overheard people talking about this. That's a sign that it could stick for a while. Sink in maybe. And that talk has been critical of the governor.

The governor's and lieutenant governor's responses and explanations - I'm not a backseat driver, I was too busy to know what was happening, sometimes we have to speed to keep to our busy schedule, etc. -- are both plausible and unsatisfying. "I didn't know" may be true, but it rarely settles things neatly.

When my seven and nine-year-old sit in the backseat, focused on their iPods, oblivious to the world whizzing by around them, I once lamented their lack of attentiveness. Now, it turns out, they were acting gubernatorial the whole time. Who knew?

If the governor had just said, "My bad. I take full responsibility. And if my trooper is ticketed, I'll pay it," this would be over. Unless, as I've said before, the saga of DCI Agent Hedlund, who first called in the SUV going a "hard 90," leads to a place where we find out his involuntary vacation from duty is directly connected to this incident. Officials insist that's not the case.

And at a time when our governor should be basking in his legislative wins and touting the soft launching of his formidable $2 million re-election campaign this week, this story is still on his tail, red lights flashing.