Please clarify how the input is provided to draw the different panel column in stateMicromaps.  

Here is an example from the assignment.  The first element in each row of the data.frame
refers to the first column in each plot.     

panelDesc = data.frame(
type=c('maptail','id','dotconf','dotconf'),
lab1=c('','','White Males','White Females'),
lab2=c('','','Rate and 95% CI','Rate and 95% CI'),
lab3=c('','','Deaths per 100,000','Deaths per 100,000'),
col1=c(NA,NA,2,9), 
col2=c(NA,NA,4,11),
col3=c(NA,NA,5,12),
ref=c(NA,NA,NA,wflung70US[,1]))

The first plot column is to be "maptail" variation on a micromap.   The maptail function
needs no arguments so the values made available to it are simply place holders.  

'' from lab1
'' from lab2
'' from lab3      
NA from col1
NA from col2
NA from col3
NA from ref 

The third plot column uses the dotconf function and this requires input. 
The third values in the rows are

'White Males' from lab1
'Rate and 95% CI' from lab2
'Deaths per 100,000' from lab3
2 from col1   # the data column with the mean
4 from col2   # the data column with the lower bound
5 from col3   # the data colun with the upper bound
NA from ref   # no reference value to draw

Hopefully this clarifies the general approach.  

A good GUI would clarify the situation.  

I used the structure above because the rows in a column of a data.frame
have to be of the same data type.  Thus I cannot store the arguments
for each plot column in the corresponding plot description column as
would seem natural.  Rather  the arguments for plot column i are in row i
of plot description.