Alabama’s unqualified attorney general Troy “Toy Boy” King held a televised news conference in Montgomery today to announce that, even though he claims the legal authority, he will not intervene to stop Gov’nah Bob Riley’s warrantless war on computerized bingo, the biggest threat to the chastity of the state’s citizens since the scourge of whiskey during Prohibition.
According to one of the bloggers at al.com, by sidestepping intervention, King avoids a legal showdown with Riley, a lame duck governor who can’t run for reelection. Yes, that’s the same governor who originally appointed King to fill the attorney general post five years ago, even though King had never seen action in a courtroom as a prosecutor.
The governor and attorney general have grown increasingly antagonistic toward each other on electronic bingo and other issues. Sources say Riley was largely behind rumors that surfaced on the Web and talk radio a couple of years ago that King was a gay Republican hypocrite, in spite of his own war on dildo shops in Montgomery.
A pollution lawsuit against the Birmingham Airport Authority was closed on February 16, signifying that the airport has fulfilled the requirements established in a court settlement with the Black Warrior Riverkeeper environmental watchdog group.
The airport has spent more than $1.7 million implementing erosion and sediment controls at their runway extension construction site, contracting with several local businesses to participate in the project over the past 12 months, according to a press release in the case,
The Black Warrior Riverkeeper group filed a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act on April 3, 2007, alleging that muddy water from much of the airport’s runway extension project had been inadequately contained or treated. The construction storm water runoff polluted Village Creek, a tributary of the Black Warrior River’s Locust Fork.
Sedimentation from storm water runoff is one of the leading causes of impairment in Alabama’s streams and rivers.
“This case highlights the value of the Clean Water Act’s citizen lawsuit
provisions,” said Charles Scribner, executive director of Black Warrior
Riverkeeper. “Our Riverkeeper, Nelson Brooke, collected pollution evidence at the airport for years while the Alabama Department of Environmental Management failed to solve the problem. We are pleased that the Birmingham Airport Authority improved their site as a result of our action.”
During the Bush years, we specialized in covering the politicization of the U.S. justice system as much as any news organization. Our archives are about the most comprehensive for anyone researching the prosecution of former Alabama Gov. Don Siegelman, and the original case against Richard Scrushy, which Glynn Wilson covered for The New York Times.
Connecting the Dots
