Toy Boy Troy Shows Up in Public

Connecting the Dots
by Glynn Wilson

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.

King has taken the legal view that the electronic form of bingo used at Alabama casinos is allowed in some counties and some cities that have constitutional amendments, and he supports a definition of bingo that allows electronic gaming, unlike the state’s Republican Supreme Court.

Riley, who has been connected over and over again to campaign money from Indian casinos in Mississippi, has express the view that the computerized bingo machines in Alabama are nothing more or less than slot machines. These are supposedly illegal under state law, even though the Legislature down on Goat Hill is wasting an entire legislative session trying to pass new bills to either ban it once and for all — or legalize, tax and regulate the gambling machines and allow jobs to be created at places such as Country Crossing in Dothan.

Everybody who is anybody knows Alabama’s gambling Kingpin Milton McGregor has supported Troy King’s campaigns in the past, but there is not a single newspaper or TV news station in the state willing or able to explain that to the public.

What the Birmingham News will tell you is that Riley has charged that King’s views on bingo and the machines have led to an “explosion” in illegal gambling, and that the newspaper’s favorite guv’nah since Guy Hunt and has charged King with caring more about gambling operators than enforcing the law.

And of course to be all fair and balanced about it, they report that King has charged Riley with being “reckless” in attempting to raid several bingo casinos without warrants, raids in King’s view that may have violated due process rights and property rights of the casinos and exposed the state to costly civil lawsuits.

At least today’s televised news conference negates the claim made in the video above that King is missing, since he has mostly been hiding out since the gay rumors hit the airwaves a couple of years ago.

Perhaps some enterprising entrepreneur should capitalize on all this funny business in Alabama politics, clearly a diversion from real issues facing the state in these hard economic times.

I wonder if people from New York and California would be interested in special tours of Alabama to not only gamble in the growing number of bingo halls in the state. Maybe they would pay to watch the antics of the Alabama Legislature, the Guv’nah and our hilarious attorney general.

Somebody should quickly write a play for the Shakespeare Festival Theater in Montgomery. It would no doubt be a sell out…

Tags: Bob Riley, Electronic Bingo, Gambling, Gaming, Milton McGregor, Troy King

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 1:48 pm and is filed under Alabama Politics, Connecting the Dots. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.