Children know what this sheriff doesn’t
Posted Oct 25, 2019
This Sheriff here.
Children know more about right and wrong than sheriff
Limestone County Sheriff Mike Blakely is the most recent Alabama public official to turn against the state’s vaunted ethics law.
The law is flawed because it’s too vague, his lawyers say. The law is too broad because it applies to him. The law stinks because this dude could not tell wrong from right.
You want clarity on the law? You want more specificity? I’m your huckleberry.
Don’t take what doesn’t belong to you. Easy.
Don’t cheat. Don’t steal.
Don’t use public service as a get-rich-quick scheme.
Don’t take the rest of us for saps.
Blakely is just the latest Alabama politician who bristled against the ethics law after he got caught. It’s like an epidemic, and it has become the one thing that brings Democrats and Republicans together. For all the wrong reasons.
The law, passed in 2010 after a wave of Democratic corruption, was ballyhooed as the best and strongest in all the land. That was considered a good thing. Until Republicans, like corruptor-in-chief Mike Hubbard, began to trip on it. The assault on the law began as Hubbard was charged, and convicted, and sentenced to prison. He was sentenced 1,172 days ago, and he remains free as the Alabama Supreme Court searches for a way to save face and still set him free.
Blakely – a 10-term Democrat and the longest-serving Alabama sheriff – finds common ground with Hubbard. They both want to protect their hides.
Blakely’s lawyers want the judge in the case, Circuit Judge Pride Tompkins, to toss the whole thing because the ethics law doesn’t give a full list of what is meant by “personal gain” or a complete accounting of all the conduct that is prohibited.
Because what is clear to a kindergartner is not clear to the sheriff.
Many of the charges against Blakely don’t even involve the part of ethics law that gets a little complicated. He faces six counts of using his office for personal gain, an ethics crime, but seven more of the charges are straight-up theft.
There are two counts of first-degree theft and two counts of second-degree theft and two counts of third-degree theft and all of those crimes are felonies. There’s even a misdemeanor fourth-degree theft, so Blakely is one of the legendary few who actually hit for the larceny cycle.
Prosecutors say he took thousands in county money and law enforcement fund money and inmate money and used it for himself. They say he took campaign donations for personal use, too. They say he also used his office to get an interest free loan of $50,000 or more.
Blakely can’t claim ignorance. He can’t plead not guilty by reason of idiocy. He took the required ethics training by the Alabama Ethics Commission and is in a position to know right from business as usual.
The truth is, if this guy did not understand that law well enough to see know those actions are wrong, he had no business enforcing the law in Limestone County for one day, much less almost 40 years.
They want you to believe they are smart and savvy when they run for office. And when they are caught they want a judge – and the rest of us -- to believe they are dimwitted and gullible victims.
The audacity is incredible.
The epidemic is spreading.
Politicians want to gut or overturn this law. And they will not stop. Don’t forget it.
Prosecutors say he took thousands in county money and law enforcement fund money and inmate money and used it for himself. They say he took campaign donations for personal use, too. They say he also used his office to get an interest free loan of $50,000 or more.
Blakely can’t claim ignorance. He can’t plead not guilty by reason of idiocy. He took the required ethics training by the Alabama Ethics Commission and is in a position to know right from business as usual.
The truth is, if this guy did not understand that law well enough to see know those actions are wrong, he had no business enforcing the law in Limestone County for one day, much less almost 40 years.
They want you to believe they are smart and savvy when they run for office. And when they are caught they want a judge – and the rest of us -- to believe they are dimwitted and gullible victims.
The audacity is incredible.
The epidemic is spreading.
Politicians want to gut or overturn this law. And they will not stop. Don’t forget it.
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