Archive for the ‘Lieutenant Governor News’ Category

Kudos to Florida’s Republican Attorney General Bill McCollum for supporting this innovative way of solving cold cases.
 
TAMPA, Fla. — There is not a lot to do in prison. Inmates talk. They play cards.
Special Agent Tommy Ray figured out a way for Florida's 92,000 state prison inmates to combine those activities and maybe help detectives crack a cold case or two. The veteran Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent helped launch a program to give inmates decks of playing cards featuring 104 of the state's most troubling unsolved murder and missing persons cases.
"What better way to get them talking than to have cards with the cases on them?" Ray said. "These are people who have been in there for years. That's the best source of information. There are a couple of high-profile cases I think we'll get solved."
This is a good idea that needs to spread.

Kentucky’s Democrat Attorney General Greg Stumbo is giving some serious thought to running for the United States Senate.  This is the same Greg Stumbo who just ran on a Democrat primary ticket for Governor down home in Kentucky and was rebuffed by Democrat primary voters.  So, rejected by voters for one office, L.G., and now he’s thinking about running for another office.  Oh, we failed to mention that he’s not seeking re-election as A.G. – not because he’s term limited either.  It’s starting to look like this guy just isn’t interested in being A.G. of the Commonwealth of Kentucky – in fact it looks like he’s running from the office all together.  He was elected on a bit of a fluke in ‘03 – I mean this is the same Greg Stumbo who:  
In 2001, a woman sued Stumbo, claiming that he had fathered a child while he was married to another woman, then reneged on an agreement to pay support. A court later ruled that there was no agreement between Stumbo and the woman, but DNA tests proved that the child was Stumbo's, and he began paying support.
And in 1991, while opposing tougher drunken-driving laws in the General Assembly, Stumbo pleaded guilty to public intoxication and paid a $100 fine after his car ran off a road into a ditch.
Stumbo was originally charged with driving under the influence, but the day after the accident, he said someone else had been driving.
So, some might begin to guess that running away from problems fits the M.O. – the next thing he’ll do is blame somebody else in his office if something bad happens – sounds far fetched, but….

From the Miami Herald
TALLAHASSEE —
Florida's top legislative leaders on Thursday lashed out at the advocates who helped win $8.5 million in state compensation for a paralyzed former Broward woman, claiming lawyers and lobbyists want to take more than their fair share of the cash.
House Speaker Marco Rubio and Senate President Ken Pruitt said in a blistering letter that the Fort Lauderdale law firm of Sheldon Schlesinger was trying to skirt state law to get it and a lobbyist nearly $700,000 more than lawmakers anticipated in the case of Minouche Noel, a former Fort Lauderdale resident maimed in a botched state surgery in 1989.

These trial lawyers and their lobbyist are totally out of control.  As you can read in the rest of the article, jump here, you can see that the legislature clearly laid out limits on how much the firm should be compensated.  The fact of the matter is that the victim in this case has been victimized twice – once in the botched surgery that left her paralyzed, and again by the greedy lawyers who retained ANOTHER lawyer to take more of the settlement money away from the victim and her family.  

Really, and truly out of hand.  

From Professor Andrew Spiropoulos's column addressing the worsening legal environment in states like Oklahoma:

Oklahoma’s lawsuit-reform debate has sadly revealed that honorable and well-meaning public officials like Governor Brad Henry and Attorney General Drew Edmondson, when push comes to shove, side with the most reactionary elements of the trial bar.

But this year’s debate revealed a problem even more disturbing than opposition to legal reform. Mr. Edmondson has imported to Oklahoma a new model of the office of attorney general that is destructive both to the rule of law and to the welfare of the state...

In the 1990s, a new model of the office emerged. Political sharks like New York’s attorney general (and now governor) Eliot Spitzer realized they could use their power to file lawsuits and criminal charges to bludgeon large corporations into big settlements that would make for good headlines. They started with unpopular defendants like the tobacco companies and, once drawing blood, moved on to any other industry with big money and bad publicity. Along the way, these shrewd politicians discovered a neat deal: they could hire their plaintiff lawyer friends to help bring these lawsuits. The lawyers would reap millions from the extorted settlements and then (coincidentally, I’m sure) make large campaign contributions to the attorney general’s next campaign.

You can read the rest of the column here – we’ll let it speak for itself.  

Back in May social networking site MySpace.com took the proactive step of providing data on registered sex offenders who had gained access to its website after numerous state Attorneys General requested data on registered offenders from their states using the site. Arkansas was not one of them. It’s taken until July for Dustin McDaniel’s office to realize that the citizens of Arkansas could benefit from his office having this information. Late is better than never, right?

The Jackson Clarion Ledger’s
Sid
Salter calls the contest between incumbent Democrat A.G. Jim Hood and his Republican Challenger Al Hopkins the “wild-card”
race in the Magnolia state.

But perhaps the most interesting
race looming in November is the one race in which Mississippi Democrats should
have a clear, decided advantage – Attorney General Jim Hood's re-election
campaign. Hood's in good graces with the Democratic Party and with the wealthy
trial lawyers who have tended in recent years to be the party's financial backers…While
Hood is the clear favorite in the race, Hopkins is a very credible candidate
and is capable of putting together enough constituencies statewide to make the
race interesting on his own.

Hopkins already has a fundraising
lead on Hood as of the July campaign finance reports. Hopkins had $356,000 cash
on hand to Hood's $289,000.

And that's before we see how much
Barbour does to help down ticket candidates try to achieve a down ticket sweep
for the GOP in November. Does Barbour simply make a few speeches and joint
appearances with Chaney, Hosemann and Hopkins using the spare change from his
$7.7 million campaign war chest to nail down a GOP win in the lieutenant
governor's race or does he share the wealth?

Read all about
it here.

Do we have a new winner for Mr. Flashbulb

Arizona Attorney General Terry
Goddard risks turning into a 21stcentury Barney
Fife if he continues to pursue costly, time-intensive conflict-of-interest
cases against elected officials which end with either small-change plea deals
or larger charges being thrown out in court.
On the old “Andy Griffith Show,” Don Knotts’ character was so
overzealous about detecting any possible infraction that he was only allowed to
carry a single bullet, and that was in his pocket. (This was a 1960s sitcom, of
course; that joke probably wouldn’t be so funny today, even on
“Reno 911.”)
Goddard’s track record in conflict-of-interest cases over the past
several years isn’t very impressive…

Read the rest of the East Valley Tribune’s editorial here