(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To This Post)

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of what’s goin’ down in the several states where, as we know, the real work of governmentin’ gets done, and where the fool’s gold mouthpiece, the hollow horn, plays wasted words.

We begin in Kentucky, one of the nation’s four Commonwealths—God save them!—where, with the help of stalwart blogger and local guide Blue In The Bluegrass, we find that Governor Matt Bevin, a Tea Party darling, remains a peach of a fellow. His administration got itself sued by Planned Parenthood for acting moronically and then apparently declined to send any representatives to a meeting with PP’s lawyers back in August. As The Lexington Herald-Leader tells us, this, decided Judge Dave Whalin, was something up with which the court would not put.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin told Bevin's office to reimburse Planned Parenthood of Indiana and Kentucky for travel and legal expenses incurred for the deposition that had been scheduled Aug. 18. Planned Parenthood's legal team wanted to question someone from Bevin's office about his administration's denial of a license to the organization to provide abortions in Louisville. The deposition was rescheduled ahead of a trial held in September in the abortion case. Another federal judge has not yet ruled on the abortion licensing dispute.

Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin. Getty Images

Bevin’s office replied that nyah-nyah, did-so!

Bevin spokeswoman Amanda Stamper said the governor's office was "surprised and disappointed" by the order and will appeal. Bevin is an outspoken abortion opponent. "We had notified opposing counsel that the Governor's Office would not agree to a deposition on the terms that opposing counsel proposed, and we gave at least a week's notice that we would not be attending the ... deposition," Stamper said in a statement. "In fact, we moved for a protective order in advance of the deposition date. Because the deposition of another witness was held on the same day, the plaintiffs' attorneys should not have incurred any additional expense," she added.

Again, Judge Whalin was unimpressed by the legal nuances of this position.

The motion for a protective order seeking to prevent or limit the deposition's scope came a day before the scheduled Aug 18 deposition. "These attempts at preventing the deposition on the day/night before it was scheduled to take place are 'too little, too late,' given that Planned Parenthood's counsel had already traveled to Louisville ... for the deposition," Whalin wrote.

Meanwhile, in another part of the government, Bevin and the state’s Democratic attorney general, Andy Beshear, are in a wrangle because Beshear is curious about what Bevin and the White House may have cooked up as regards to voter suppression in the state. Beshear would like to see emails on this topic. Bevin would rather he did not. Again, from the Herald-Leader:

Spencer Scharff, a civil rights attorney in Phoenix who previously served as voter protection director of the Arizona Democratic Party, said in a telephone interview Monday that he has been seeking similar information from other governors and state officeholders across the country “in the name of transparency and to help journalism.”

Thanks, pal. Anyway, the governor’s office balked and Scharff took his case to Beshear.

Beshear’s office then asked the governor’s office to provide unredacted hard copies of all the information Scharff requested so that Beshear could review it privately, as is routinely done in such cases, to determine whether the documents are exempt from public disclosure under the Open Records Act. Officials in Beshear’s office “expressly acknowledged” their obligation to “maintain the confidentiality of the records,” according to Beshear’s ruling. Beshear, a Democrat, has had several high-profile political disputes with Bevin. On Sept. 26, Alexander told Beshear that the governor’s office “is willing to allow a court to review the disputed documents if necessary, but not the attorney general.” Alexander said Beshear is “an adversary of the governor both institutionally and politically” and “hardly a disinterested arbiter.”

We leave Kentucky and head south, to Louisiana, where the state’s Supreme Court may well have ruled against a truly creepy suspect because of an implied comma that the Court missed. From The New Orleans Times-Picayune:

Demesme voluntarily agreed to two interviews with police regarding his alleged sexual misconduct with the minors. In both recorded interviews, Demesme was read his Miranda rights, said he understood them and waived those rights, Crichton wrote.

"Nonetheless, the defendant argues he invoked his right to counsel," Crichton explained. "And the basis for this comes from the second interview, where I believe the defendant ambiguously referenced a lawyer." The ambiguity, Crichton wrote, was contained within Demesme's tortured syntax as he told police, "If y'all, this is how I feel, if y'all think I did it, I know that I didn't do it so why don't you just give me a lawyer dog cause this is not what's up."

Try it this way.

"If y'all, this is how I feel, if y'all think I did it, I know that I didn't do it so why don't you just give me a lawyer, dog, ‘cause this is not what's up."

The Court preferred to believe that the defendant was referring to a mythical beast called a Lawyer Dog and, while many lawyers are undoubtedly dogs, I suspect that the defendant’s colloquialism should have prevailed.

The justice's written recitation of the line did not allow for the possibility that Demesme's "lawyer" and "dog" might be offset by a comma. Crichton cited a 2002 state Supreme Court decision that requires a certain level of clarity in a suspect or defendant's request for counsel. "As this court has written, 'If a suspect makes a reference to an attorney that is ambiguous or equivocal in that a reasonable police officer in light of the circumstances would have understood only that the suspect might be invoking his right to counsel, the cessation of questioning is not required,'" Crichton wrote.

We move along, dog, to West Virginia, where a plant blew up near Parkersburg, and where people are still curious about exactly what it was that went wafting through the air. From The Parkersburg News and Sentinel:

A cause has yet to be determined, Stewart said. Investigators with the West Virginia Fire Marshal were on scene ready to commence the investigation into the fire on Saturday. The state Department of Environmental Protection conducted air quality tests in the area, including Williamstown and Marietta, Stewart said. The Wood County Unified Command is issuing alerts and in its latest at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, a statement was issued by the unified command that a local lab advised that the fallen ash was non-toxic to residents. Concerns with air quality caused officials to postpone Saturday’s football game between Parkersburg Catholic and Williamstown high schools and the women’s soccer match between Ohio Valley University and Ursiline.

Stories in the wake of the initial explosion seem to indicate that nobody really knows what was being stored in this abandoned plant, which was being used as some kind of dump and, therefore, nobody really knows what the local residents might have inhaled.

The IEI warehouse caught fire about 12:30 a.m. Saturday. Plastics were stored in the building, but officials still do not have a detailed account of items which may have been destroyed in the fire. During a press briefing this morning, Lawrence Messina, director of communications for the West Virginia Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, said the documents, also known as MSDS, have not been released because officials fear the information is inaccurate. Messina said officials believe paperwork which would have given a more accurate account of what was stored in the building likely was lost in the fire. Messina said officials are in contact with the owner of IEI and working to assess the contents of the building.

For years, one of the primary employers in the area has been the DuPont chemical company. There has been a history of bad corporate citizenship in the area going back decades. For example, last February, DuPont and one of its spinoff companies paid over $600 million to settle thousands of lawsuits brought by people in and around Parkerburg who had been injured when PFOA, a chemical used in the manufacture of Teflon, leaked from a plant near the city. Fortunately, this did not become a major bummer for the corporations, because that’s the important thing.

Shares of Chemours jumped 13 percent. The company said it would pay half of the settlement, although liability for litigation connected with the chemical was passed onto it when DuPont spun it off in 2015. In addition, Jefferies analyst Alexander Laurence said the liability was $300 million below Wall Street estimates, and DuPont shares rose 1 percent.

Whew. Close one. Anyway, the fire is still smoldering, and what’s burning in Parkersburg is anyone’s guess.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin. Getty Images

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Official Shearer of Sheep Friedman of the Plains brings us a story of how laws must change to fit the times. From The Oklahoman:

Gov. Mary Fallin on Monday signed Senate Bill 286 repealing laws against seducing an unmarried female and imputing unchastity to females. The changes go into effect Nov. 1. Sen. AJ Griffin, R-Guthrie, was the author of the legislation, getting it passed after three years of trying. Griffin said she came across the seduction and slander crimes while trying to educate herself on the law. "I peruse the criminal code quite a bit, just trying to learn primarily, and then ran across those ... and, of course, initially laughed," she said.

The legal history behind these statutes is…ah…interesting. Apparently, still giddy from having become a state less than a decade earlier, Oklahoma went a little sex-crazy during the 19-Teens.

No one has gone to prison for a seduction offense in decades, Cleveland said. Early in statehood, though, seducers did go to prison, records show. The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals condemned the crime as a black and deadly treachery similar to Judas' betrayal of Jesus. In language used in more than one opinion, the Court of Criminal Appeals wrote: "Under the Mosaic law, the penalty of death was inflicted for this offense. The seducer was taken beyond the gates of the city and stoned to death. If this was the law now, there would not be so much impurity in our country. The courts and juries of this state cannot be too vigilant in protecting the innocent girls of our country against the wiles and machinations of such incarnate fiends in human form."

Also being repealed is a related law that makes it a more severe felony for a seducer to marry his victim to avoid prosecution then abandon her. That law first went into effect in Oklahoma in 1915. The maximum punishment is 10 years in prison. The main slander law being repealed prohibits any person from "falsely and wantonly" imputing to any woman "a want of chastity." A conviction is punishable by 30 to 90 days in jail and a fine of $25 to $500.

Can I just say that, from a purely rhetorical standpoint, “incarnate fiends in human form” is the greatest redundancy in the history of the English language.

This is your democracy, America. Cherish it.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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