(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.

All right, all you bastids involved in Tennessee politics. I am serious now.

Are you all fckin' high?

Seriously, I thought our semi-regular weekly survey would get a break now that Kansas no longer is the Atlas Shrugged Home Game. I thought there was less of a chance that we'd have one state to which we'd need to come back, week after week. (Thanks to the inexhaustible Tennessee Holler for being our Guide Michelin to the Rocky Top insanity.) But, damn, if Tennessee hasn't stepped up in a big way.

First, we have this DA, who has a problem with Muslim and LGBTQ citizens, to which a local judge said, well, that's OK then. From NewsChannel 5:

General Sessions Judge Diane Turner rejected the motion to disqualify Coffee County DA Craig Northcott, who was assigned as a special prosecutor in the case against Justin Jones. The Vanderbilt divinity student faces an assault charge for throwing a foam cup of tea onto an elevator with Casada and other lawmakers during a protest...

After Northcott was appointed as a special prosecutor, new details emerged about his controversial beliefs. He has compared Muslims to members of the KKK. He refuses to use Tennessee's domestic violence laws to protect people in same-sex relationships. And he has suggested that protests by black NFL athletes are an "attack on Christianity." Jones' lawyer, Nick Leonardo, says Northcott's beliefs and potential conflicts are "deeply alarming."

"It's the public's faith in the integrity of the justice system that is at stake here," Leonardo told the judge.

To which the judge replied, in essence, "Lunch yet?"

"I am not persuaded that it is an appropriate case" for disqualifying a prosecutor, Turner said, concluding that there was no legal authority for her to take such action.

Good luck, Justin Jones, and welcome to the Franz Kafka Burlesque Thee-ay-ter.

Justin Jones has some road ahead. Jonathan Mattise AP

Meanwhile, there's State Senator Mark Pody, who is speaking in support of a radical anti-choice bill and who apparently is running against the Devil for alderman in the 14th district of Gehenna. From the Holler's electric Twitter machine account:

"I'm against Satan and I'm standing with God..."

A bold position to take.

"Our armor says, 'We face the enemy'..."

Dude, you're wearing a shirt and tie from Walmart.

"We have no protection when we run. We have no protection for our back..."

Speed Stick, by Mennen.

"I'm not against any colleagues, whether they stand with me or not. I'm against Satan."

I'm so in for the debates down there.

This last bit has to do with a bill that is at the moment sailing through the Tennessee lege, and that essentially would ban abortion outright in that state. The bill is so nakedly unconstitutional that the National Right to Life organization opposes it on the grounds that defending it will be a waste of time and money, a position also held by all three of Tennessee's Roman Catholic bishops. But, then again, there's Senator Pody at the podium:

"...and I'm standing with God."

OK, that's two votes.

We move along now to Kansas City, where the folks in the U.S. Attorney's office woke up one morning and, apparently, believed they were living in East Germany, as the Kansas City Star reports.

A ruling by U.S. District Court of Kansas Judge Julie Robinson late Tuesday capped a three-year probe that examined the extent to which federal prosecutors in Kansas had accessed recordings of confidential phone calls and meetings between defense attorneys and their clients at a private prison in Leavenworth. Conversations between clients and their attorneys are confidential in nearly all aspects. Robinson found that federal prosecutors in Kansas determined on their own that they could access recordings of these discussions, tainting several criminal cases along the way. At least three criminal defendants in Kansas have had their sentences vacated or their indictments dismissed as a result of the scandal. More than a hundred others have filed petitions for similar relief.

Judge Julie Robinson isn’t messing around. Mitchell Willetts AP

That shouldn't tie up the federal appeals system there for more than a year. What did these dopes do, anyway? And were private prisons involved? Of course, they were.

The U.S. Attorney scandal came to light in 2016 during the prosecution of inmates suspected of trafficking drugs within the walls of a private prison in Leavenworth operated by Corrections Corporation of America, now CoreCivic. A federal grand jury in Kansas indicted six suspects in May 2016. During a hearing the following month, Erin Tomasic, an assistant U.S. attorney on the case, disclosed that she had possession of surveillance video from within the prison, including video from inside rooms where attorneys can meet with their clients. That admission caught the ear of federal public defenders, who claimed that video from inside attorney visitation rooms would intrude into confidential communications with their clients. Soon after, several defense attorneys throughout Kansas began to suspect that their discussions with clients were in the possession of federal prosecutors.

That had to be the "Wait. Whut?" moment of all time for the defense attorneys. It was Christmas in the springtime. And then, realizing that there were a few pooches left unscrewed, the prosecutors proceeded to stonewall the judge until she finally had enough and held them in contempt.

“The Government’s wholesale strategy to delay, diffuse, and deflect succeeded in denying the individual litigants their day in court for almost three years,” Robinson wrote as part of a 188-page ruling.

The complete impunity that steadily has been handed over to prosecutors since the phony "war" on drugs began 30 years ago has made too many of them arrogant, and even more of them too lazy. You have the entire law-enforcement apparatus at your disposal. Play by the damn rules. It isn't hard.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hurst is not unique. Rogelio V. Solis Getty Images

We move along a short ways down to Mississippi, where we find another prosecutor lighting his reputation on fire. Mike Hurst is the federal prosecutor responsible for overseeing the massive immigration raids targeting several Mississippi chicken plants last week. As Mississippi Today points out, his prosecution of these matters has been a touch selective.

From 2006 to 2015, Hurst was an assistant U.S. attorney in Jackson and worked on public corruption cases. A review of 306 criminal cases in which Hurst is identified as the lead or only prosecuting attorney from that period shows that approximately 40 percent of those were immigration-related, including violations such as illegal re-entry, harboring undocumented people and passport falsification. Of those roughly 125 immigration cases he led, Hurst criminally prosecuted just four businesses, court records show.

This, of course, doesn't make Hurst unique.

The proportion of businesses prosecuted for immigration crimes to total immigration prosecutions during Hurst’s tenure as assistant U.S. attorney mirrors data in a May report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University.

Since 1986, when Congress enacted criminal penalties for employers who knowingly hire undocumented workers, both prosecutions of such employers and prison sentences have been “relatively rare,” according to the clearinghouse. The TRAC report found between April 2018 and March 2019, only 11 individuals were prosecuted in seven cases; prosecutions have rarely climbed above 15 per year since 1986.

But this was the largest such bust in the history of the country. If the owners of the plants walk, or get the pamphlet thrown at them with a light fine, Hurst is going to find himself alone in a very hot spotlight.

As the Mississippi raids show, not everyone faces penalties for immigration violations. Rogelio V. Solis Getty Images

From Mississippi, we zip on up to West By God Virginia, where Governor Jim Justice (R-Jerry Reed Lyric) said the following upon his inauguration.

“I want absolutely nothing. Nothing. I don’t want a thing for me or my family in any way. All I want is goodness for this incredible state and its incredible people.”

The West Virginia Gazette-Mail supplies the punchline.

Hours later, the new governor held his inaugural ball, not at a Charleston hotel or the local civic center, as his predecessors long had, but at The Greenbrier, a palatial resort 120 miles from the Capitol. The hotel’s owner: Jim Justice.

When you're hot, etc.

Thousands of guests mingled across The Greenbrier's multiple ballrooms and ornate lobbies, feasting on a local-inspired menu that included fried chicken and ham biscuits. Some tried their luck at the resort’s casino. In the 12,000-square-foot Colonial Hall, Lionel Richie serenaded the first couple with his 1977 Commodores’ hit “Easy.”

“Do it, Jim! Do it, Jim!” the singer coaxed, as Justice and his wife, Cathy, slow-danced on the stage. Partygoers paid $75 each for tickets. But the tab was largely picked up by industry leaders, statehouse lobbyists and a variety of special interest groups, each contributing thousands of dollars to the governor’s inaugural committee to fund the lavish festivities.

You can't say the president* hasn't shown the way, at least as far as public grifting on one's own properties is concerned. To wit:

All told, more than $1 million — half of the inaugural fund — went to Justice’s Greenbrier Hotel Corp., according to financial reports filed with the Secretary of State’s Office. State ethics officials have described the arrangement as perfectly legal. Private dollars funded the event, and no public money flowed to the inaugural committee. But they also say West Virginia laws never contemplated someone like Jim Justice.

There's a lot of that going around.

And we conclude, as is our custom, in the great state of Oklahoma, where Blog Buckaroo Buddy Friedman of the Plains brings us the saga of how the Tulsa P.D. is failing to make sense of this whole diversity business. From the Tulsa World:

“We can do a better job,” Harper told the Tulsa World. “For a long time, we did things a certain way. Times are changing, and we’re not producing the same results. There have been classes where we’ve had no African Americans. The last two (academy classes), for whatever reason to a certain level, is unacceptable. With the way the city is comprised, we should always have African Americans in the pipeline.”

TPD recently received flak over its lack of minority representation after the most recent Tulsa Police Academy graduating class failed to feature a single black member. During last Wednesday’s City Council meeting, several people, including state Rep. Regina Goodwin, chastised the Police Department for what they believed was a repeated pattern of negligence in recruiting minorities. Goodwin, in particular, took exception to the city and Police Department celebrating a 25-member academy class that lacked African Americans.

“How is that something to be praised?” Goodwin asked city councilors. “How is that something praiseworthy?”

I'm sure this has Nothing To Do With Race, because nothing ever does.

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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