Pick a political party or platform. It doesn't matter.

You can't tell the difference through the dirt.

Alabama has the Big Three Scandals now - House Speaker Mike Hubbard is on trial, Governor Robert Bentley is under investigation for his actions and infatuations, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore may get tossed off the bench again for refusing to obey the rules of the court.

Or, as we say in the Heart of Dixie, business as usual.

Sure they're all Republicans. But that's just because Republicans are hot right now. Since you can't get elected to statewide office as a Democrat, you can't screw up on the same scale.

But don't worry. This is an equal opportunity sleaze state. It is the thing that unifies us all. It's black and white and Republican and Democratic. It's rich and not-so-much. It spreads across the land and it reads like a novel you wouldn't believe.

In Birmingham the mayor and a council member fight in the back room during a council meeting, and ambulances come for both. Alexander City's mayor - and his wife - are arrested after a brawl with a council member. The mayor is immortalized issuing a groin-high karate kick. And the mayor of Talladega - he'd been elected after serving prison time for defrauding the city of Talladega - was beat about the face and head by a bat-wielding former friend.

And all that's just in the last 10 months.

In Mobile, former county commissioner Stephen Nodine - at times a Republican and others a Libertarian - was charged with killing his mistress, but pled down to perjury, harassment and ethics violations. Then he tried a run for Congress - before drug-related probation violations last year stopped him short.

Alabama puts the can in scandal.

Clockwise from top left: Alexander City fight, former Talladega Mayor Larry Barton takes a beating, Former Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine is arrested, and House Speaker Mike Hubbard is on trial.

One former governor - Democrat Don Siegelman - is still in prison on corruption charges. And who can forget Gov. Guy Hunt, the first Republican governor elected since reconstruction, who was convicted of using inaugural funds for his own use?

Lovers of Alabama irony will note that Hunt was elected because of blunders and scandals by Democrats Charlie Graddick and Bill Baxley. Baxley is now the lawyer defending Hubbard - the architect of the Republican takeover in Montgomery and former party head - from 23 ethics charges.

Former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford is still in prison, too. He went there after taking bribes from Al LaPierre, the former executive director of the Democratic Party , and Bill Blount, the former party chairman.

Two Jefferson County Democratic county commissioners were convicted of crimes that helped drive the county into the nation's largest municipal bankruptcy. Two Republicans did the same, and Gary White is still in prison.

Another former Republican commissioner did time for spending money from a kids' charity at casinos and such. A Democratic former commissioner did a stint for passing money to charities that kicked it back to him.

We can go on and on and on, because this is the real Neverending Story.

There was the Republican Birmingham city councillor (and member of the Council of Conservative Citizens) who was convicted of child porn. There was the Democratic legislator who passed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the "Heritage to Hope Foundation" only because he got to keep 40 percent of it.

That's the Alabama way. Set up a worthy-sounding charity and then pilfer it.

But it's the same with politics. They claim an ideology, pit us against each other, then collect money and power to enrich themselves and their friends.

Republicans don't have a market on sleaze any more than the Democrats did when Hubbard called the GOP victory "a referendum on the (Democrat) culture of corruption."

It's not about politics. Or party. Those are just the things they want you to believe.

If they can make it partisan, perhaps you won't see what really matters: Their character.

Or the lack of it.