Maybe it was a joke. I hope it was a joke.

But man, it doesn't seem funny now.

Mike Hubbard, then the speaker of the Alabama House of Representatives, was sucking up to former Gov. Bob Riley in an email, as he often did. It was September of 2011 and Hubbard was riding high politically. With help from a series of Democratic scandals and an ethical high horse backed up by a slate of tough new ethics laws, Hubbard led a GOP sweep of Alabama. He was, many said, the most powerful politician in Alabama.

But he was suffering financially.

He could not figure out how being speaker of the House was not more lucrative. He wondered out loud if Bob Riley & Associates might have something he could, you know, do to earn a few bucks.

"I need to be a salesman for BR&A," Hubbard wrote. "Except for those ethics laws. Who proposed those things?! What were we thinking?"

Yeah. Not so funny these days.

Because it has been almost seven years since those emails between two of the men who championed those ethics laws, three-and-a-half years since Hubbard was charged with breaking a slew of them, two years since he was convicted on a dozen counts and sentenced to four years in prison, and a year since his lawyers appealed his case.

Man, it's hard not to think about Mike Hubbard these days.

Because -- 684 days after sentencing - Hubbard remains out of jail. And because, thanks to Hubbard and his ghastly greed, Alabama politicians have begun to reexamine that ethics law they were so proud of in 2010.

Now - as with most laws passed by your Legislature -- they must deal with the unintended consequences of their reforms.

In this case, the unintended consequence of a tough ethics law is that Alabama politicians themselves face the real possibility of punishment.

And that just won't do.

Legislators and the lobbyists who court them and the principals who pay the lobbyists are scared to death the laws that clipped Hubbard will bite them, too. So lawmakers this year set in motion plans to take another whack at the law - a year-long effort to clarify what is and is not illegal.

The first meeting of the Code of Ethics Clarification and Reform Commission was last week. Next month it will hold a public hearing, where lawyers and advocates for the guilty or would-be guilty will talk about how unfair it is to hold these people to such standards of integrity.

It will continue throughout the summer, and by next year will decide whether to scrap the ethics law, or to replace it using language from a bill developed by prosecutors as a base, or to leave it alone.

Remember Mike Hubbard as it unfolds. I fear these guys - in the heart of the Briber Belt - don't want to make standards for Alabama politicians and enablers higher.

They want to make them harder to prosecute.

Who proposed those ethics laws? What were they thinking?

I can't give you a good answer on why Mike Hubbard is out of jail.

Maybe, as conventional wisdom holds, Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals judges are so political they'd put off ruling on a case of this magnitude until after the June primary, just to save themselves heartburn. Or maybe high-profile people with high-profile lawyers get more consideration than the rest of us.

Maybe, as some legal experts contend, they are just taking the time to do it right.

Maybe this commission will do the same.

I hope that's not a joke.

Note: Updated 9:30 a.m. May 23 to correct that Hubbard ruling is before the Alabama Court of Criminal appeals, and not the Alabama Supreme Court.

John Archibald is a columnist for Reckon by AL.com. His column appears in The Birmingham News, the Huntsville Times, the Mobile Register and AL.com. Write him at jarchibald@al.com.