Things have gone mightily sideways in Alabama these days. The state's governor, Robert Bentley, resigned on Monday rather than face impeachment over an extramarital affair that had serious political implications, and we'll get to that in a minute. His replacement, Kay Ivey, has been sworn in and has done her level best to be as Alabama as she can be. One of her first acts was to sign a bill removing judicial discretion in death penalty cases because nothing says, "Roll, Tide" like icing a few convicts—and the state just couldn't get that thing right. From AL.com:

Judicial override was initially designed to prevent runaway juries and an extra level of procedural safeguards to prevent the unjustified imposition of the death penalty, Dunham said. "That has not been the way it has worked historically in Alabama," he said. "It has been used to impose death sentences against the will of the community and has been disproportionately used in election years in cases of white victims and African American defendants," Dunham said. Alabama was an outlier with judicial override, becoming the last state to allow its use by judges for overriding life without parole recommendation to impose death, Dunham said. As a result, for a long time the practice has placed Alabama's death penalty statute in constitutional jeopardy, he said. While the legislature's bill is a step forward, Alabama is still alone on the limb because it is still the only state to allow a non-unanimous jury impose the death penalty, Dunham said. Under Alabama law a jury can vote 10-2 and still recommend death.

As time goes on, Harry Blackmun's warning against the futility of "tinkering with the machinery of death" looks ever wiser.

As for Bentley, well, he got some strange with a staffer, and he used the machinery of his office and some campaign money to cover it up, and that was enough for the legislature to threaten to give him the boot. Things came to a head, as it were, last Friday, with the release of a report by the judiciary committee of the Alabama House in which it was revealed that Bentley's affair was improbably tangled up in his administration's blatant attempt to suppress the franchise of Alabama's minority voters—specifically, the closing of 31 Department of Motor Vehicles offices in largely minority areas, which would thereby make it harder for voters inconvenient to Bentley's aspirations to obtain the necessary IDs.

The person behind this plan was Rebekah Mason, the governor's secret significant. From Al.com:

According to that report, which was compiled by lead investigator Jack Sharman, it was Mason who "proposed closing multiple driver's license offices throughout the State" and asked the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency to "put together a plan." According to Sharman's report, former ALEA head Spencer Collier understood Mason's intentions were to have the plan "rolled out in a way that had limited impact on Government Bentley's political allies." Collier, according to the report, claims he then reported the closure plan to then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange's office because he was concerned about a Voting Rights Act violation. Collier assented to the closure plan, but through the use of an "objective measure based on processed transactions per year to determine which offices to close," the report states.

(By the way, in a stunning coincidence,that AG, Big Luther Strange, was the guy appointed by Bentley to replace Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III in the United States Senate.)

(Also by the way, Bentley first met Mason, who is a former beauty queen, because of course she is, when Bentley was her Sunday school teacher. God works in mysterious ways, and she apparently worked overtime on Bob Bentley.)

So Bentley's out and, thanks to The New York Times, we learn that Alabama's vast Bible-banging community is in something of an existential crisis over the whole matter, Bentley having been a Good Christian Man for most of his public life.

To many of the conservative Christians who unexpectedly propelled Mr. Bentley, a Republican, into power, his demise was a dispiriting setback in an age when they feel their values are under siege. "We're sorry for him and his family, but at the same time, he made his choices and did what he did," said the Rev. Joe Godfrey, the executive director of the Alabama Citizens Action Program, a church-supported group that holds substantial influence in the Legislature. "I don't know that people feel had; I think they feel disappointed. Here was a man who had a chance to accomplish great things, and he failed."

See? Having a church-supported group wielding "substantial influence in the legislature" is a bad thing on the merits, and not just because it inevitably leads your politics down the blind alleys of human nature, never to return. What was it that Mr. Madison said? If all men were angels, no government would be necessary. Well, they're not, and it is, and things work best if we all don't get confused on the issue.

"People were looking for something that was more grandfatherly, something that was more wise and trustworthy and less politically slick," said Angi Stalnaker, who was Mr. Bentley's campaign manager. "They wanted someone that they could see themselves having Sunday dinner with, and, of the candidates in 2010, Robert Bentley was the one you could see inviting over for fried chicken and cornbread."

OK. But there was something else going on there, too, a dynamic that exists within theocratic conservative politics generally, and is a big symptom of the prion disease that is destroying the higher functions of the Republican party.

"The idea that moral hypocrisy hurts you among evangelical voters is not true, if you're sound on all of the fundamentals," said Wayne Flynt, an ordained Baptist minister and one of Alabama's pre-eminent Geethe fundamentals have become. At this time, what is fundamental is hating liberals, hating Obama, hating abortion and hating same-sex marriage."

And thus are four decades of Republican politics summed up in the pithiest way I've ever heard. The most important thing in fundamentalist Christian political life is remembering always whom and what to hate. This portion of the Gospels eluded me in my coming up, but maybe I slept through that class.

At the very least, the Alabama fundamentalist community is taking its embattled status well. The church-supporting groups that wield substantial influence in the legislature haven't missed a beat. From the AP, via The Athens Courier-Post:

Lawmakers on Tuesday voted 24-4 to allow Briarwood Presbyterian Church in Birmingham to establish a law enforcement department. The church says it needs its own police officers to keep its school as well as its more than 4,000 person congregation safe. Critics of the bill argue that a police department that reports to church officials could be used to cover up crimes. The state has given a few private universities the authority to have a police force, but never a church or non-school entity. Police experts have said such a police department would be unprecedented in the U.S.

Gee, if we only had real-world examples of what a bad idea religious police can be.

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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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