Touches of gray

Nuance is not an Alabama tradition.

Things here tend to be classified, more so than in many other places, into simple dichotomies. It's good or bad, right or wrong, black or white, from the Lord or from the devil, Alabama or Auburn. (Pre-emptive strike for Auburn fans: No, I'm not saying your team is from the devil.) It's a view of the world that has the benefit of enabling quick judgments that lead to decisive actions. But it also has the drawback of those actions often not being the best choice available to solve the problem.

Once again, another complex issue will come before an Alabama decision-making body today, when the state school board will tackle "double dipping" by legislators who moonlight as two-year college employees, a practice that led to a seemingly never-ending series of troubling newspaper headlines and brought a Pulitzer Prize to downtown Birmingham this year.

Several proposals, or a combination of them, could address the concerns raised in the stories. The two-year system could seek to cut ties with the legislators to whom it no longer should be attached. The state could keep legislators from working in jobs where the duties include lobbying the government for funding. Alabama also could bar lawmakers from gaining employment with the state after their election or within a limited time beforehand.

Or in a systemic reform, the state could bar outside employment altogether and make legislative service a full-time job, which is the best solution for a host of reasons I addressed earlier. (To quote myself, "If all lawmakers have to surrender all other employment for the duration of their time on Goat Hill, no profession would face disincentives to serve that the others didn't. More importantly, we could alleviate concerns about conflicts of interest in both the public and private sectors.") And the options mentioned in the last two paragraphs are far from the only ones.

Instead, the state school board is likely today to impose a broad policy that, despite some last-minute modifications, effectively would bar anyone who works in the community college system from serving in the Legislature after 2010. And that move likely will prompt a barrage of lawsuits from the Alabama Education Association and other groups worried about losing influence, based on concerns over civil rights, separation of powers, and who knows what else.

A blanket ban and costly litigation? That is an Alabama tradition.

Well, you know his name is Saban...

Are you looking at Nick Saban's bum? Are you? Bum-looker!

(For proof I don't belong in a mental institution, click the ESPN link and scroll to, um, the bottom. Pun mostly not intended.)

If, and, and but

When you want to be president, polling in the low single digits in your party's primary has to be discouraging. Now imagine not even being the first choice among candidates with your last name.

That, in a nutshell, is why former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson abandoned his efforts to grab the Republican presidential nomination earlier this week, ceding the mantle of "GOP White House hopeful named Thompson" to former U.S. Sen. Fred Thompson, R-Tenn.

So when might the old Law & Order regular might stop the countless months of exploratory footsie and officially enter the race? Let's get a clear and concise answer from Thompson himself: "We are going to be getting in if we get in, and of course we are in the testing the waters phase. We're going to be making a statement shortly that will cure all of that. But yeah, we'll be in traditionally when people get in this race."

Bold and decisive. Eventually. Maybe.

Coke machines in the desert

To say the last two weeks have been "hot" would be to call the Hundred Years War "a brief misunderstanding," or the Pacific Ocean "a place to store some water," or the Devil Rays "not the best team in baseball." It's been humid day after triple-digit day of an unspeakably dense, choking heat, the kind that permeates your very being and saps your ability -- and sometimes even your will -- to move, or think, or breathe.

Apparently it plays tricks on your senses, too, because I've had some strange visions lately:

• Political master Karl Rove resigning after his nation-
  polarizing, divide-and-conquer, "50 percent plus one" house of cards collapsed in a Democratic takeover of Congress last year? Can't be, not with the "permanent Republican majority" in place.
• Horrific bombings killing more than 500 people in one day in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq, which heretofore had been perhaps the stablest part of the country? Not with the mission already accomplished.
• The highly touted September report from Gen. David Petraeus on the troop surge actually being written by White House officials? Nah, not even the Bush crew is that brazen.
• Joe Reed, the No. 2 guy at the Alabama Education Association, calling the state's new community college chancellor, Bradley Byrne, "the fuhrer," and in writing, no less? Too ridiculous for words.
  
• Alabama senators pushing, in the face of a $20 billion liability for state employee and retiree health benefits in the next 30 years, to give themselves state-subsidized health insurance? OK, that one I actually can believe.
  

Just imagine the hallucinations we'd have if global warming were anything more than an excuse for lazy polar bears that refuse to take personal responsibility and learn to swim.

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