By Staff
Bob Ingram, Alabama Scene
MONTGOMERY – There is something eyebrow-raising about the controversy over naming Gov. Bob Riley as the special master (overseer) of an effort to develop a statewide computerized voter registration database.
The responsibility for establishing the voter database was initially given to Secretary of State Nancy Worley, but for whatever reason she missed the deadline. The federal courts then stepped in and gave Gov. Riley the authority to do the job. That is when some of the Democratic leadership began to howl in protest — State Democratic Chairman Joe Turnham, and Joe Reed, long time spokesman for black Democrats.
Both filed motions in court claiming that Riley should not have the responsibility for this project because he is a Republican running for reelection in November. Ironically, there was no protest from them when Worley had the assignment, and she is a Democrat running for reelection in November.
But somewhere in all this noise, there is an uneasy feeling that there is more to this controversy than meets the eye. There's an uneasy feeling that there are some people who don't want the state to have a computerized voter data base. I hope I am wrong.
Federal agents raided the Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge near Decatur late last month and arrested 27 men for lewd conduct and indecent exposure.
One of the men arrested was a prominent member of the state bar — Gary Huckaby of Huntsville, a partner in the state's largest law firm –(Bradley, Arant, Rose &White) and a past president of the Alabama state bar association.
Huckaby is perhaps the leading First Amendment (freedom of the press) attorney in the state. He represents a number of newspapers and was the legal counsel for Sports Illustrated when it was sued by former Alabama Coach Mike Price two years ago.
An attorney for Huckaby said he would enter a plea of not guilty for Huckaby and "vigorously defend this case."
A similar raid at the Wildlife Refuge a year ago resulted in the arrest of seven men on similar charges. The U. S. attorney's office said it had received numerous complaints of lewd acts at the refuge.
This trip down memory lane is provoked by the announcement a few days ago that very soon the name of Parisian will be gone forever from Birmingham and Alabama.
As a small boy growing up in northeast Alabama in the 1930s, those rare trips we made to Birmingham — my widowed mother had no car, so we always rode with a friend — were one of the highlights of my year. And there was a similarity to all of those expeditions. Mother would shop the same stores on every trip, with me and my two sisters tagging along: Loveman's, Pizitz and, of course, Parisian. And always we would have lunch at Britling's Cafeteria.
Loveman's, Pizitz and Britling's have long since gone, and now last week came the announcement that Parisian — birthed in Birmingham in 1877– will soon be only a name out of the past.
Reading of the demise of Parisian was not unlike reading an obituary of an old friend.
We in the media couldn't get to our word processors or TV microphones quick enough to expound on this story. Sadly, we were so anxious to put Barkley on the front page and the six o'clock news that we made a bonehead mistake. We forgot to read the state Constitution.
Charles Barkley will not run for governor of Alabama in 2010 because he cannot; the state Constitution forbids it. One of the qualifications of a governor is that he must have been a legal resident of the state for seven years. Barkley is not a legal resident of Alabama, and even if he became one tomorrow the first election in which he could run for governor would be 2014.
And by then most folks will have forgotten how well Barkley could dribble on the floor.
Bob Ingram's syndicated weekly political column appears in dozens of newspapers across Alabama. He is a native of Cherokee County.