On Friday morning, I heard one county commissioner up for re-election for the umpteenth time say that while the voters had said he couldn't run again, and the Tennessee Supreme Court had said he couldn't run again, and the State Attorney General had said he couldn't run again, he wasn't sure whether the law applied to him because nobody had come up to him directly and told him he couldn't run again.
I wonder how well that defense will work the next time I get stopped for speeding.
"I know what the law says, Officer, but nobody told me specifically that it applied to me!"
"By golly, you're right!" he will say. "You can go about your business. Have a nice day!"
Yeah, right.
Any politician with an ounce of integrity (I know, I know, but try and pretend such a critter exists) would have withdrawn from the election immediately. Unsurprisingly, not one did.
And now their hypocrisy has been given cover by the Knox County Election Commission, which declined to enforce the law by allowing their names to remain on the ballot for the upcoming primaries.
Pathetic.
UPDATE: Speaking of incompetence, I've corrected a couple of glaring errors in this piece, thanks to Mike Silence. I said it was a city councilperson when it was actually a county commissioner and I mistakenly called the Knox County Election Commission the State Election Commission. Those errors tend to creep in when I write late at night.
Of course, this post was written at 9AM, so I'm not sure whether that excuse will fly...unless of course I was up all night, making 9AM late at night for me. Yeah, that'll work.
Posted by Rich at April 3, 2006 9:07 AM | TrackBack