All Muck is Local

This one may be the crooked politician(s) story of the year. It's a doozy.

Simon Speights is the mayor of Lipscomb, Alabama. He got the job back in 2005
when his predecessor resigned and the City Council voted him in. But Speights
isn’t exactly eligible to be mayor.

Speights pleaded
guilty to burglary in 1994, and while his voting rights have since been
restored, his right to run for political office has not. Records show Speights
occasionally uses the surname Speight, which might account for no one realizing
the mayor’s criminal record. Oh, and he’s driving
a stolen car (no one knows how he got it). And he’s collecting
more than twice his authorized salary (no one knows how that happened). Last
week, the local district attorney demanded
that a judge remove the mayor from office.

But who would replace him? The
mayor pro tempore is Gaston Randle, a city councilman and the former police
commissioner. Randle might not be the man people want in charge; last month he resigned
his commissioner job after being indicted for stalking a local Hispanic woman.
And more recently, Randle has been charged with extortion, bribing and
impersonating an officer.

Sweet Home Alabama!