Good morning!
Another Halloween is in the books, and each year it reminds me why it’s one of my favorite holidays. The costumes and children’s laughter are great and all, but what drives Halloween’s high ratings for me is the prevalence of tiny Almond Joy candy bars.
Halloween gold, baby!
Frankly, ALL of the tiny candy bars are great, but it is the Almond Joy I crave most. I’m of the opinion almost all regular sized candy bars are too large to really enjoy. To be fair, I never actually eat a regular sized, much less a king sized, candy bar, nor do I ever buy them, but I do remember the last time I polished off an entire standard Snickers, I was over it by the last bite.
As a coconut lover, the mini Almond Joy is the top Halloween prize. Someone tried to convince me Friday night that they might even be keto-friendly because of the coconut. I’m willing to accept that without further research. Vivi is kind enough to give me most of hers each year. But I’m also not afraid to eat hundreds of those tiny Heath bars either. Don’t sleep on those bad boys.
During my prime candy bar-buying years as a teenager, I would never have considered buying an Almond Joy or (heaven forbid) a Heath bar. Both seemed like candy bars only old men would like. Maybe that’s why I like them so much now. (Suddenly it’s all making sense!) I can’t imagine how uncool it would have been to eat a Heath bar in front of my high school buddies. Pretty much social suicide.
The most frightening part of Halloween as a child of the ‘70s and ‘80s was what maniacs were supposedly going to do to those little candy bars. Our pre-internet world was rife with word-of-mouth tales of kids who ate candy injected with poison or who chomped into apples (apples at Halloween?!) loaded with razor blades. And absolutely the most concerned person in the United States about these candy-poisoning lunatics was my mother.
As a younger child, she terrified me with the idea one of my neighbors had been lying dormant like some kind of murderous sleeper cell for years, waiting for the perfect Halloween to start injecting cyanide into Baby Ruths. And there was no way I was taking anything from some old lady pretending to be all sweet and grandmotherly after she jammed a razor blade into all those candied apples she made.
Of course, as I got a little older, it dawned on me what a monumentally dumb criminal one would have to be to try to poison the neighborhood kids. It wouldn’t take much to lead back to your house if you were handing out injected caramels or razor blade apples. By the time I was 7 or 8, I was pretty cynical about there being any actual dangers, but it didn’t really matter. We weren’t getting a single bit of that candy until my parents had inspected each and every wrapper for needle holes or other signs of tampering.
It was maddening watching them carefully eyeball each piece like they were trying to defuse a bomb. I’m surprised they didn’t break out a jeweler's loops.
As a father, my approach was definitely shaped by those hours my parents wasted staring at un-poisoned candy. I figured the easiest way to handle things was to eat half of whatever my kids got. To “take one for the team,” so to speak. If I suddenly dropped dead, they would know to stop eating their candy. Outside the massive weight gain, it worked perfectly. I can assure you they never got even one single poisoned baby Almond Joy.
Here in the “Six Seven Decade,” the fears of razor blade apples and injected Snickers have faded away and been replaced by the dangers of fentanyl-dusted Milk Duds. The modern mythical Halloween maniac is someone who, instead of selling his expensive stockpile of fentanyl, takes delight in sprinkling it on Halloween candy, or handing out candy-colored fentanyl pills to children. This fear now has parents donning rubber gloves to look over the kids’ candy.
I’m not entirely sure how parents are supposed to identify fentanyl-laced candy, but thankfully that also has so far turned out to be an urban legend. But I do understand parents’ fears — which is why I’m offering my services.
If you still have any of those tiny Almond Joys left over, let me know and I’ll bring them back to my lab for a full analysis.
The cost of bad decisions
One of the dangers of those in government allowing their political opinions to dictate their actions is it frequently ends up costing the rest of us a fortune to defend.
For instance, the now-famous, or infamous, inflatable penis protester in Fairhope is talking about filing a lawsuit over her arrest in Fairhope a couple of weeks ago at that city’s “No King’s” protest. The arresting officer was videotaped barking back at protesters who gathered around as he rolled around on the ground with 61-year-old Jeana Renea Gamble that, “This is a family town! And I’m not going to have someone out here dressed like this. It’s abusive!”
Fairhope resident Renea Gamble is shown in her costume she wore during the Saturday, Oct. 18, "No Kings" protests. (Photos via Threads)
Tellingly, Gamble wasn’t charged with violating the city’s obscenity laws, probably because someone down at City Hall had the sense to remember the U.S. Supreme Court has been extremely protective of political speech — even raunchy or downright dirty political speech.
The officer’s statement certainly comes off as a personal opinion rather than a true reading of the law. The First Amendment’s protection of political speech doesn’t have a carve-out for “family towns,” whatever those may be.
The officer’s overzealous attempt to stop a protest he found personally offensive is likely to cost the city a hefty legal bill if Gamble decides to pursue the matter.
Similarly, public universities across the country are now facing a wave of lawsuits after firing employees for social media posts in the wake of the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk in September. Auburn University — which is no stranger to losing big money for violating its employees’ rights — had one of the first of these cases land in federal court last week.
Kevin Courtwright, who has been a landscaping supervisor at the university for nearly four years, was fired for comments made on his Facebook page regarding Kirk’s assassination. Courtwright is one of several employees fired by Auburn for such remarks, although the university has been quite circumspect about providing any details as to who was fired or what they wrote.
Courtwright’s lawsuit at least finally makes clear what he wrote.
“One fascist down; a whole socio-political movement go. FAFO nazi trash,” he replied to a lengthy post made by someone else. Certainly not the kindest or most Christian response to a young father being murdered, but I’d still say it’s protected speech.
Primarily, Courtwright reposted comments written by others that were critical of Kirk’s stance on gun rights, among other things, but which also said the violence perpetrated against him was not acceptable.
The lawsuit states that university officials first approached Courtwright’s wife, who also apparently works at Auburn, to ask her about her husband’s state of mind and to inquire as to how he would handle Kirk’s “Turning Point USA” showing up at the school. She replied that he wouldn’t have done anything about it, according to the lawsuit, and that he was mentally fine.
The suit goes on to document Courtwright’s path towards termination, mentioning multiple visits with university officials who eventually fired him. Much of the questioning he faced revolved around whether his post had encouraged violence, something he denied. Courtwright’s suit says he was told to remove the post — which he did — and that it was unlikely he would be fired. Then he was fired.
Auburn President Chris Roberts’ first public statement about the firings was included in the lawsuit. “It has come to our attention that there are Auburn employees who made social media posts that were hurtful, insensitive and completely at odds with Auburn’s values of respect, integrity and responsibility in violation of our Code of Conduct. We are terminating the employment of those individuals. We unequivocally condemn this conduct, which is antithetical to the values we hold dear in the Auburn Creed,” his statement read.
Some days later, Roberts attempted to walk back some of his statement, as reported by the Auburn Plainsman, which wrote that Roberts “stated that he regretted some elements of his statement, which caused confusion over ‘offensive speech vs threatening speech.’”
Courtwright’s termination letter stated that he was fired for: “Intimidating or intentionally imposing on the rights and privileges of other employees; Engaging in grossly offensive, obscene, or immoral conduct; Any actions deemed by the University as constituting major misconduct.”
While I can certainly understand why someone might be offended by Courtwright’s post and find it insensitive at best, AU is going to have a hard time making the case he was actually threatening violence. One would also have to wonder if, given the university’s more than 13,000 employees, that Courtwright’s post is even the most egregious thing written online by an AU employee in the past three or four hours.
On top of all of this, there’s the question of whether the AU firings were driven by U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville’s statements encouraging the state’s universities to get rid of people who posted offensive remarks about Kirk. I can’t help but wonder if all of the expense of defending the university, the hours of depositions and lost productivity are going to be worth coming down on this one employee for being an insensitive jerk on Facebook?
Waiting in line next to waste lots of taxpayer dollars in court are the elected officials pushing a bill to change the state constitution to ban naturalized U.S. citizens from holding most public offices in Alabama.
This “solution looking for a problem” as my co-publisher dubbed it this week, isn’t likely to go unchallenged. In fact, a high-ranking member of this very state government told me this week the proposed amendment would absolutely spur a massive lawsuit that will cost the state tremendously and seriously questioned why those pushing it are willing to waste taxpayer dollars for no reason.
All to stop a problem that’s not a problem. This isn’t exactly a “stop the presses!” statement, but Alabama doesn’t have any non-U.S.-born citizens who hold any of the offices that would be available only to “real” citizens if this legislation passes.
The amendment filed for next year’s legislative session, is sponsored by Sen. Donnie Chesteen, R-Geneva and was created by Secretary of State Wes Allen. Allen is currently running for lieutenant governor. Allen likened this legislation to the framers of the U.S. Constitution requiring that the president be U.S.-born.
“For the same reasons our founding fathers sought to ensure that our nation’s leader was a natural born American citizen, we believe the same standard must be required of those operating in the highest levels of our state government,” Allen said. I hate to break it to Wes, but none of the positions his legislation would “protect” from foreign influence carry one iota of the power vested in the president. This is as apples and oranges as it gets.
To say it’s a stretch to suggest the current situation in Alabama even remotely resembles the U.S. following the Revolutionary War is massive understatement. At that time, almost all of the former colonists had been English citizens and plenty were actually born across the Atlantic. It made a lot more sense to worry about pro-British loyalties 250 years ago.
Allen, of course, is playing to the anti-immigration fervor that helped put Donald Trump in office. I guess he’s trying to catch the president’s eye by pushing this truly outlandish legislation.
The amendment would also play on the fears of those who see enclaves up north electing radical Muslims to public office and who worry it will happen here. The idea of Alabama, which elects just a smattering of middle-of-the-road Democrats to public office suddenly voting in radical Muslims is beyond laughable.
But the reward for voting in this “protection” will be a fat lawsuit that wastes tax dollars and reinforces our nationwide reputation for blockheadedness. Allen needs to go watch a naturalization ceremony and to get to know some people who have done what it takes to become U.S. citizens before deciding they present a threat to this state.
But even if Allen does actually think it makes perfect sense to deny close to 80,000 U.S. citizens any opportunity to hold public office in Alabama, he really should consider whether it’s worth the time and money that will be wasted.
Waiting in D2
We spent most of the day Friday waiting for a judicial decision in Mobile City Councilman William Carroll’s lawsuit that seeks to have Samantha Ingram disqualified and a new election date set. That didn’t happen.
(Left to right) Samantha Ingram and William Carroll outside the courtroom
As we roll into Monday when Mobile’s new mayor and City Council are installed, Ingram stands to be sworn in while this legal Sword of Damocles hangs over her head.
Carroll, who lost to Ingram by a fairly wide margin, appears somewhat resigned to the fact he’ll be leaving office. In his District 2 electronic newsletter this week, he ruminated on his term ending and thanked the constituents for the opportunity to serve them.
That doesn’t mean he’s dropped his lawsuit, though.
We still have no idea how Circuit Court Judge Brandy Hambright will rule on this matter. Even if she determines Ingram casting a vote in Georgia last November negates her residency status in Mobile prior to this year’s election, there’s still the question of whether the judge will grant Carroll’s request that Ingram be barred from any special election that would follow. I’m still not sure why Ingram would be banned from a special election if she now meets the residency requirements.
My guess is if there is a special election and she is allowed to run, she’ll just beat Carroll again, wasting time and money. It would have been much better for everyone if he’d filed this suit much earlier so the matter would be settled prior to the election.
As it stands now, we’re all just waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Season over
I’d like to think positive thoughts helped the Murphy Panthers achieve what nobody thought was possible Thursday night. No, they didn’t finally win a game. But by only losing 45-0, the Panthers avoided the ignominy of giving up 500 points over the course of the season.
Murphy High School Panthers
Officially, the Panthers were outscored 495-12 this season. That’s a particularly rough campaign. I suppose first-time coach Sherman Williams has nowhere to go but up from here. I’m still amazed he was able to get enough kids to field a team to show up for their weekly beating by the end of the season. That in and of itself is a testament to his powers of persuasion.
Coaches in the school district are already being fired left and right, so it’s hard to imagine there won’t at least be some discussion about whether Williams should continue at Murphy. He is a former college football player, though, and right now that appears to be the primary requirement for a slate of jobs in Alabama. If he is fired from coaching, politics awaits.
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