Congratulations to Alabama State Senator Charles Bishop for giving Alabama some much needed national attention.  You can’t beat getting linked by Drudge.  Unfortunately, the attention was due to his brand of third world style politics.  According to Bishop, Senator Lowell Barron called him a son of a bitch.  For a simple Arkansas born redneck like Bishop ‘dems fightin’ words.  He cold cocked Barron and the two were quickly restrained.

The good news?  There’s video!

Fortunately for Barron the punch landed on his head, so there’s no likelihood of any long term damage.

Now I don’t begrudge Bishop for wanting to slug Barron.  He would be the most deserving recipient of such violence in the Alabama Senate.  However such actions are unacceptable.  Political disagreements in a civilized society, or even the Alabama legislature, must be settled through dialog.

As usual, Bishop was good for some entertaining quotes.

“I was raised in the woods of Arkansas and people don’t say that about your mom.”  Translation: I wasn’t raised any better than this.

“I love every one of you. Most of all I love this chamber. I’m going home and you all have a good day.”  Was Barron in the room when he said this?

“We are going to have to start acting like adults and quit acting like children.”  Starting when?

“If he calls me that again, it’ll happen again.”  He does sound repentant.

So just how proud has Bishop made his constituents over the course of this year?

Early in the term he proudly proclaimed that he wanted to get rid of all the “Mexicans” during a protest over the legislature’s 62% raise.  He later said that he meant “illegal Mexicans,” but I was in the crowd and it was pretty clear that he was throwing out bigoted red meat (which most of the crowd sadly ate up).

Bishop firmly opposed the state’s slavery apology - some might say that he too firmly opposed it.  During the course of that debate he called the resolutions sponsor, Hank Sanders (who is black), “Big Boy.”  While not overtly “racist,” it certainly carried with it some racial undertones.

Earlier in the term, Bishop almost got into another altercation with Senator Little.

Personally I don’t think that it is too early to strip Bishop of his Senate seat.

• How to repair the Alabama Senate
• Supporting Bishop is a bad move
• Double standard
• He’ll be here all week, don’t forget to tip the bartender
• GOP Coming Around?

This entry was posted by Brian on Friday, June 8th, 2007 at 5:18 am and is filed under Alabama, Dumbest Legislators, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Please note the copyright policy.