All the governor's women
There's a certain poetic justice in the fact that a woman is Alabama's new governor after fallen Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley resigned Monday rather than face impeachment over crimes that surfaced during an investigation of his alleged affair with a top aide.
Bentley, a 74-year-old Republican, former Baptist deacon and so-called "family-values conservative" stepped down amid the reverberations of his taped love yearnings and sexually charged comments to 45-year-old political adviser Rebekah Caldwell Mason. An investigative report for the House Judiciary Committee also found that Bentley encouraged an "atmosphere of intimidation" to keep the story under wraps and abused the power of his office by directing law enforcement officers to track down and seize the telephone recordings.
After Bentley resigned, Kay Ivey, the first Republican woman elected lieutenant governor of Alabama, entered the Alabama Senate chamber for her swearing-in ceremony "to a thunderous round of applause," according to The Associated Press.
Gov. Ivey, 72, is Alabama's second female governor, preceded only by Lurleen Wallace, who in 1966 ran and was elected as a surrogate for her husband, George Wallace. He had served four terms and could not by law seek re-election.
The investigative report about Bentley also contained text messages that the fallen governor sent to his aide and love interest. They were intercepted by Bentley's then-wife, Dianne Bentley. The former Mrs. Bentley was able to read the messages because they also showed up on the governor's state-issued iPad, which he had given her.
Don't you just love karma?
Warm ending for cold cases
We've all heard the adage that truth is stranger than fiction.
But a 52-year-old inmate already serving a 50-year prison sentence for kidnapping and rape pleading guilty Monday to three cold-case murders here certainly brings that proverb to life again.
Christopher Jeffre Johnson pleaded guilty Monday to three counts of first-degree murder for the killings of Sean and Donny Goetcheus and Melissa Ward. He was sentenced by Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole to three separate life sentences with no possibility of parole - on top of the 50-year sentence he has been serving since 2014 for the kidnapping and rape of two teenage girls.
Police said that when they initially questioned him about that crime, he also admitted killing Ward, 33, who was last seen alive on Oct. 29, 2004, getting into a pickup truck outside a Bi-Lo grocery store on East 23rd Street. Two months later, her body was discovered on Cash Canyon Road in Lookout Valley. He accompanied detectives to the crime scene and pointed out where he said he left Ward's body and clothing seven years before, information only the killer would have known, detectives said.
And when the DA's office indicted him for Ward's murder and interviewed him about that case, they also asked him about the Goetcheus brothers who were found dead inside their Brainerd home on Jan. 9, 1997. In those conversations with investigators, Johnson admitted going to their home to obtain a videotape he said showed illegal activity by a local businessman. He told investigators he got into an argument with one brother and shot him, then he realized the other brother was home and shot him to eliminate a witness.
"A lot of hard work and effort went into [this case] for many, many years, and it is good to see that it's come to a conclusion," Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston said.
The work has been part of Pinkston's "Cold Case Unit," which he created after taking office on Sept. 30, 2014, to review and investigate about 200 unsolved homicides and missing persons cases in Hamilton County. Nine have now been solved.
Good job, folks.
Comcast ad hits buzzsaw
Comcast has proven once again that customer service is not its forte.
A company Facebook advertising post of recent weeks lit up the internet, saying "Introducing Gig-speed Internet to the city of Chattanooga."
Huh? Did Comcast miss Chattanooga's nickname "Gig City" - so dubbed because EPB introduced it here in 2010?
Answer: No they couldn't have missed it, because Comcast unsuccessfully sued in 2008 to block EPB from rolling out fiber to every home in the city.
The advertisement post, viewed more than 274,000 times, brought some unkind responses:
"You guys realize that was already a thing right?" said one man.
And a woman wrote: "I'd rather birth a cactus than deal with Comcast ever again. Gig speeds have been here for years. Buck up."
Comcast says the backlash is the result of a misunderstanding. The cable company didn't mean to imply it was rolling out the city's first gig service, Rather it was introducing Xfinity's first gig service for residential customers.
Perhaps it's like what Kellyanne Conway has said about President Donald Trump: "You have to look at what's in his heart."