That’s the breathless advisory concerning a coming news conference by Lt. Gov. Bill Halter.
Let’s see.
He paid off his campaign debt?
He’s running for U.S. senate as a write-in against Mark Pryor?
He’s running as a third-party candidate for president?
Or maybe they’ve gotten word that he purchased — through his hired canvassing company — sufficient signatures to get the state lottery on the ballot in November. I expect so. I don’t know about you, but I’ve already begun spending my Powerball winnings.
UPDATE: Yes, the secretary of state’s office confirms, the lottery has qualified. Easily.
Now the office turns to reviewing signatures on the amendment to make adoption and foster parenting more difficult as a means of punishing gay people. The only question is how far off the required number the acknowledged insufficient total will prove to be. I wonder if the number will be so far off that somebody might finally challenge the essential fraud of claiming you’ve reached the signature requirement when you have stated for the record, as lead organizer Jerry Cox did, that you have not. By claiming the requirement has been met, you qualify for more time to gather more signatures.
UPDATE II: I confess having a little sarcastic fun at Halter’s expense because he’s just so deadly serious about all this. But let me defend him, as I did Mike Huckabee on an earlier occasion when Huckabee was using the platform of his office to promote a ballot initiative. IT’S LEGAL. It’s a public policy debate. A constitutional officer has free rein to use his or her office and staff to promote what he or she believes to be worthy public policies. If that means buying lunch at the Sizzler and a tank of gas to get a staffer up to Lepanto to talk to the citizenry about a lottery, so be it. I earlier defended Huckabee’s staff — one of my rare ethical agreements with him — for working on his ballot initiatives and spending some relatively piddling amounts in the process. I can do no less for Bill Halter. Spending state money on a partisan race is another matter entirely. You can’t do that. Or out-of-state travel on the public’s dime for one’s own personal political aggrandizement. You shouldn’t do that. That’s not the case here.