Posted: December 21, 2011 at 7:26 pm

“Knee-Walking Drunk” Endorses Open Container Guy

Bitterroot state senator Jim Shockley’s citation earlier this year for drinking canned red beer while driving inspired the Republican to step down from his position. (He chaired the legislative committee drafting tougher DUI laws.) But, it didn’t stop him from accepting the endorsement of former Senator Conrad Burns (R-Mont.), whose infamous “I’m ready to go get knee-walking drunk!” foot-in-mouth syndrome led to his Senate demise.

Shockley announced the endorsement on his campaign website.

Perhaps this will become a kind of theme, a stream of endorsements by drinking advocates. Maybe those involved in the infamous and tragic Shane Hedges DUI accident and death of the House Majority Leader (in which Judy Martz barely escaped a prosecution for evidence tampering) will chime in. Rs have kept a steady pace since then so there are lots of endorsement opportunities for the campaign.

A review:

Of course, there is Alan Hale, Shockley’s colleague in the state house who is campaigning in favor of drinking and driving.

Brad Johnson, the former Secretary of State, got pulled over for a DUI and went subsequently to treatment, though it didn’t seem to faze him: from a rehab center, he actively continued campaigning in his PSC race and is now running again for Secretary of State, a position voters ousted him from in 2008.

Greg Barkus got a few DUIs on the road over the last decade; Scott Boggio, a GOP legislator from Red Lodge, ran up on a curb while driving around with another repub, Elsie Arntzen, and got pulled over, and turned out to be massively drunk, though of course Arntzen, a DUI Task Force member, expressed the usual right-wing-passenger-shock, and said she “had no idea” driver Boggio was impaired.

And of course then Barkus went for the hat-trick, a third DUI, this time in style by running a boat up into the rocky shore of Flathead Lake, causing injuries all around, with passenger Rehberg, drunk himself, taking a page out of Arntzen’s script and saying he was shocked to hear that the driver was impaired.

Then there was recently Brad Molnar, who mowed his car into that of some hapless girl just last year, and fled the scene and was placed under a restraining order from any contact with the victim.

Drinking, Driving, Boating, Hit and Runs. What is most important is that Republicans will often fight publicly for stiffer sentencing for criminals, and against the evil smoking of marijuana, and in favor of “values”.

Posted: November 11, 2010 at 7:53 am

Barkus

The crooks who calls themselves judges and prosecutors have given Republican State Senator Greg Barkus a free pass, a slap on the wrist, for being twice the legal limit drunk (and that measurement was taken several hours after the accident) and almost killing several people and putting one in a coma. No jail time, and in three years the conviction will be completely wiped off his record. This even though Barkus has at least one prior DUI. As Michael Jamison reminded us last year,

“The defendant, Barkus … has a previous arrest for driving under the influence. The prosecutor’s deputy attorney has a previous arrest for DUI.

The original judge’s ex-husband – who was city attorney in a nearby town – has a previous arrest for DUI.

Even Barkus’ own defense attorney has a previous DUI arrest. The lawyer’s case, however, was dismissed, in part because the arresting officer was not available to testify – he had been killed by a drunken driver.”

And yet, Ed Corrigan, the Flathead Prosecutor, cooks it up so that a week after the election (Corrigan just got re-elected last week), he’d give his old buddy a slap on the wrist. I’m told by a prominent Flathead community member that Corrigan’s wife and Barkus’s wife are very close friends. Anyone with any information on that should feel free to pipe in.

Important question here is whether Corrigan and Judge McKeon treat normal citizens with the same level of punishment for a similar type of incident. Someone needs to do that research.

Once again, we learn that there are two things Republicans do very well, drink, and cover up their drunken messes. And, let’s remember, Shane Hedges got a similar treatment when he killed the House majority leader trying to drive him in a drunken stupor on an icy road.

The truth is that DUI is a terrible problem in this state, but nobody seems to want to do anything about it. Especially not legislators, for many of whom drinking is a full-time job. Alan Hale, a new legislator (R), just elected in the Helena area, says that the laws are too strict and he wants to make them more lenient.

If your children are driving tonight, remember that there are drunks driving out there, who had that extra one for the road, because they knew they could.

You’re also going to want to read James Conner’s take on this at the Flathead Memo.