Those squirrels are everywhere!

Do you ever have one of those days when you just can’t concentrate? This was one of those days for me.

Admittedly, I was already giddy when I went to bed last night (even though I ended up staying up working on the blog entry a bit longer than usual), having gotten an alert from Matt Campbell’s Blue Hog Report about Leslie Rutledge.

Rutledge is that gun-totin’, pro-life Christian lady running for Arkansas attorney general on the platform of fighting Barack Obama. Not do the actual job of an attorney general, but fight the president of the United States who is basically a lame duck. Because that’s a smart use of state resources.

David Sterling and Leslie Rutledge during an interview at KUAR before facing each other in the Republican primary runoff.
Photo by Michael Hibblen, KUAR News.

Rutledge had already had a bad few days, having been passed over for an endorsement by the NRA, despite being a gun-totin’, pro-life Christian lady, in favor of the Democrat running for the position, Nate Steel, who has an actually well-rounded legislative and legal background.

Tuesday evening, though, Pulaski County Circuit Clerk Larry Crane canceled her voter registration in the county, having found that she also had registered to vote in Washington, D.C., and Virginia (where she had lived while working for Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign and later for the Republican National Committee). No, he didn’t do it on a whim, but began investigating after receiving a complaint last week about Rutledge, along with copies of her other two registrations, from a group called the Arkansas Libertarian Coalition (the state libertarian party says it’s never heard of it).

Mike Huckabee, one of Leslie Rutledge’s former employers, speaking to a gathering of another, the Republican National Committee. Photo by Susan Walsh/AP.

Rutledge, of course, blames the revelations (the latest as well as those about her scattered and apparently cloudy work history, what most people would call job-hopping) on politics and says it’s just another attempt to thwart her campaign to become the first female (and first Republican) attorney general for the state. No matter what comes out, she’ll blame it on politics, usually Chicago-style, D.C. and/or extreme liberal.

I just don’t buy it; in just the period between her law school graduation in 2001 and 2007 when she went to work for the Huckabee campaign, she held five jobs, according to the Arkansas Times‘ Max Brantley, the longest for three years as a clerk for family friend and Court of Appeals Judge Jo Hart. In the last position for the state Department of Human Services before the Huckabee campaign, her termination papers (changed from voluntary to involuntary about a week later) had a “do-not-rehire” note and a code used to signify “gross misconduct” attached.

The job-hopping alone is enough to make me wary, as is her constant campaigning to fight Barack Obama (um, that’s not the job of the state attorney general; perhaps you should read up on what the job entails). But the thing that sticks in my craw the most is her blaming criticism of her on dirty politics.

Image from quickmeme.com.

Sorry, Leslie, that’s not it. Did you really expect (especially considering that you’ve worked on campaigns) that no one would look into your background? Job-hopping doesn’t convey responsibility and playing victim all the time is a few dozen steps backward for women, so drop the “first woman attorney general” spiel.

It isn’t because the county clerk is a Democrat, or because the governor is a Democrat, and there is no vast left-wing conspiracy at play.

It’s a bit of karma, I think, and it’s because, from what we’ve seen, you are not qualified and apparently have little understanding of the law, not just the thing about voter registration, but about ad coordination between candidates and super-PACs. Which is kinda important for the position of attorney general.

So, as if the Leslie Rutledge thing weren’t enough, I could actually move my right arm this morning more than a few inches (and could rotate it!!!), which I hadn’t been able to do properly in about a week.

Five and a half years ago, I shattered my right proximal humerus (which wasn’t at all funny and was on my birthday, no less) and, after surgery, was in physical therapy for several months. Every once in a while since then, I’ll have flare-ups where my arm will spasm or get unusually stiff, but the longest any had lasted until this past week was about three days, and as of Tuesday, this one had lasted six days.

Waking up this morning with only a little bit of pain was such a relief that I was actually doing happy dances most of the day. Add to that some great response to today’s column (people on the paper’s website actually thanked me for the column, and I had some lovely emails and calls as well!) and it was just really hard to stay focused.

And then there was a hilarious Stephen Colbert clip on the “latte salute,” sent by an email friend. It was a good thing I wasn’t drinking or eating anything when I watched it.

Schadenfreude and giddiness make for a day when you’re just constantly being distracted by squirrels.

Damn squirrels. How they got in my office I’ll never know. 😀