So our freshly-minted governor managed to get himself some unflattering national attention over the weekend with his move to jettison a Bredesen-era order requiring the governor and his staff to publicly reveal their incomes. This can't exactly be called a surprise, since Bill Haslam had resisted calls from political opponents to publicize his finances during the campaign. (There were a lot of insinuations about what he might be hiding in there, but one possibility is just that there's a political difference between knowing your governor is a rich guy and knowing he's a really, really, really rich guy.)
But at least Haslam didn't use his inauguration day to preach--unlike new Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, who shortly after being sworn in on Monday spoke at a Birmingham church and announced that "Anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." An aide later said the governor only meant it in a good way, of course. He doesn't want anyone in his state to burn eternally in a lake of fire, or whichever vision of eternal damnation for nonbelievers he embraces. That saving souls is not actually his job as governor may need to be clarified for him.
It's a sorry state of affairs when our choices for executive leadership are between plutocrats and theocrats. But we'll still take the former. At least they let us drink.
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