AG Watch

Pull on your hip waders! It is gettin’ pretty deep along the ArkLahoma border.

Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson has had it with the…ahem…phosphorus that little Arkansas chickens dump into the Illinois River. Water, like something better not named, always runs downhill-in this case, into Oklahoma.

Chickens aren’t the only ones dropping P into the H2O. Edmondson’s actions are certainly unpopular in Arkansas, but have also spurred the Oklahoma legislature to consider revoking the home state AG’s power to sue.

Kickbacks, of course, are at the bottom of the coop. Edmonson has farmed out the litigation for the suit to campaign contributors; one-third of the booty from the case will go to firms whose letterheads coincide happily with the Edmondson donor list (Riggs, Orbison, Turpen, Neal).

In a seeming effort to balance the scales of suspect donations, the Oklahoma Scenic Rivers Commission has accepted a $1.1 M “grant” from the poultry industy in exchange for a bevy of “commendations.” Edmondson objects to the grant and his suit remains. The various interests of the state clearly conflict.

So many contradictions and countervailing contributions make for a situation as furcated as the Illinois River itself. Nothing apprehensible grows from this fertilizer of shady deals and chicken dung; the whole heap amounts to a multiple choice money-grab.