Is Charles Foti guilty of arrogance or incompetence?

This is an Opinion Letter in the Shreveport Times about Charles Foti. It appears, from all reports, that it has sent the DailyKingFish.com lunatic fringe of left wingers in Louisiana politics over the edge. I will not provide a link at the risk that any hits on his sitemeter will give the little fabricating weasel a feeling of accomplishment.

HT: www.thedeadpelican.com

Richard M. John: Is Charles Foti guilty of arrogance or incompetence?

July 27, 2007

There is a story I have heard repeated on numerous occasions about the duties of the Louisiana lieutenant governor's job. It is something to the effect that one of the office holders used to wake up every morning and call the governor's office. He would ask the governor's aide if the governor was still alive. Every morning the lieutenant governor would get the same answer, "Yes, Sir." He would then put on his golf clothes and head to the golf course, since he had no responsibility other than filling the seat of a vacated governorship.

Unlike the lieutenant governor's job, the attorney general for the state of Louisiana is the chief legal officer in the state and his duties are numerous. According to the Louisiana Constitution, the attorney general is to protect the interest of the state of Louisiana and is given the power to institute, prosecute or intervene in any civil matter, If requested by a district attorney, he may advise and assist in the prosecution of any criminal case, and upon a proper showing to a district court he may institute, prosecute or intervene in any criminal prosecution. These duties, as further defined by the Legislature, are extensive and are essential to the welfare of the state and its citizens.

How is it then that with such vast responsibility and extensive duties, the current attorney general, Charles Foti, continues to find the time and the resources to take actions outside the scope of the duties of his office and yet fail to perform those tasked to him? Whether it is incompetence or arrogance, I do not know; but, I do know he has an obvious problem carrying out the duties trusted to him by the voters of this state.

While he has no problem using his office to issue "Attorney General Opinions" for his political crony, John Breaux, he cannot find the time to issue an opinion on the legality of a crony's apparently improper use of public transportation for political campaigning in Monroe. While he has no problem blatantly overstepping the boundaries of his office to attempt to prosecute Dr. Ann Pou and using the prestige of his office to alert the media to the investigation, he cannot admit he bungled the whole prosecution because he did not have authority to do anything in the first place. He can punt the whole Pou mess to Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan, but he cannot admit he made a mistake and end the entire charade. He can certainly find time to belittle Jordan's office when a grand jury, looking at the evidence gathered by Foti, found the evidence to be insufficient to even justify proceedings against Dr. Pou, but he cannot recognize he violated the sanctity of the grand jury proceedings, for the sake of salvaging his own tattered reputation, by discussing evidence presented to the grand jury with the media. These are only a few examples of the attorney general's failure to understand the very laws he is responsible for upholding.

Attorney General Foti has spent more than 33 years on the public dole. He has evidently forgotten he has been vested with a public trust to do a particular job and not given free reign to help his cronies and push his own personal and political agenda. If the hurricanes of 2005 have taught Louisiana anything, it is we cannot continue to allow those who run our state to do so with a laissez-faire attitude. If we refuse to hold our politicians responsible and require they act in the public trust rather than their own, we may all be washed away whether or not the levees hold.

UPDATE:  I will from time to time add other blogging on this subject.
Houston's Clear Thinkers