Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood is number two on this year’s list of the nation’s worst state AGs, a Competitive Enterprise Institute study finds.
The study says Hood, the lone Democrat statewide official, is “attempting to control Google’s search methods despite the gravest of First Amendment and federalism concerns; hiring outside counsel for lucrative cases, who then collected payouts that rightfully belonged to the state; [and is] repeatedly defending a clearly incompetent state pathologist’s ability to provide ‘expert’ testimony in criminal trials.”
(Photo via AG website)
The author of the study, Harvard Law School graduate Hans Bader, is a senior attorney with the Competitive Enterprise Institute. His legal experience includes First Amendment, federalism and civil rights issues.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is a DC-based non-profit public policy organization founded in 1984 whose goal is to advance the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty. CEI publishes original scholarly studies and its analysts provide commentaries to major television, radio and print news outlets.
Four criteria were used in considering the list of the nation’s worst AGs:
– Ethical breaches and selective applications of law.
– Fabricating law.
– Usurping legislative powers.
– Predatory practices.
Bader notes that “over the past 20 years many state AGs have increasingly usurped the roles of state legislatures and Congress by using lawsuits to impose interstate and national regulations and extract money from out-of-state defendants who have little voice in a state’s political process.”
Hood falls squarely in this description, using his office to seek lawsuits as a form of activism to advance his political hold on the AG office while being vigilant to allow his campaign contributors and closest legal friends to benefit from outside contracts.
Most Mississippians, however, either aren’t aware of Hood’s ethically questionable antics or don’t care since he’s been elected three times in the reddest of red states, and is now seeking his fourth term.
Perhaps reports such as these will open a few eyes.
Click here to read the full report: The Nation’s Worst State Attorneys General 2015 by Hans Bader
