A local conservative stopped by the office for a visit last week. It's not often that he and I agree on matters of public policy, but I respect him very much and always enjoy our thought-provoking conversations.

That's why I feel I disappointed myself – and him, I suspect – when I answered his first and only question with a ramble worthy of a man who believes the second gunman on the Grassy Knoll was one of the little green men who survived the 1947 Roswell UFO crash.

My friend asked what I thought about the bingo verdicts handed down earlier this month in Montgomery. Now, I realize that since football season is almost here many locals have spent the majority of the news-gathering portion of their day for the past few weeks picking apart clues from the Paul Finebaum show, trying to piece together the identity of Cam Newton's father's alleged secret “bag man” (insert “cuckoo” sound effect here).

With that in mind, I'll briefly recap the trial.

Last fall, about a month before the November elections, federal prosecutors blasted into Alabama with indictments for a group of nine businessmen, state legislators and lobbyists whom they alleged had been conspiring for months to illegally spend millions in the fight to legalize gambling in Alabama.

Since my friend already knew all the details of the case, the first verbal volley he got from me was a rhetorical question asking how the defendants' alleged “crimes” were in any way different from the alleged suspicious acts performed by a gang of politicians on the other side of the bingo debate who (purportedly) took millions from Mississippi Indian casinos to help promote their side of the bingo argument.

“You'll have to ask the feds why our former governor, 'Choctaw Bob' Riley, was not also indicted,” I said. “It all sounds the same to me.”

Looking back, the use of that nickname was probably my friend's first hint that my answer wasn't going to be sensible or well-reasoned.

And, I continued, it was also possible that the announcement of the indictments was timed for maximum effect, coming as they did just a few weeks before the election. Further, I said, in the case of at least one legislator it could be argued strongly that it was the stigma associated with the indictment that cost him his reelection.

It was at that moment that my friend's right eye began to twitch involuntarily. My Clouseau-like cogitations, I remember thinking, were obviously hitting their mark.

I further extrapolated that the ultimate, dismal failure of the prosecution to secure a “single, solitary conviction” despite bringing a total of 124 charges was further proof that the entire episode had been “a sham perpetrated to satisfy 'Choctaw Bob' and his family who obviously were owed a favor for something shady they'd done previously on behalf of the conservative cause thus despite the lack of a single shred of hard evidence they were awarded a federal anti-bingo 'show trial' (air quotes with my fingers) as compensation for their underhanded efforts”.

My friend smiled as he wiped the spittle off his glasses. Then he stood to leave, shook my hand, and wished me a good afternoon.

But I didn't have one. I spent the rest of the day thinking about what a lunatic I would have to be to believe something so farcical could be factual, even if my fictionalized evil-doers were all, appropriately, Cheney-like Republicans. Hellfire, it's probably been months (or at least a couple of weeks) since anyone in Cherokee County peddled such a harebrained conspiracy as mine as if it were the indisputable truth.

Goodness knows, I sincerely hope the twisted, convoluted plot to which I subjected my friend last week will be the final flight into Psychoville that anyone around here embarks upon for some time.

Sadly, 2012 is just around the corner and it will be an election year, so I won't hold my breath.