Author: Rob Holbert

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. A judge is accused of using his powerful position to give lighter sentences to defendants who helped satisfy unusual sexual desires that included paddling young men and boys on their bare butts. The feds swoop in and indict him and the pervy judge lands in the slammer. What? You’ve never heard that story before? Oh, that’s right, I forget this is Mobile. Our version of that story is a little different. It goes something along the lines of: Powerful judge is accused of manipulating sentences in exchange for sex and spanking young...

I’m not sure if most communities typically have enemies, but Mobile almost certainly does. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Boeing. The Chicago-based, Seattle-born airplane manufacturer has consistently and aggressively tried to pee in Mobile’s cornflake dreams of becoming a major player in the jet-building world. We had to fight them tooth-and-nail to land Airbus and now it seems we may go through the same type of wrestling match to see the Canadian company Bombardier’s C-Series passenger jet assembled here. It’s enough to drive you to drink tiny, airplane-sized bottles of booze. If you’re someone who chooses Kardashians over aerospace...

Will we one day soon drop off the kids at school knowing their teachers are armed, trained and ready to gun down any potential mass murderer bent on harming the students? If one Alabama lawmaker has his way we will. The idea is perhaps a natural response to the horrors of school shootings that have happened in other parts of the country. We’ve been fortunate in this state not to have experienced a school killing spree like the one that took place in Parkland, Florida, last week — or the many others that have taken place nationwide since Eric...

A few post-Mardi Gras odds and ends: Over the years Lagniappe has done a few stories about the reluctance of members of the Mobile County Bar Association to take on sitting judges at election time. As local lawns are currently festooned with signs for judicial candidates, that issue may, at first blush, seem to have corrected itself. But not so fast. Right now there are six people running for Circuit Judge in Mobile County — five for one open place. The other open place had one attorney, Wes Pipes, qualify, meaning he will win by default. Meanwhile, seven incumbent...

There was a time when average was good enough, I’ll admit. Like everyone else, I held my hands out asking for more of what, in retrospect, really wasn’t all that special. But that changed a few years ago. It started when the Mardi Gras maskers began throwing the peanut butter MoonPies. Since time immemorial we’d all been steeped in the traditions of rolling around on the ground trying to pry a chocolate or banana MoonPie out of some 7-year-old’s hands. Or leaping into the air using what little athleticism Father Time and 50 years of Pizza Hut hadn’t taken...

The Deepwater Horizon oil spill seems like a lifetime ago. Most of us were not so closely tied to the Gulf that it left scars on our way of life or financial well-being. Yes, lives were changed by the disaster, but for 90-plus percent of us the most lingering stress caused by the spill has been in waiting for all that sweet, sweet BP money to roll in. The oil giant agreed to pay billions in fines and reparations to not only make us whole, but to make us even better than we were before that tragic day when...