Rude remarks to, hopefully, derail senator’s plans

Benton County’s sorriest state senator, Sen. Bart Hester of Bentonville, was back on his personal soapbox of late — once again carping at a legal ruling by the Arkansas State Supreme Court, but this time in a high profile criminal case within his district.

Hester may help make laws for the state of Arkansas as an elected state senator, but his myopic view of the law from his seat in the Upper Chamber of the Arkansas legislature makes him just as easy a target as he feels the state’s elected Justices to the State Supreme Court are as foils for his personal diatribes.

Let me be quick to point out that Hester is not an attorney. Hester loves to bait the public with comments on some newsworthy outrage and go off smiling like a Cheshire cat at how smart he was to garner the public’s viewpoint at the expense of others, often those not even in the room when these fussing fits of his take place.

But the fact that Hester is not an attorney or actually understands the law does not stop the senator from commenting in the public and on the record in legislative hearings what he “thinks” about the state’s highest court and its rulings in matters he actually knows very little about.

Hester parroted his comments on what the legal matter, referred back to Benton County for a retrial was actually about the cost to the taxpayers — he said $350,000.

He then struck a “nerve” by accusing the high court of being a “friend of the child rapist.”

But this column is not only about Hester’s remarks.

It is about his inability to serve as the president pro tempore of the Arkansas State Senate — a job he covets and is in the mix among the state’s 35 elected state senators.

Bart Hester does not deserve to be elevated to president pro tempore of the state Senate. He does not have the decorum or leadership to hold that post.

He may be elected to that post by bullying his peers, but it will indeed be a “dark” day for the state should that happen.

Hester cannot, it appears, discern between the law and the Legislature. There is indeed an ethical and moral line between the courts and those who make the laws.

But don’t ask the Bart Hesters of the legislature that — he intends to at every opportunity when considering a state contract, in this instance for a building project, the proper time to vent his personal anger and disgust at the court members who are not in attendance.

The current president pro tempore of the state Senate, state Sen. Jim Hendren of Gravette, would never, never stoop so low as to even hint at what Hester fired from the lip.

Sen. Hendren, the Governor’s nephew, has implemented new ethical rules for the Upper Chamber and done so with respect and restraint from its members.

Hester’s barrage of lowbrow comments on the justices of the state Supreme Court threatens to set the state Senate back decades in the eyes of the public and others.

Oh, there have been some rascals holding the president pro tempore office in the history of the Legislature, but I challenge anyone to find a holder of that office as the chief leader of the Upper Chamber who has so viciously attacked the state’s highest court with such vile verbiage.

Being the president pro tempore is only a “badge” to wear for Hester. He has not the personal ethics or individual decorum as a gentleman to hold this office.

Some insiders say Hester is the governor’s choice for pro tempore — I doubt that. Hester is just as apt to mouth off on the governor