A nasty knot for state Rep. Tom Taylor

How does one begin to untangle state Rep. Tom Taylor’s DUI arrest?

As drunk driving cases go, this one has so many layers to peel back.

First thing, his level of intoxication was off the charts. Literally. According to his driver’s license, Taylor is 185 pounds, which means a man his size drinking 10 beers or 10 1.25-ounce vodkas in an hour (one hour!) would register a .21 percent BAC.

Taylor blew a .225, a measurement not on the blood-alcohol concentration charts used by some to calibrate how much drinking they can get away with before risking handcuffs. A .08 BAC level is the legal limit, or four beers in an hour for a 180-pound man. (Your body processes a drink per hour, so .08 would be five drinks in two hours, six in three, etc.)

That it was 2:49 on a Thursday afternoon during spring break indicates this was not an over-social lubrication, not an “I had some wine with dinner.”

This was the equivalent of 11 or 12 drinks in an hour or even more over a longer period. With kids. With an empty water bottle smelling of booze. This is problem drinking.

That he was driving 27 mph over the 45 mph speed limit (72 mph, to save you the math) is not unremarkable. Being lead-footed is a state tradition. But hightailing like that with four teen-aged exchange students AND blowing a .225 is downright terrifying.

Oh, yeah, he was packing, which is his right, of course. He had a Glock 36, a .45-caliber weapon with substantial stopping power. Add together a 36 and a .225 and what do you have? The wrong guy on the road to flip off.

Oddly enough, that’s legal. Really. A lawyer for the gun-rights group Georgia Carry told my colleague Aaron Gould Sheinin it’s