A Senate committee has approved a bill that would raise the penalty for promoting gambling, and for possession of an illegal gambling device, from a misdemeanor to a felony. The focus of this bill is the big fish who are operating casinos that are illegal in Alabama, Sponsor Bryan Taylor, R-Prattville, said.

Attorney General Luther Strange praised the committee action. Strange said the bill was his top legislative priority.

One might assume that Mr. Strange was speaking from his state office phone in Montgomery when issuing the above comment to the media. That quite possibly could be a wrong assumption. People who work in and around the capital complex tell me that he is rarely in his office. One source says that Mr. Strange has been there less than a dozen times since he assumed office and one of those times was for a retirement party.

He does have a residence in Pike Road, a residential area east of the Capital City, Florida and a mountain vacation home. He also has access to an apartment near downtown Montgomery. He is most frequently seen in a large black SUV accompanied by one or two additional SUVs. I will provide a later update on other comforts and conveniences afforded our attorney general.

Meanwhile former AG invents new craps game

The former attorney general, Troy King, has invented a new craps game. He has formed a company called Innovate Technologies Group LLC which has developed a new bingo game called O-craps! According to King it is a class II bingo game that is played on a table.

“It looks like a craps,” he told me this past week, “but it’s just bingo balls and bingo cards.”

The O-craps! website, shows the game being played on a modified craps table but preserves its class II gaming characteristics. It features a new type of felt that mimics the experience of a traditional craps game but is, in essence, an accounting grid for the bingo game being played.

“I don’t know of anything like it that’s in the market,” King said. King, who left office after losing the 2010 GOP primary to Strange, described the venture as a hobby. He said his primary business focus since leaving public office has been his Montgomery law practice.

Asked if O-craps! could be legally played in Alabama, King said he thought the only place the machines might be used was at the Poarch Creek Casinos. “Our potential market will be outside Alabama,” King said. He said the game was exhibited at the National Indian Gaming Association trade show last month.

King says the game satisfies the requirements of class II bingo under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It takes at least two players to play the game. The player purchases a bingo card by putting a chip on the line and the bingo caller activates a bingo card. A traditional bingo ball machine blows a ball across the table.

Kennedy to form alternative Democratic group

Retired State Supreme Court Justice Mark Kennedy, the chair of the State Democratic Party, resigned Monday, announcing that he will form a non-profit foundation to support progressive Democrats fed up with the years of failure by the Alabama Democratic Party “to offer voters little more than watered down Republican Party rhetoric” and what Kennedy calls “the politics of fear.”

The name of the new organization will be called the Alabama Democratic Majority and Kennedy will be its chairman.

According to Kennedy the foundation hopes to do what he says the Democratic Party in the state has not done, which is build and develop a broad base of donors and use the dollars they give to identify, support and elect Democrats.

Kennedy said this past week that the only way his party can matter again is to reinvent itself, rebrand itself and reach out to a new generation of young Alabamians not caught up in the state’s old divisions. “The party must also appeal to an aging generation who need a state government that will support efforts to bring better medical care to seniors and the poor,” he said.

The factions in the party have been heading for a split of this sort, partly because of a near half-million-dollar debt and many factors other than party debt.

This is something that will take more than money to revive.

Bob Martin is editor and publisher of The Montgomery Independent. Email him at: bob@montgomeryindependent.com