The email landed in the inboxes of at least a half-dozen Alabama senators a few days ago – it purported to warn them of “hidden” items buried sneakily within a gambling bill passed by the senate two weeks ago. Apparently written by a former Alabama supreme court justice (or at least bearing his name), the email, naturally, got some attention.

But that email, which is filled with inaccuracies, hyperbole and leaps in logic so great that it’s genuinely hard to believe any attorney, much less a former justice, could get the law so wrong, is a case study in all that is wrong with Alabama’s current state of gambling.