Jim Hood: Another of the Nation's Worst State Attorney Generals

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood has a truly awful record, as today’s Wall Street Journal notes, citing his links to trial lawyers who tried to bribe a judge, and his dishonest attempts to deny those links.

CEI recently rated the nation’s worst state attorney generals, but it only listed the six worst, which didn’t include Hood. Hood clearly would make a list of the top ten worst state attorney generals, though. (CEI once issued such a top-ten list, back in 2007, which Hood narrowly avoided making. Here’s that list, and my here’s my op-ed describing the worst 3 attorneys general on that list, Richard Blumenthal, Bill Lockyer, and Eliot Spitzer).

The six worst attorney generals this year are (1) Jerry Brown (California), (2) Richard Blumenthal (Connecticut), (3) Drew Edmondson (Oklahoma), (4) Patrick Lynch (Rhode Island), (5) Darrell McGraw (West Virginia), and (6) Bill Sorrell (Vermont).

All of these politicians use lawsuits as a weapon to restribute wealth from businesses and consumers to wealthy trial lawyers and their political cronies. What sets Jerry Brown apart, and makes him the #1 worst state attorney general in America, is his refusal to defend state laws and agencies against frivolous lawsuits, based on ridiculous reasoning that could endanger state-constitutional guarantees; and his destruction of California jobs through lawsuits (and threatened lawsuits) against California businesses and local governments.

Here is a link to the full study explaining my ratings of the nation’s worst state attorneys general. Here is a link to my additional explanation for why Jerry Brown is the nation’s worst state attorney general.