You know the type. All the other guests left hours ago, but one oblivious misfit is still there in your home, sitting by himself on the sofa in the den.He didn’t take any of the broad hints that it was time to go so you and your spouse finally gave up and went to bed, hoping the clueless clod had left by daybreak.
Suspended state Supreme Court Justice Allen Loughry is starting to resemble that social outcast. He doesn’t know that it’s time to leave – way past time, in fact. West Virginians are giving each other sidelong glances and thinking to themselves, or whispering, “Why is he still here? Why doesn’t he go already?”
Leave it to Gov. Jim Justice to say it out loud.
“I wish to goodness that Judge Loughry would just do what seems to be the right thing,” Justice said at a press conference this week. “Now, I don’t [purport] to know every little detail, but it just seems the right thing is resignation and go on down the road.”
Whether it’s the right thing or not may not matter to Loughry, who wouldn’t be in the fix he’s in if he did care. In any case, he doesn’t seem to be in any rush to resign or “go on down the road.”
In fact, last week, his attorney petitioned the acting Supreme Court to stop Loughry’s impeachment trial, as it did for Chief Justice Margaret Workman and former Justice Robin Jean Davis.
A federal jury already has found Loughry guilty of 11 counts of mail and wire fraud, witness tampering, and lying to federal agents, but he won’t be sentenced until January, so what’s the rush?
Loughry apparently does not share the governor’s concern that our state’s reputation is being tarnished by the continuing drama. His resignation could stop the smirking.