The Indianapolis Star is reporting that Attorney Greg Zoeller has fired Deputy Attorney General Jeff Cox over a "tweet" of his suggesting that "live ammunition" be used on the Wisconsin labor union protesters.
I'm going to write on this matter more soon, including addressing Attorney General Greg Zoeller's extreme hypocrisy when it comes to sanctioning unethical behavior in his office.
Let me just say I know Jeff Cox. I had Jeff on the other side of an eminent domain case that is still pending. He has been nothing but professional and courteous, a far cry from other Deputy Attorney Generals I've dealt with during the Carter/Zoeller regime.
I ran into Jeff at the Distillery a couple years back. He defended Attorney General Steve Carter's do nothing approach to his job. Jeff argued that the AG's powers were so limited that he couldn't do anything about the issues I raised. I said that AG Carter was simply making excuses to avoid taking action where he was legally authorized to do so.
One thing I learned about Jeff Cox early on is that he likes to say provocative things, things he may not actually believe, in order to provoke a response. That's fine when you're having a conversation in a bar. It's hazardous though when the conversation is memorialized in a writing through a Twitter account that can be copied and used against you.
That is indeed what Twitter is about. Twitter is about people having conversations, through the Internet, about things that are going on in the world. People are "speaking out loud" in snippets about things that pop into their head.
When people speak face to face, in less guarded informal settings, they tend to say things they would never say in a more formal letter or even a blog post. When Twitter intercedes, those informal conversations, those off the cuff thoughts, are made permanent.
I thought I could be a successful Twitterer or, as my enemies would say, "Twit." I often have observations about daily life that my friends find to be funny and/or interesting. Then again, given my sarcastic nature and dry wit, I also tend to say things that I never intend to be taken seriously, but rather to provoke a response Falling into the wrong hands and taken out of context, those humorous, provocative tweets could easily be used against me.
Maybe tweeting isn't such a good idea fter all.