AG's refusal to pick a minority member for ethics panel defies state law passed by voters

On Tuesday afternoon, Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said he was refusing to appoint a new member to the Arkansas Ethics Commission because of a requirement in state law that at least one person on the commission be a “member of a minority race.” Complying with that law would be “racial discrimination,” Griffin said, which he called “both wrong and unconstitutional.”

Political grandstanding is to be expected from Griffin, but when we looked into the current membership of the Ethics Commission, we were left with two big questions. First, there’s currently a vacancy on the five-member commission left by the resignation of Little Rock dentist John Pitts in November — but Pitts was appointed by the governor, not the AG. Why was Griffin stepping in to make the pick, not Gov. Sarah S