This supposed picture of Roy Moore riding his horse to the polls yesterday is only kind of Photoshopped.

By this point, you may be aware that last night Alabama Republican voters anointed Roy Moore as their once-and-future nominee for chief justice.

You are also probably aware that Moore, a former chief justice, cannot be trusted to do the basic responsibility of that job—follow the law—if elected. He was removed from the job in 2004 for defying a federal court order to remove a granite Ten Commandment monument he had placed in a public building.

You also may have heard that Moore made a point of taking a horse to the polling place where he voted on Tuesday.

So, with all that insanity streaming out of Moore, it’s a good thing then that Alabama Democrats have put up a fine, more rational alternative candidate, right?

Right?

Right?

Well, the newly minted Democratic nominee for chief justice is Harry Lyon, a Pelham lawyer who has unsuccessfully ran for several offices over three decades as both a Republican and Democrat. And thanks to the legwork of Alabama-conservative-man-about-Twitter Taylor Nichols, we can tell you that Lyon has an … interesting history.

Let’s start with this story from The Washington Post in 1998:

Harry Lyon, a former [Alabama] Republican candidate for state auditor, is in serious condition after he was shot Sept. 6 and found lying face down in a pool of chocolate syrup.

Wait, what?

Robert Lee Black, Lyon’s neighbor, was charged with attempted murder; Black said he shot Lyon in the neck after finding him pouring Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup on Black’s car. The two neighbors have apparently had previous disputes.

Don’t you hate when your neighbor shoots you in the neck when you’re trying to make a Sedan Sundae to get back at them for snatching your morning paper or not pruning well enough or whatever?

I’m sure that’s something to which most Alabama judicial election voters can relate.

(I’m actually not sure if that is a joke.)

Fortunately, Lyon survived the bullet in the neck he took for his sweet defacement of his neighbor’s vehicle. He lived to run for governor in 2006.

That was five years before the passage of HB56, Alabama’s tough new immigration law. But Lyon showed that he had a unique and powerful vision for how to deal with the state’s illegal immigration woes:

Recently [Lyon] was quoted by the Montgomery Advertiser as proposing to hang a few illegal immigrants to get the attention of the rest.

Really.

“My idea is to bring attention to the problem and let the Legislature [and courts] decide,” Lyon said. “I’d give them 90 days to make arrangements to make them leave and if after that, you’d have to go to public execution.

I mean, from a policy standpoint, that’s an obvious, logical progression of events: Kill a few folks to get the Legislature’s attention, wait for them to do something, and then if they don’t act, carry out the mass murder of an distinct group of people in their entirety to take care of the problem.

That’s how President Johnson passed The Great Society, if I remember correctly.

“I admit it does have some shock value,” [Lyon] said.

Yeah, I guess I could see how genocide might make some people uncomfortable.

But other than the two bullets he has taken and his uplifting love of genocide, Lyon is a very serious jurist and clearly takes the law extraordinarily seriously.

Check out this screenshot of his law practice’s website:

Get it? His name sounds like “hairy lion.”

Hilariously professional!

And I know that some voters may be confused and uncomfortable with an actual lion running for chief justice, but we elected “Big Jim” Folsom back in the day and he was a live bear.

(That worked out for the best, didn’t it?)

So, in summary, this fall Alabama voters will choose to place either Roy “THINGS AIN’T JESUS LIKE THEY USED TO BE!” Moore or Harry “Chocolate Genocide” Lyon atop the state’s court system.

Good job, Alabama primary voters.

We knew we could all count on you to do what is best.

Reran Tragedy is Weld’s satirical blog about politics and life in Alabama and the South. The artist known as Cal Alabaster Jr., if that is his or her real name, may or may not also be the author of the Alabama humor blog called “King Cockfight.” If true, you may read Cal’s work there at kingcockfight.wordpress.com. You can also follow Cal on Twitter @KingCockfight or email Cal at king.cockfight@gmail.com.