Are you Being Bugged?

Jeff and Corey from Spy for Rent join Joe to talk about surveillance equipment, and how you can find out if someone is listening or watching you.  

Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:00

Please have honestly finding a lawyer with the highest range for honesty and integrity. Legal down with your lawyer. Go in the bottom. Go into the last. Go in one. That's more than 20 years of experience. You're in the street fellow. Go to 40 minutes, criminal defense. Go in the time. Go in the command.

SPEAKER_04 0:48

Run a runda running. Today is March 7, 2026. Here listening to the Little Little Down with Joe Ingram, your Birmingham lawyer on WERC 105.5 FM in Birmingham, WBHP up in Huntsville, and WRTR in Tuscaloosa. Our guests for the second hour today will be Jeff Hammock and Corey Fuller of Spy for Rent. Spy for Rent is the name to know for investigations in the state of Alabama, and they are the exclusive investigative partner of my law firm. You will want to stay tuned for that. Next week, next week, we have a great guest in studio. Caroline Dobson will be here in the studio with us. She is running for the Alabama Secretary of State position. You will not want to miss that interview. She is a lawyer down in Montgomery. She does transactional work, and she's going to be our guest next week, and you will not want to miss that as we continue to talk about the state races of Alabama for the primary. As always, we encourage you to listen to our show, download it, like it, share it with your friends and family. You can check it out on Apple, iTunes, Spotify, my website, or iHeartRadio. As we talked about a couple weeks ago, if you have a question, a comment, something you want to share with us today, you can go to the iHeartRAP, iHeart Radio app, and it doesn't matter when you send the message. You can send it anytime you're listening to Talk Radio. And all you have to do is say, this is a message for the legal lowdown. The technical gurus here can find it, and we can play it on the air if you have a question or a comment. If you need my office, call 205-825-5297 for a consultation. Joe Ingram is all you need to know in the state of Alabama for legal representation. That's all you need to know for legal representation. Legal news of the week. We have to start with what happened last weekend. We didn't get to talk about it. America and Israel finally pulled the trigger. They attacked Iran. And the build-up's been going on for a couple weeks. And no one thought Trump would go across the red line. Finally, he decided, you know what? We're just gonna hit them in the daytime. They didn't even do it at night. They hit them in the daytime. And all the leaders over in Iran were having a meeting. They bombed the Supreme Leader's compound. Took out 49 of them at one time. They also bombed the judicial center, which would be our Supreme Court. I mean, they just they just took them out left and right. And so uh we are seven days into the war. Uh yes, it is a war, folks. I don't care what they call it. Anytime you put troops in harm's way, we are at war. The um the big concerns now are is the United States government going to get behind us because we need more money because we are dropping bombs round the clock. And uh it doesn't matter where you stand, um you you are here to protect the men and women that stand behind us and protect us every day on the street that wear the uniform. Uh you need to pass the legislation and give on the money to fight to defend us. So there you go. Um the other thing that triggers me about this story is we still have the um we have a temporary shutdown related to the Department of Homeland Security funding. Well, do you really want the TSA people not to be at their top right now? There's all kinds of sleeper cells, there's all kind of people Joe Biden let walk across the border for four years. And if you solve those stories, folks, they talked about Chinese, they talked about Iranians, they talked about all these people from these foreign countries that walked across our southern border. No one even checked them for ID. Do you want a sleeper cell to attack us at home on the homeland because you did not have the funding for the government? I think that's a bad look for anybody, whether you're a Republican, Democrat, or you're part of the Socialist Democratic Party of Mandami and AOC. And by the way, AOC, why don't you just leave the Democratic Party? Join the socialist movement, okay? So we that's the scary part for all Americans, is not having the funding in place for America, having a shutdown. They only have to be right once. They only have to be right once. We have to be right every time. One time is another 9-11. I'm not scaring anybody. I'm not trying to say the sky's falling. I'm just telling you, we have to be right every time. Do you want somebody at a TSA that's not getting paid, that literally lives paycheck to paycheck, that's already missed, probably going on their second paycheck or coming up on their second paycheck, slipping on the job because somebody in Washington will not pass a bill. It's a scary time in America right now. Other big story of the week is the sacrifacial sacrificial limb, uh Department of Homeland uh secretary until Friday, Thursday, Christy Dome. She was the former governor of South Dakota, she was a former congressman, she's sharp as a tack, she's a bright lady. There's been all these stories out there in the past. These stories about the affair with Corey Lewandowski. That was prior to the election. Don't know why they're bringing it up now, other than the fact that they brought up some stories that Corey's working for her and he's been on planes with her and some intimate details there. Um they even brought up stories about the book she wrote that where she killed a dog on her property. Okay, so she killed a dog. Uh she was grilled this week in a Senate hearing by the senator from North Carolina, Tom Tillis. He crucified her. And when you lose Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana, when he's questioning you, folks, I love John Kennedy. He is the sharpest man there is. Here's why. He's brilliant, but he can lay it down for people with an IQ of 10 can get it. He's a brilliant man. When you lose John Kennedy, you've lost the Republican Party. And he already knew the answer to the question about some commercials that Christy Nome had shot for uh advertising purposes. And don't know the exact number, but the number is somewhere between$185 million and$200 million she spent to create these ads. And uh President Trump learned about that, and I think that was between what happened up in Minnesota, what happened with um her infidelity issues, if they are any allegedly. There was just a snowball effect. And here's how Washington works. Here's how Washington works. Probably the senators got in a back room and they said, Hey, we're gonna call her up here, we're gonna crucify her. If if you fire her, this may give us something to an off-ramp, if you will, to look like to the Democrats that we took one for the team. And then we can probably get funding back done for the Department of Homeland Security. Don't know if that's the case yet, but that's kind of how I feel this is playing out. Christy became the sacrificial lamb to get funding back for the government. That that gives the Democrats an off-ramp. It looks like they won that point. Uh, Trump fires her. Uh, so everybody's happy. The the bad part of this is that President Trump stated that he was going to announce that he's given her a new position out west that he was going to announce uh today, Saturday, I think down in uh Miami or Dural, can't remember where, for a position that's never been created yet. Now, this is no different than Susan Rice and Benghazi. If you remember President Obama, after that happened, they just moved Susan Rice out of the out of the limelight. They just took her in-house. That's kind of the same thing they're doing here. Christy Gnome has been a loyal soldier to President Trump. So they're just going to kind of move her off to the side, take her out of the limelight, if you will. That's all they're doing here. Um, a couple things to think about. This is the first secretary in President Trump's second uh administration that's gotten the axe. And um you don't want to do this a whole lot because it's going to be hard to replace somebody in front of a Senate in an election year to get a vote. To um, you don't want anybody out there talking right now. We have the midterms coming up in October. Trump's been really good this time around. People that work for Trump are not out telling stories, selling books, telling all the gossip what's going on behind the scenes. So they've got to handle this situation very carefully, and maybe they are. So that's something to think about with the Christie Gnome issue. Uh, some national legal news from the Supreme Court this week. The Supreme Court, John, this is an Alabama case. Taylor versus Singleton. The Supreme Court declined to hear a case of Taylor versus Singleton, allowing a lower court ruling to stand that struck down Alabama's ban on begging, panhandling. We have so many people in Birmingham over there on Lakeshore when I run that stand out there looking for money. And they swap them out during the day. And some people give them money, some people don't. Folks, you're not helping us, you're hurting us because these people are collecting a lot of money and they're just running and buying drugs that day. That's all they're doing. You're not helping us. But the Supreme Court decided not to hear that case this week, so the lower court ruling will stand on that case. Um there was another case this week that I want to talk about related to guns and people that use drugs. And the reason why this case is really unique, uh, Judge Gorsick was asking the questions. And um it was really good banter between the lawyers doing oral arguments and the justice because um they were arguing how this case started about is if you remember Joe Biden's son, they hit him with being a uh a drug user and having possession of the gun up in um what's the state he's from, Delaware, I think, and he threw it in the garbage can. And so that's how this case has worked its way through the system up to the federal court. And um Geor Justice Gorsuch uh had some really, really good lines this week about whether somebody that's a an alcoholic or the old term for that, John, was called a drunkard. You ever heard that term? Yeah, I have to. My grandparents used to use it. And um, if you'll think back to our founding fathers, this is how far back Judge Gorsuch went on this issue. The American Temperance Society back in the day said eight shots of the conservative justice pointed to the founding fathers' drinking habits to convey his skepticism about the Department of Justice's argument that a habitual drunkard was similar to a modern day drug user, and that both were worthy of being disarmed. John Adams took hard cider every morning with his breakfast. James Madison reportedly drank a pint of whiskey every day. Not sure what the proof was back then, relative to today, but for all intents and purposes, he drank a pint of whiskey a day. Thomas Jefferson, I didn't know this one, uh, had three or four glasses of wine a night. Now that doesn't sound like a lot, but if you drink three glasses of wine every night, that's 21 glasses a week, you there's roughly six glasses of wine in a bottle, so he's consuming three bottles a week of wine, presumably. Something to think about there. Um, but uh Gorsuch was not buying the government's argument of taking guns away from drug addicts, alcoholics, things of that nature. Not sure how this case is going to play out. And uh the law has been on the books forever. 18 USC 922 G3. I've had a number of these cases that I've had to defend people on. Uh not sure that the Supreme Court is going to go along with this and overturn that statute. But we'll see. We'll see how this plays out by June or July. We're going to follow up on that story. Uh other news this week from the Supreme Court that I found kind of interesting. There is a uh the court is reviewing the scope of federal defendants' rights to appeal, Hunter versus United States. Um they are reviewing the rights of the number of times people appeal cases. Other significant news this week nationally and legally. Uh the social media trial is still going on related to Instagram and YouTube. Um hasn't been in the papers that much. I haven't seen much in the media about that case. You have to go out and read it to find it yourself. Uh an interview, an interview, excuse me, folks. I got tongue twisted there for a minute. Environmental law. You don't hear much about that. Environmental law. Up in Oregon, awarded$34 million in damages related to a 2020 Labor Day fire. So there you go. They love their forest up in Oregon and they awarded$34 million for an environmental law case. Um a federal judge this week blocked the end of protections for Haitian immigrants. There's been a lot of legate a lot of legislation this week related to immigrants. Kantanji Brooke just gave President Trump a win. She authored an opinion we're going to talk about here after the break. And um I pull it up. I found it fascinating that she's the one that authored the opinion giving President Trump a win. Uh on that case. Uh, I want to go back to just a minute before we go to the break. I want to talk about the Clinton's depositions last week. They've been put out live. Did you see how Hillary flipped out? Do you know why? Hillary Clinton, for all intents and purposes, thinks she is a queen. She's she's an elitist. She doesn't think she has to answer to anybody beneath her. Her whole life, she has lived in government. Bill Clinton was a lieutenant governor. Then he was the governor, then he was a president for eight years. Then after he left the presidency, they click they created the Clinton Global Initiative. And then Hillary decided she wanted to be a United States Senator. And so she she won that. And then from there she was the Secretary of State. She's used to giving orders. She's not used to answering to anyone. And she lost her cool. And it's hard to believe that she has a law degree from Yale because she couldn't control herself in the basic uh back and forth with Nancy Mays from South Carolina. That was beautiful if you saw that. And by the way, when they did Bill Clinton's deposition on Friday, it went six hours. Did you see him? He has the beginnings of Parkinson's. His hands are shaking. He is he's frail. Bill Clinton has lost his fastball. He had a lawyer on both sides of him during the deposition. That is scary. Bill Clinton has lost his fastball. And they asked him some questions that he could not answer. They asked him about John, that picture of him in the famous blue Lewinsky dress. They asked him under oath, have you ever seen this picture? And he kind of grinned. He said, No, I've never actually seen the picture. Now it's been out in the news forever. But he looked at it and he kind of grinned. And he was kind of embarrassed because it brings back the Lewinsky issue. He's lost his fastball. Clinton has lost his fastball. And then they asked him a question that was really hard for him to answer about children under 19. Because I think Monica Lewinsky, she may have been 20. She was a college intern, right? I think. But it's right there on the cusp of what is the line? You're the president of the United States. You have a presidential intern in the White House. So um but President Clinton was a really good president. He did a lot of good things. Um he just had some he had some uh issues that he couldn't overcome, I think. So that's something to think about. So after we come back here to the break, we're gonna talk about some state legal news this week. There's some been some good legislation to talk about. There's been some cases I want to talk about. We're gonna talk about the Anaya, the Anaya law case. Um the trial is finally started and underway. I understand that a jury was finally seated on yesterday afternoon. This is a case that happened six years ago. And somebody asked me today, yesterday in the hall, Joe, why does it take six years for a case to get to a jury, to get to the courtroom? And uh we may talk a little bit about that not just in the state of Alabama, any state. Sometimes it takes years for a case to work its ways to ways to trial. And uh yes, it's sad, and um sometimes the older the case gets, the better it gets for a defendant. And you're gonna ask me why is that possible? Well, police officers may retire, police officers may die, witnesses may leave the state, you may lose evidence. We've seen that in cases. The older a case gets, the better it gets for a defendant. Unless they just got you. And if they got you, they got you. So for all intents and purposes, we're going to see how this case plays out. We're going to talk about how this created the NIAS law, how it affects every criminal case in the state of Alabama now that involves violence related to certain crimes, how a judge can have an ANIA law hearing if they find that you're a violent and you're a danger to the community or a danger to yourself. They can hold you without bond indefinitely until your case goes to trial or the case is dismissed. And in this case, it took five or six years. So that's something to think about. Your list to the legal lowdown on WERC, WBHP up in Huntsville, and WRTR in Tuscaloosa. The second hour we're going to have Corey Fuller, Jeff Hemmack in the house, Spi Frent. They are the exclusive firm for my office, and they are the best investigators in the state. They can serve papers, they can do investigations for you. If you think your spouse is uh having an affair, they can follow your spouse, check out the paramour, they can do cell phone searches, they can do bug sweeps, they do all this, and they're the best in the state of Alabama, and that's why we use them, and that's why we bring them to you because they are the best at what they do. Uh just want to remind you next week, Caroline Dobson. Caroline Dobson, she's going to be running for the Secretary of State on the Republican side of the primary ticket uh in May. She's going to be here with us in the studio. She is a brilliant lawyer in Montgomery. She does transactional work. You will not want to miss this interview. Uh, I went out and did some reach out research on her. I finally highly, highly intelligent and competent, and I can't wait to have any reserve. We'll be back with after the news and weather. All right, so we're going to do that.

SPEAKER_03 24:33

Go in the mod. Go in the log. Don't forget to follow Joe's legal lowdown podcast. If you need a private legal consultation, reach out to Johan's website. Goinground.com. Two minutes again next time. Going. No consultation is made that the quality of legal services to be performed is greater than the quality of legal services performed by any other lawyer. Going to go into the clear of the Alabama course recognizing in criminal defense and family law. If you need a private legal consultation, go to go in the law.com. And now welcome back to the legal low down.

SPEAKER_04 25:20

This is the second segment of the first panel, the legal lowdown, with your Alabama lawyer, gentlemen. So we were talking about some legal news. First segment. I forgot to print this story about Katanji Jackson giving President Trump the win on the immigration issue. Essentially, Katanji Jackson stated, or will state in an opinion, that when people show up for their hearings in front of federal immigration judges, that the opinion stands and they got to do what they're supposed to do, and if they're ordered to deport, they got to get out of the country. So that was a big deal because, for all intents and purposes, Katanji Jackson is on the far spectrum from President Trump. That's that's easy to say. And the fact that the Supreme Court has her authoring the opinion of this case says a lot. Either they had to be really right on the merits, or I don't know why, but she's gonna author the opinion. So kudos to that, and I'm gonna go back and read it because I want to see what she has to write in her opinion. Uh want to go back just for a minute, talking about the Christy Gnome hearing this week. Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina. He's he's leaving, he's done. And um maybe it's because he's in North Carolina, which can sometimes be kind of purplish. Maybe it's because he's leaving and he doesn't care anymore. So you're gonna get the full Tom Tillis. And when you sit up there long enough, some of this stuff you just say, enough. I don't care what how I was elected. I I I I just gotta call balls and strikes. Or maybe he's just mad at Trump and he's decided to go on the attack mode. Folks, if you remember back in was it November or December, the feds decided they were going to not necessarily investigate Jerome Powell of the Federal Reserve. They sent a letter to him because they were questioning when he was deposed under oath in front of Congress about the uh cost of the new Federal Reserve building. Not saying that he committed perjury, just saying this is what you said. Can you back up what it is? Uh Jerome Powell ran out to the presses, made it look like he was going to be indicted by President Trump, and it started a war in the press. Uh Tom Tillis went on a rant. Uh, he's on the committee that is going to decide with Senate approval for the new Federal Reserve Chairman to replace Jerome Powell. And Tillis stated in a Senate hearing that until the questions are answered by the Department of Justice, quasi President Trump's administration, that he was not going to hold hearings for the Federal Reserve Chairman. Why is this important? Well, guess what? The Federal Reserve Chairman, Jerome Powell's term, comes up, I believe, in May. We are in March. We are less than probably 10, 11 weeks away from Powell being done. So don't you think it's important to start some hearings for the new Federal Reserve Chairman? I think it's really important that we have the head of the banking, uh, Federal Reserve Bank in place before his term ends. We surely want to get rid of Jerome Powell. We don't want him to stay one day longer than he has to. And and by most people don't know this. Did you know that Jerome Powell could step down now? He could leave. He's not going to because he wants to stick it to Trump. But he could actually he could actually resign and step down now. But he's not going to do it. He's not going to leave one minute before he has to, just to be a thorn in his side. And uh so Tom Tillis also has that going for him. Um they're so busy with so many fronts. Somebody needs to get to President Trump and say, hey, we got to start these hearings for the Federal Reserve Chairman pretty quick because we're getting to the middle of March coming up. So anyway, that's something to think about. Other thing I want to bring up related to Christy Nome that I think is really important. She got crucified for all these ads that she paid$185 million to$200 million for. We need it not just for Republican ads. We need it for people to appreciate the red, white, and blue flag that is out there, hopefully, on your home. We need people to understand that capitalism is the greatest system in the world. The market should decide what you pay for a hamburger, a hot dog, a chair, whatever from Amazon. We need capitalism. We do not need socialism. The fact that 38% are ready to embrace socialism in America is really scary. Really bothers me. Coming up, second hour, is spy for rent. Jeff Hammett, Corey Fuller are going to be in the house. They're going to talk about some gadgets. They're going to talk about some information that will probably be over my head. And then we're going to have somebody that may call in. We're going to talk about a really big issue in the state of Alabama. There's some legislation down there. They are trying to combine a bunch of professional licensing boards under one hat and do away with all these executive directors and all the independent bodies that govern private investigators, people that have HVAC license, heating and air, plumbers, beauticians, social workers, massage therapists. Massage therapists are really important. They take a license test that's almost the equivalency of going to medical school because they're working on your muscles and they twist your arms and your legs and all these different positions. And so they're trying to combine all this under one hat in the state of Alabama. Everybody out there in the state of Alabama that has a professional license from a board, you need to go read this legislation. You need to call your legislature because if this passes, it could affect your license next year when or whenever you renew your license. Scary stuff out there. Scary stuff. In state legal news this week, uh Tommy Tubberville. The governor race. We had Doug Jones. Tommy Tubberville has outraised in money, Doug Jones, by three. Three times as much money in the month of February. He raised$1.8 million for governor. He has 11.2 million in his coffers. That is a significant amount of money for the governor's race. Doug Jones on the last report I see has just over, I think it's$1.5 million. He's running behind. He'll make up, folks. He's going to get out-of-state money. Tubberville has weighed in this week on the Public Service Commission bill. He is for creating a new state office called the Secretary of Energy. And he right now is okay with keeping it along, the Alabama Public Service Commission. I don't know what everybody in Montgomery's thinking. There has been so much made of George Soros and all his billions trying to buy the equivalency of the Alabama Public Service Commission over in Georgia. And they're worried about it here. Well, I've gone back and I've looked. I don't think there's been very few Democrats, if at all, elected to the Alabama Public Service Commission in the state of Alabama. And they've talked about rate hearings. Well, they haven't had a rate hearing in 40 years. Well, maybe they didn't have an actual hearing, but the Public Service Commission had to approve the rate increases for Alabama power. So maybe they did it in private. Maybe they didn't have to have an actual hearing, but they had to approve the rates because, for all intents and purposes, the Alabama power is a monopoly in the state of Alabama. So there you go. I don't know why everybody has jumped on the board about not doing their job. I don't know that the Public Service Commission has done anything wrong here. Maybe the rates went up because everything went up after COVID. And maybe the power company rates went up with everything else. Homes, cars, everything else. Maybe you ever think of that? They're no different than everybody else. And the thing is, once the rates go up, do you have any incentive to make the rates go down if you're a monopoly? No. But they have said that they're going to freeze them to 2027. So that's that's a plus. They're supposed to stay consistent with where they are now to 2027. So we'll continue to watch the watch the bills related to the Public Service Commission down in Montgomery. We are watching the trying to create a new uh position for the Secretary of Energy in the state of Alabama. Don't know that all these are needed. Uh Doug Jones commented this week uh related to that story. Uh we do not we don't need to rush into something that doesn't fully address the problem or possibly could make it worse. Uh quote, Doug Jones. Uh he further added, in a time when Senator Tubovrill's support for federal policies is placing Alabama's budget at risk, the last thing we need to do is establish another bureaucracy funded by taxpayers. Alabama already has an office that should be assisting the PSC in coordinating energy policy. It's called the Governor. Unfortunately, where we are right now, because leadership at the PSC and in Montgomery has been holding to the power company and not the people. End a quote. I ask you to go back and listen to my podcast with Matt Gentry, who's running for the Public Service Commission. Matt, if you win the election in a year from now, and I go look at your coffers, are you going to be bought and paid for by the Alabama Power Company? Absolutely not. We shall see because I'm going to hold him to it. He better know it. In the lieutenant governor's race, funding-wise, Wes Allen in February had a little bit more money than John Wall. And they are in a tight race, and they have been back and forth at each other. If you have been reading the news articles related to Wes Allen and John Wall and IDs and things of that nature to vote, um you need to go read those articles. We might be having a couple of those folks in the studio with us to discuss uh the race for Lieutenant Governor coming up in a couple of weeks. I look forward to that. As far as uh Allen goes, he received 165,000 from political action committees. And he closed February with 1.3 million on hand. That's that's a pretty good number for the lieutenant governor race for one month. That's that's significant. But we're getting close to the primary, so for all intents and purposes, they're gonna they're gonna spend every dime between now and May. Because if they win the primary, they they're 95% home to win the election in the state of Alabama. So there you go. Something to think about. All right, so your list of legal lowdown with Joe Ingram uh here on WERC 105.5. We are talking about some legal news this week. Uh the case of Anaya. Anaya's law. That is a big case, and it's the jury selection started this week. It's been six years. And for most of you out there that do not know what Anaya's law is, um they passed a law that if you are charged with certain crimes in the state of Alabama, uh you can be held without bond until the case goes to trial or you're vindicated and you're acquitted for cases such as murder. Another big story this week that you need to follow. Um someone is about to be put to death in the state of Alabama, and uh his name is Charles Lee Sonny Burton. He has asked the Supreme Court to review his case, arguing arguing that he was deprived uh about his trial defense and some inadmissible evidence during the trial. Uh the other thing that he's really up at arms about is that they are putting him to death during Ramadan. And uh he's he's upset about that. Um he was convicted of a 1991 murder at Talladega Auto Zone during a robbery. 1991, 2006. What is that, 35 years for justice? And we're gonna wait for you because of Ramadan Week. That's how long you have to wait in the state of Alabama for the ultimate justice if you are the victim of a the ultimate crime in the state of Alabama. Uh I don't think it's gonna hold up, and I do believe that they will go forward with the um death sentence this week. So we shall see how that plays how that case plays out. Um They there's been some commentary. Um there's been some emergency filings in this case. K I Ivy's weighed in on it. Steve uh Marshall, the Attorney General, has weighed in on this this last week. Um It's it's um it's there's just nothing good to say about the ultimate crime, and you're asking them to wait one more week or two for some new evidence or waiting to the end of uh a religious uh period is Ramadan because you killed somebody and you were found guilty by a jury in the state of Alabama. Want to back up just a second. I forgot to talk about this. There's been so many races. There were some primary races held this week over in the state of Texas and in Arkansas. Um Senator Tom Cotton won his. No problem, hands down. Um are you familiar with Congressman Al Green? He's the one that walks around with the cane. Uh he's filed impeachment articles against Trump a number of times. He was thrown out twice at the State of the Union address, and he's so proud of that. Maybe he's been doing all this stunts, and he's not bringing up. Money home for his district. Because here's what happened to Al Green this week. In the Texas primary, he's going to end up in a runoff for his seat. And he has been in Congress since 2005. So that tells you if you've been in Congress for over 20 years, you should have a pretty safe seat at this point. Even though you're a congressman, you have to run every two years. If you're bringing home the bacon, you're taking care of your folks back home, you should be pretty safe. The fact that he's going to a runoff says a lot about him. Maybe they're tired of him back there in Texas. Maybe they're making, maybe he's making Texas look bad. I don't know. The fact that he's elected by a district says a lot about that district, does it not? So maybe, I think the runoff for uh Texas and Arkansas is in May. I think I'll check on that. I'll update you next week. But for all intents and purposes, Al Green may have pulled his last State of the Union stunt. He may be gone by the time 27 rolls around. We shall see. That's a very interesting race. Oh, the other race in Texas that's really important. The Senate race. Senator John Cornyn. Uh his uh opponent, Paxton, Paxton, that's running against him. This is a very interesting race. There were three people in the race. Uh now we're going to a runoff. John Cornyn has been up there for a long time. He is a good member of the Senate. He's a very good member of the Republican caucus. He does his job. And they're trying to pick him off. President Trump came out this week and stated that whoever he gave his nod to, he would hope the other person would drop out of the race. Uh Paxton came out and said that he couldn't do that in all good conscience for the people of Texas because Corning hadn't done his job. I don't know where he gets that. I really don't know where he's coming up with that. I don't know what is causing this race because normally you don't see this. We are spending a lot of money on the Republican side of the ticket for a race that you need money for in the general election when it's a safe seat. It's generally a safe seat in Texas. Uh there they keep trying to go after crews, they keep trying to go after crews. They've done it a number of times with Beto, but they just don't get there. And so I don't know why they're doing this in Texas. Some seats you're just not going to get. They're red seats. So we shall see about that. We shall see about that. Next week, Caroline Dobson's in the House. She's running for Secretary of State. You do not want to miss that. Coming up at the top of the hour is Corey Fuller, Jeff Hammock, Spy for Rent. Spy for Rent is the exclusive partner of our firm. They have some spy stories for the week. We're going to talk about some administrative law issues down in Alabama, professional license. If you have a license in the state of Alabama, folks, for cosmetology, if you're a massage therapist, HVAC, plumber, electrician, realtor, all these licensing boards, they are trying to consolidate under some legislation and make it one entity over all these licenses. It's a big deal because related to doctors and lawyers, we we police ourselves, meaning lawyers. We have the Alabama State Bar. We prosecute our own, we investigate our own, we make sure that we're following the laws. People are not practicing law without a license. The same thing for physicians as well. How would you know what is required for each of these individual professions, all 19 of them under one board? That's a lot. And it's all it's going to do is increase more government for John Q public out there and increase taxes. I don't think it's a good idea. And if this applies to you and you have a state license, you need to run to your uh state legislature and tell them you are against this and you want to keep the board that you have because the next time you want to get your license, there may be a delay in getting it. And if you don't have your license, you don't get to practice. Same thing as your driver's license by a LIA. If you have an expired license, you can't drive on the road. That's how important it is. You need your professional license to earn your income. So that is how important this is. Did I lay it down there for you, like John Kennedy? You need your license for your income. How simple is that, folks? How simple is that? So we're going to go to news and weather in just a minute. When we come back at the top of the hour, Corey Fuller, Jeff Hammock will be in the house. We're going to have some really good uh debate with them. Uh they come in once a month. They have good intel to provide to you. We look forward to that. You're listening to the Legal Lowdown with Joe Ingram on WERC 105.5, WBHP up in Huntsville, and WRTR in Tuscaloosa. Today you might want to go out to the chili cook-off if the weather is not bad over in Liberty Park. I'm told we may have some bad weather this weekend. Uh it's been really hot this week. We'll be back after news of weather.

SPEAKER_03 51:00

He's here to answer your legal questions and give you the help you need. You are listening to a legal lowdown with your lawyers. Go Ingram. Go Ingram law. Go Ingram has more than 20 years' experience fighting for his clients here in the state of Alabama. Go to focus in criminal defense and family law. You don't have to face your legal issue alone. You've got no income on your side. In case of sensitive legal matters, you can always wait after what we can go at GoIngramLog.com and wait for a private consultation. And now we're a bit of the people and all around good guy.

SPEAKER_04 51:42

Alright, Matter Rider, we're back to the second hour of the Legal Lowdown. Today's March 7, 2026. And we're doing spy stories. Yes. Kind of like bedtime stories for adults. This week we are fortunate enough to have Jeff Hammock, Corey Fuller, in the house from Spy for Rent. Jeff, Corey, how are you guys? Doing good, Joe. How are you? Good. I'm happy to be here, Joe. Good morning. Yeah, I know. All right, Jeff. What what's our spy story uh topic for the week?

SPEAKER_06 52:14

Well, we're gonna change it up and we're gonna go to Back in History, the little magazine, uh, the Mad Mad magazine had the spy versus spy inside of it. That's where we're gonna go this morning. Uh there was an announcement made in Alabama that a company had been hit for almost$10 million by an employee who had embezzled the money. It's been ordered to pay 9.8 restitution. So instead of doing a we're gonna we're gonna call this the spy versus spy. And you're gonna get my three decades of experience from the poor man James Bond to the young guy with all this technical equipment, and then you and whomever else is going to judge who is the best at it. Okay. All right, so I am that employee, I am that person that embezzled the money, and I have worked for this old man's company for years. I'm salary, I'm benefit, occasional bonus, whatever, right? But I have no other future in the ownership or dividends of the company. As with most, income the kids to take over, take the old man's down at the beach on his boat, take the sons off to or daughter's off to, and whatever, and I really managing the company, and every day, Monday through Friday, I come in and make y'all money. Um I have become jealous of the assets that I've acquired all my time. Um, I'm resentful, and anytime you have that jealousy and resentful, you seek satisfaction. And from that I start the satisfaction by giving me a little of the green that comes through. I write a little something off the book, I create an invoice, and before long it's like a drug habit. And now not only have I just taken a few hundred dollars off the book, but it's it's addictive. Because I run the office, I see the things that are going on, I know about meetings, I know when the owner's coming in, meeting with the son, meeting with the accountant, and all of a sudden I start picking up these emails of the meeting. Because I've embezzled money, I'm always waiting on that next shoe to drop, right? The handcuffs to show up and I go to jail. I take what is available right now, anyone can do it, and because I set these meetings up and I go into the boardroom, for the cost of seven dollars and eighty cents, I can buy a FM transmitter with a microphone and it hooks to a nine volt battery. So my hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment uh embezzlement. If I'm curious as to what's going on in that room, I get I get a pretty good trade-off for it. I get data, I get information. So when I go set the boardroom up, I just plug the nine volt battery in, and this thing begins, John, this is where you'll jump in, uh, transmitting on the FM spectrum. And we can kind of dial it around to get away from the regular stations, right? You have this one blank space somewhere on the spectrum. It doesn't transmit far. But because I work in the building, I go right into my cubicle, I pull up that FM station, and I hear everything that the owner, the accountant, everyone's talking about. I then know if I have another day of freedom or should I get the passport out of the desk and step on out of the office, right?

SPEAKER_00 55:56

When you talk about FM, uh, so that means frequency modulation. Corey? Yeah, the FM radio. Right. That's what, yeah. So, for example, the radio station you're probably listening to us on, depending on where you are. If you're in Birmingham, you're listening to us on 105.5 FM, or you might be listening on to the 960 AM, but let's say the FM. So 105.5 megahertz, it lives uh it lives in a place on the spectrum. A lot of people don't know this. The old uh VHF TV used to be, you know, channels two through 13. That all used to be what they call very high frequency or VHF FM radio, all used to live between what is channels six and seven. So we have a very limited band where we are. Now, uh air traffic control, that's a little bit higher on that in that same area. You know, that's around like say 110 to 140 megahertz somewhere in there. So where is this a piece of equipment? This is somewhere on the lower level.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

This is like 80 to 110 megahertz.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Well, that's actually where we are. Yeah, that's exactly where Brock is radio is.

SPEAKER_06 56:52

But the strength of that transmission and the ability for me on the back of it is like one of these little scroll dials uh screw dials. I can go and drop it down somewhere like let's just say 90.1. All right, and I can work it like a dial till I don't hear anything but me, that mic on my transmission, right? And there's a radio station two points over on the frequency or spectrum. It's co-channel adjacent. There was that, right? That we learned that in class too. We just had a very hard one. So on this whole spectrum analysis stuff. So anyway, I then that's the expensive, really technical stuff. Mine is a nine-bolt battery for a buck at the dollar store and a seven dollar FM transmitter that might go 30 feet.

SPEAKER_00 57:36

And with FM, it has a lot to do with antenna as well. So what what size antenna does this does this radio employ?

SPEAKER_06 57:42

It's just self self-contained.

SPEAKER_00 57:43

So it's there's got to be one in there, but it's tiny, like a quarter.

SPEAKER_06 57:46

We're looking like a one inch by one inch square, it's size of a quarter. The biggest thing on it are the wires that come out to the nine-volt battery, right? So you're getting 20 feet maybe of this antenna that gets out, and that's all you need internally, because again, I've stolen the money, I work in the business, I see everything, I just need the heads up if I'm caught or not. So let's say I I bugged it. How does the business owner know? How do you, as a business owner or as a person that's going through a divorce, Joe can say and attest to there are programs on cell phones that the individual can bring your someone else's cell phone, like from a dashboard or their computer? They can see their calls. Everything is duplicated and sent to that to that spyware's receipt. So how does a person or in this instance a business owner defend themselves from a$10 poor man James Bond buck?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

That sounds like where you guys come in. Where it takes Corey.

SPEAKER_01 58:51

Exactly. So so you're talking about low end of the spectrum. So we can go all the way up to six gigahertz. You know what I mean? So you can there's we're just talking about FM radio right here, but you can do it over Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, whatever. There's devices you can buy on Amazon that you can just plug in, and you don't even have to do the battery stuff that Jeff's talking about, or it's just plug into a wall.

SPEAKER_00 59:13

So it doesn't matter what kind of modulation, amplitude versus frequency modulation, what it is is you're talking about you're looking at the spectrum, and the spectrum goes is basically it's you know, like what we see light all the way from the low end of the spectrum, which is red or even lower than red, you know, what would it be, um infrared, all the way up to the very high end ultraviolet. So that's what you can see with your eyes. But then much higher up is the non-visible light like RF, and that's what you're talking about. And that spectrum is is very wide too. And then you can take a piece of that spectrum and you can analyze it for little spikes, because I imagine you're able to graph it where um the x-axis is your maybe your uh frequency and the y-axis is the strength or something like that, and you're able to see where there's little spikes of their strength in this certain way. Correct.

SPEAKER_01 59:54

So you can see that, and getting pretty technical with it, you can see the spikes, you can run a waterfall, you can you can basically display it however you want. You can even have uh save it to where you can analyze it later. Because let's just go from baseline. So, what you do to catch this$10 device is you would get a baseline. You've got your Wi-Fi transmissions, your Bluetooth transmissions, your radio stations, your cell towers, all this stuff that's going on, and you get a baseline for the area. Um, you use a spectrum analyzer like we have in the studio today.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:26

How much was that, Corey?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:27

Uh spectrum analyzer is about ten thousand dollars. And then you can get different types of antennas. Some are expensive, some are cheaper. It depends on what you want to do. So you got omni antennas, which are getting the whole area, then you have more directional stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:40

All right. Let me let me just stop that.$10, 9 volt battery. How much?$10,000 just for the device. Just for that, what you have sitting on your desk right now. There are other things in our bags that we bring, right?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Well, you can't use it without using the$20,000 software.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:57

There you go.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:58

So, well, in other words, it can pick stuff up, but you got to decode it and figure out what it is. Exactly.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:03

Now I'm still over here$10 out of my pocket. You're the business owner and a bunch of money in the bank. Thank you. Passport in hand, Bitcoin ready to go, you know, or I just stay another day.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:15

Or for people who remember the 1960s, you know, the Watergate Hotel when they broke in and put those bugs in, the DNC, to try and monitor, you know, what they thought the conversations that were going on.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:25

Listen, data, intel is what we both go after and acquire. It's what we protect, right? And that's all that was. If I know what you're talking about, much like the telephone conversation that was broadcasted, you know, and captured about Alabama Power and some of the other ones with the PSC, it's there. It's easy.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:47

And but the the thing I guess you have to deal with is most stuff in this day and age is encrypted in such a way to where you could not understand it. It's not, you can straight up because with FM, if it's regular analog FM, that can be demodulated and understood. But a lot of it is gonna be ones and zeros, and you might not have the proprietary software to decode the ones and zeros. So then is this equipment more about finding out that there is at least being something being broadcast so you can uh use the directional ability to point out where that thing is, that transmitter's coming from?

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

Correct. So some things you can demod and actually see a video and see or hear the audio that's being transmitted. Now, if it's encrypted, like you're saying, you can still see the transmission happening. And that's when you have to triangulate it and figure out the strength of that signal. And you can use this is just one tool in the toolbox, the spectrum analysis. You're just seeing what signals are there, what's the baseline, is there any anomalies to that, especially during certain times and meetings, or you know, if I was going to run a bug, me personally, I wouldn't get the$10 bug. I would hide it and I would only transmit at certain times. So you would have to have somebody there with the spectrum analyzer all the time. When you see a skiff in the army and stuff like that, they have people monitoring signals constantly, all the time for anomalies. And then you can see what friendly signals are out there, and you say that's a friendly transmission right there. And then you have a list and you can be alerted with the software if something else pops up that's an anomaly. And then you'd want to check it out.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:20

Is it more difficult in a noisy environment? And I not mean like audio noise, but for example, here in the building where we're we are, there's probably 12 different businesses here and a whole bunch of people living upstairs. And when I open up my computer and I go search for a Wi-Fi network, there's probably 40 things that pop up. So there's a lot of RF bouncing around here. Just in our suites alone, there's a ton of RF here alone. So when there's a lot of RF, does it make it harder for you to identify these things as opposed to you're at some guy's farmhouse out in the middle of nowhere?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:46

Correct. So that's why just one sweep usually isn't enough. You want to do, you want to get your baseline and then constantly.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:53

Let's talk about what the baseline is. Like if we know there's an executive board meeting tomorrow where there's sensitive matter that's gonna be discussed, we may go in, and and again, we're working for the company in this matter. We may go in and set up our equipment the day before and begin to run these searches, identify the various things because there's gonna be a lot out there, right? Around here downtown, we're just gonna we we got the FAA down the road, we've got other competing stations, we've got Wi-Fi, what, five and six, and on and on and on. So we run this baseline, we gather the data, we begin to eliminate what known frequencies and targets. And then if we're still picking up stuff, or if we get that anomaly, we take more equipment and sweep you, sweep the room, whatever it takes to keep it quiet. And it's only during that time that we're there. We pick up and leave that bug, as he said, he I I went to Poor man James Bond, ten dollars, right? What he's talking about might go to Wi-Fi, right? Hook in there. And it might not transmit. It'll collect data for hours and then transmit at 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:05

Sure. Or maybe it doesn't transmit at all. Maybe it just writes it to some sort of a thumb drive or SD card and somebody comes back in, picks up the recording, so to speak, on that digital media, and they take that and upload it to the computer, unless they need it in real time. Because I would think that would be the way to go. Not that I'm giving people ideas, but the way to go is not have RF at all, but try and just keep it as low profile as you can.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:25

That's a drop device, but you have to have access to the building at all times to be able to do a drop device.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:30

You see, that's what happened with Watergate. You know, is they had they broke back in to fix the mics. That's when they got caught. Well, because they left that tape on the door.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:35

Yeah, so we're where you have to choose your if you're gonna attack it, we take it from the attack mode, right? Because we're gonna be in the defense mode, we have to look at what vulnerabilities occur right now with the company, how we need to clean and tidy those up. And it's a step process. But again, this company lost a significant amount of money. Significant. And um it's it It's an employee-driven theft. Right. And they trusted this person. They had access to everything checking accounts, credit cards. They ran the business while the owner was off whatever, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:11

And this kind of thing, I imagine, is also an in a problem at places like, say, a gas station, you know, where they have those card skimmers and they uh have uh equipment set up to where they can read the card when you plug it in, but also they put a camera so they can get a picture of you typing your PIN number in, and then they can match up the video of what buttons you press you put the pin in with the information that the skimmer pulled off of the card, match up the card, the the number. Maybe there's a time code that you match up with the video, and you're able to go, okay, here's the information on that card, and then here's the the number. Now we'll go down the street to the ATM and we'll just pull all the money out.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

Yeah, I mean, so I I just handed John basically a pre-inspection form. And so to narrow the scope, it what information do these people want? So there's tons of devices, like you're saying, different information that they're trying to get. So that's the first thing. Is it audio, is it video? If it's something that they have to see, then it's gonna be a video camera. Then where is that video camera gonna be set up? So on some things, the spectrum analyzer isn't gonna catch everything. You've got to have your thermal cameras, nonlinear junction detector, which is like if there's electronics, it's it's looking for electronics in something that shouldn't, like this chair right here. If there was electronics and it saw it there, it's like why does this chair have electronics? But it's there's a ton of tools in our toolbox that we use and it's based on the threat and what we think uh somebody would want to obtain.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:30

Let me let me you've touched on something about gas stations and paying cards. What about gas station bathrooms? In other words, what about employee bathrooms, right? Taking video that you don't know we had one in Coleman County that put them in the in the men's bathroom that was capturing people or at an Airbnb. Well, so yeah. Or your hotel, right? So these things again, ten dollars. Uh I'm gonna spend a hundred dollars for like a video capture card, right? Some kind of camera placed in the room. I'm the hotel staff, I drop it in, I come back the next day, retrieve the video. Right? Because I I have access to that building. Otherwise, it's some type of transmission. So people people really need to take a look.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:14

Especially if you're in an environment where you're not used to, like for example, a hotel room. You're not usually in that hotel room. You wouldn't think that smoke detector looks funny, that mirror looks strange. You wouldn't necessarily think to scrutinize those things as opposed to in your own house where you go, okay, something changed. Or in your own business.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:31

Right. Right. The the the simple stuff you buy online. But no, these little you you can find them, they're probably about two inches long. It looks like a really square, old square security camera, but they're very short, got a lens, some have antennas. Otherwise, they're just a built-in lithium battery and a SD card.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:50

And those things, once they get that video out there, somebody gets it, puts it on the internet, then that's great for they could blackmail with that information, they could use it to their advantage.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:58

They make money on porn sites. You sell that off as Boyer video.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:03

Aaron Andrews is one of the biggest cases I can think of.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:05

In Nashville, yeah. Yeah. I I remember that story.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:08

So an executive protection, which we do a lot of security consulting too, um, that's one of the things that you do when you do your advanced, as you want to call it, but you would check the room for those type of devices before the executive or whoever the VIP is comes in if you're worried about that type of thing, which, you know, your reputation, I mean, there's a lot of things with that that, you know, it's not just financial information. You can be hit reputational damage, it can hurt your company, hurt your shareholders, hurt stockholders, you know.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:37

You can imagine somebody, for example, maybe they're a faith leader or something like that. They're known to be a very pious, very religious man, but behind the scenes they might, you know, curse a lot. And they do a pretty good job protecting their reputation. But a hidden mic, you get caught saying some stuff. Maybe it's not even anything personal or anything, but but you you're using some foul language, and all of a sudden that hits, you know, hits the media. Like you remember what happened when uh I think it was uh Jesse Jackson muttered some off-color stuff about Barack Obama thinking the mic was off, but the mic wasn't off. And that's the kind of thing you gotta watch out for because your reputation can be ruined by just one utterance.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:12

Yeah, I mean, uh security for businesses goes way beyond just bodyguards now. It's your online reputation, it's uh the financial transactions that are going to, your wire transfers, ACH, you know, you have dual control, all these things that you've got to worry about. Not just this is a small piece to the puzzle when it comes to that, but you've got to have somebody that understands that and has experts in each area to be able to really protect whoever you're protecting or the your organization.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:42

Um and and Joe, I apologize. We took over your show. You haven't said a word since in the last like 15 minutes.

SPEAKER_04 1:10:47

Y'all made it easy for me today.

SPEAKER_06 1:10:48

Well, no, John, that's why we invited you in because Joe has given that what are they where and that's kind of how I was in class. Corey is an excellent business partner, right? You know, we carry each other's water sometimes, and he had to carry me through class the other day. I'm still trying to digest some of this stuff. And and again, it was a it was a whole what eight hours, ten to six, nine to five, something like that. And it was just on that one device right there in the software necessary.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:19

Yeah, we got some updates. Like we can we can even see when drones are flying near now with the spectrum. Yeah. We can catch and that's being used in Ukraine right now, the actual software that we use.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:30

Aaron Powell When you talk about triangulating, so does that mean you have to have three separate receivers and they're measuring, they're all measuring signal strength of of something and they're communicating with one another to give a location? Is that how that works?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:41

You can do it that way. There's multiple ways to skin the cat. If you have one receiver, you can just move the platform. And like I was saying, you save everything that we scan, it is saved. So you can go back and look at it later for analysis because it's we're getting signals all over the place. It's hard in real time to scan every single s signal and then look at it and see is that friendly, not, et cetera.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:01

So But with only one, you would have to have a situation where the the what you're trying to track is static because if the thing you're trying to track is moving tracking.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:13

Once we start adding antennas, then we can track the movement. But right now we're seeing the signal strength is recognized as a drone, and there should be no drone outside that corporate window on the fifth floor.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:25

So what kind of what kind of uh range are you talking about being able to detect? Is this is this within like inches, feet? Certainly not miles. How how big how how wide of a net can you capture?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:34

So it depends on your antenna. That's what your and so your omni antennas uh that capture things from multiple directions. Are not as powerful as something that's directional, right? Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:46

So that's more long, but it's so it's so you use something like a YAGI antenna to catch something that's very directional, whereas something like this is more of a almost like a a very wide net sort of thing, so it catches everything. But at the same time, it's not gonna be super it's it's not gonna be super um what's the word, sensitive because it has to pick up everything. So it needs to be very broad. Trevor Burrus, Jr. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:07

So that's why you use multiple antennas, and you've got to know what each antenna is good for. And so what the problem is it's that's why it's so important that sheet that I gave you, is what are you actually worried about getting out there? And that's when you focus the scope of the inspection on those type of threats. So and that's and you have to have the knowledge to be able to tell, I need this antenna, or I need this type of antenna, or I need to this won't even work at all because it's not it's a drop device, like you're saying. So you're gonna have to use a thermal or some other physical inspection tool. So that's that's where that comes in. But it gets pretty complicated right there, and we could talk about that all day. But um I think the biggest point to it is is you've got to know the threat, understand the threat, and then how to be able to find that threat with what information you're given. Because if you just go on a rabbit hole and try to get everything, then it's gonna be and this is the legal lowdown.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:02

Joe, why don't you why don't you uh tell us some other things that we're talking about today?

SPEAKER_04 1:14:06

Uh so the um well the chili cook-off is is uh today. Happening today. Uh if you can uh handle the weather over in Liberty Park. And um this has been a fascinating conversation. If you have a PhD or you go to MIT, uh I'm sitting over here thinking about why I never went to medical school. Uh and now I know why. Because I don't have the aptitude of John and Corey in the room.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:37

I've m I have neither a PhD nor have I been to MIT, nor do I have any sort of I I just find this stuff fascinating because I I love this is science fiction, but it's actually reality. It's not science fiction, it's just science.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:49

Yeah, and and and and probably the un the next unibomber out there is listening to us and saying, this is what I need to know. We're hiring, please. We're hiring. John might John might want to work for you part time. All right, we're gonna go to breaking weather. We'll be back after the break. Bye. We have Corey Fuller and Jeff Hammock of Ply for Lin. They are the exclusive partner of our show, and they're in the studio today. We had a fast fascinating conversation the first um segment about I don't know what, but if a unibomber's out there, God love you, you got some new technology. Anyway, I'm just joking. Uh because they're all looking at me thinking Joe's an idiot. And yes, I am, and I just proved it. All right, Jeff, second segment, we want to talk about something that's very serious, administrative law today. Um we've been following a lot of legislation out of Montgomery, and now the legislatures in all their power down there, they have came up with a new law that they're trying to introduce about the professional boards, Jeff. So what's going on with the with the legislature and trying to um consolidate all the professional board licenses down in Montgomery?

SPEAKER_06 1:17:26

Well, what happened was, Joe. Somebody from South Alabama elected the senator who has just not let this stick go. It's a dog on a stick and he won't let go. He wants to take, and listeners are important that you listen to this, this is not your local business license that you buy for your city, municipality, or county. This is your state occupational professional license. If you're a gas fitter, if you're a plumber, if you're a real estate agent, if you're a massage bar, social worker, social worker. And if you keep going on, we go into the very uh in-depth professions that require a lot of education, like pharmacist, pharmacist techs, we look at nurses, we look at nurse practitioners, we look at anything that you sit before an examination for, uh, whether it be an apprentice, a training, an hour that works out, and you take a test for, and the state of Alabama gives you a license to practice your job. Those are called regulatory boards, licensing and regulatory boards in Alabama. And we have a multitude of them, as I named off some of those professions and even more, they all work independent of each other under their own board. For example, my board is the Alabama Private Investigation Board. If you want to be a PI in Alabama, you apply to that board and you get your uh license and training and you're ready to go. Um so once you once you apply and you're under the control and jurisdiction of the board, that board is over you. The massage parlor will never tell you, the board will never tell you what to do. The plumbers board has no control, it's just that one board over your patch. Senator Elliott out of Montgomery wants to consolidate everyone's board into one board. Now, this is something that's come up several times. Uh state of Georgia even successfully did it and fell flat on their face. But basically, what is happening is if you're one of those occupations, instead of having your board and an executive director who is the group agency or worker for that board, they keep up with the licenses, they make sure the people are tested. If there is a complaint, they handle those disciplinary actions. There are a number of things that that executive director does. And what's happening now behind the scenes, there's a public hearing next Wednesday that you can voice your opinion. And again, it's not just investigators, it's real estate agents, Joe. Um it could have been attorneys, they were exempt, and that r you know brings me to the question of why is one exempt when another one isn't. Um it's coming up Wednesday, and if you have a state license that you've been issued, then you're gonna need to probably call your association, call your licensing board, and find out if they are included or exempt from that legislation. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:20:40

We're talking about uh some administrative law down in Montgomery. John, who's on the phone with us?

SPEAKER_06 1:20:48

Yes, yeah, yeah. So um one of the things we're gonna put on now is a um he's a reporter, he's an investigative reporter, but he's also a private investigator. And he does a lot of news work down in Montgomery. He has a lot of behind the scenes from the broadcasting news media aspect, but he incidentally he's also a private investigator. That's how I know him, and and he has some information about this bill. And and you know, and he's tracked it. It's not the first time it's come up. Every time there's a legislative session, Senator Elliott brings this up. And the problem is not the problem is the state. The state has what's called a sunset review committee, and they're supposed to do annual audits that the state is understaffed. So if we create the state organization to oversee everybody's state occupied occupational license under one umbrella, who's going to audit the state? Because we're already being audited, they just don't come around and do it. They may go three years before we get an audit, but if we did not have a finding in the last audit, say five years ago, and A always goes to B, that's what we do for the rest of the years, right? It's the process of cycle. And then they come in and they say, Oh, you you're in violation of whatever, right? And and so now we look like we've gone six, five, four years, you know, intentionally doing whatever we want. It's what we picked up and we did before. You need to know these executive directors are businesses, they're individuals who enjoy this type of work managing regulatory boards. It's a very niche kind of service. All right.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:37

So let's bring in our uh caller.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:40

Hey, how are you today?

SPEAKER_04 1:22:42

Yeah, this is uh good.

SPEAKER_05 1:22:43

Greetings all. This is Brian Hodge.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:45

Hey Brian, how are you today, man?

SPEAKER_05 1:22:48

Oh, so far so good.

SPEAKER_04 1:22:50

All right, so we're talking about the legislation that down there they're trying to pass about uh the professional boards. I understand that you uh have some background in this. Give us the lowdown on it.

SPEAKER_05 1:23:03

Yeah, so uh I'm the editor of the Montgomery Independent, and um part of my job is to you know track legislation. Uh this bill or one similar to it has been introduced uh for the last I think this is the third year. And uh I just had the benefit of everything you guys were talking about as I came on a little late, but um I wrote a piece about this, it's published right now on our website, uh Montgomeryindependent.com. And the um the primary issue that I see aside from it might be a needless expansion of state government and you know put some small firms out of business, entrepreneurs out of business, is that uh if I as a private investigator, because I'm I'm both a journalist and a private investigator. And if I have a problem right now, I know the regulatory board, uh the Alabama Prize investigation board, I know the people on it. If I have an issue that comes up, I'm pretty confident that I can go to just about anybody on that board, tell them the problem I'm having, and I can be pretty confident that they will bring it up for discussion or at least try to find some sort of resolution to my problem. When if if this bill were to pass and that board would disappear into the state bureaucracy, it's very difficult to penetrate. I mean, I've I have to call people in state government all the time, and some are more accessible than others, but you know, it is uh if even if it's difficult for me, it's gonna be very impossible, uh close to impossible for somebody who doesn't have the history of trying to make these calls and get hold of people and get something resolved once it's disappeared into the state bureaucracy. And so, my you know, the the board that we have and and by extension the licensed private investigators is gonna lose some autonomy if our board were subsumed into the department of workforce. But aside from that, I think it's going to prove very difficult for the average Joe to be able to get anything resolved and or even have a chance to be heard uh once this is part of the department of workforce.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:26

Hey Brian, let me ask you this, okay? You there?

SPEAKER_05 1:25:30

Yeah, yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:32

Okay. So Georgia did this several years ago, correct? They consolidated all of this.

SPEAKER_05 1:25:40

They consolidate all of the I believe the yeah, the legislation that Elliott uh has proposed, my understanding was modeled off of the one that Georgia did.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:50

All right, let me give you a little story on this one. So when that happened, all the boards went under one executive director, same thing they're trying to do here in Alabama, and there were people that went out of business because if you are required to have an occupational professional license and that license expires, you're no longer allowed to work.

SPEAKER_05 1:26:11

You're you're you can't mercy of whoever issues the license.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:16

So my next question then is if there are let's just say a hundred uh regulatory boards in Alabama, I don't know what the number is, why there's only sixteen or seventeen that are being put into this legislation and there's so many being exempted? Why is Joe, you're a lawyer? Why is the state bar exempted? It's a occupational license, no different than any other.

SPEAKER_04 1:26:40

Yeah. I think as for physicians, the medical board, and attorneys, the Alabama State Bar, we provide we provide a service to the community at large that could be detrimental to either their physical health or their legal position in some kind of situation. And so the state bar is run by lawyers. We have office of general counsel. If I'm put in a position, say with me or my client or somebody I don't know anything about, I can pick up the phone, I can call the uh Office of General Counsel, and I get an official opinion that they put in the book, and you better make sure that you've written it down that you got it from them. Same thing with this with the medical board. Um physicians um save lives, and so it is run by physicians, but now there are three attorneys for the medical board. I know this because I have had two medical board cases in the last year, and they are the uh prosecution function of the medical board. Uh now, all these boards, I'm not saying one is more important than the other, they're all important and they all have probably statutory laws tied to their profession.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:58

They're there for a reason to protect. The consumer. Absolutely. Just like the State Bar. So you say that one board is exempt because they have the potential to cause harm. I'd say if somebody I mean, look at the hair I have on my head today, that caused by a hair tech, right? Somebody burned my head, but they have a professional license. Who is to say that and and you need to understand that the the this executive director position that this legislator is creating and why he's creating it, I don't know. Maybe he can't get re-elected. I'm not saying he's going to get the job. But it requires zero technical or professional experience in that industry.

SPEAKER_04 1:28:42

And I can imagine, Brian, if they create this board, if you're going to consolidate 16 or 19 professional boards into one, I imagine you're going to have to have the same staff to manage all these people.

SPEAKER_05 1:28:58

Well, not only that, uh I just use the Alabama Private Investigation Board as an example. Okay, they have, I believe, three employees. They're not state employees, they are not part of the retirement plan, they don't get any of the benefits of being state employees. But if this proposal goes through and everything is lumped into a division of the Department of Workforce, other than the executive director, um the the rank and file people who are doing the back end work on this thing are all going to be stable. So we're going from a situation, at least with the Alabama Private Investigators Board, where you it's going it's going to cost um more money for the same work. And where is that cost going to get passed on to? I have a hard time believing it's not going to get passed on to the licensees.

SPEAKER_04 1:29:59

John Q. Pope.

SPEAKER_05 1:30:00

And a lot of a lot of people, I mean, there are a few big PI firms in the state that have a lot of employees and this and that. And um, but most of them are guys just like me. They're self-employed. You may be the only person that works for your firm. And um, you know, you're talking about a license uh increase for the fees or whatever else they come up with. And that and let me interrupt you is going to be born by us.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:28

Let me interrupt you, Brian. And that's at the discretion of the executive director if he wants to he or she want to raise the licensing rates. It's changing legislation, but there and again you have that single par power of authority. Where Alabama has gotten us through wrong is like I said, it's a sunset review committee that's required to do these audits. They've been haphazard in doing them. It is back office legislation that is trying to get pushed through. Really and truly, it's it's going to create an entire state agency under this workforce program. And you're gonna lump all of these professions who are totally different from each other. Totally different under one person's command and authority who has knowledge of what all of them but know. Doctors' boards are made of doctors, investigators' boards are made of consumers and appointees, and the whole list goes down the line for it. What the state needs to do is clean up their own house instead of trying to create a new one. And it's Senator Elliott that really and truly is doing it, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_05 1:31:36

It's like you said, Joe, you got the I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 1:31:39

Hey Brian, just out of curiosity, we're talking about 16 to 19 boards of people that have a professional license in the state of Alabama. How many people does this affect? Do you have just a rough number?

SPEAKER_05 1:31:52

I'm not quite sure because the boards that are that exist, you've got a cosmetology board, how many hairdressers are there in the store? A lot. How many plumbers are there?

SPEAKER_06 1:32:03

How many gases are there?

SPEAKER_05 1:32:04

I mean, yeah, yeah, I I think it's going to be a lot of people, but you know, um, now I listen, maybe I'm on the wrong tree here, but it's like you said, Joe, when this when you have state bar, uh the is the leadership, the authority is uh is attorneys. And uh with a private investigator, most of the people on the private investigation board are private investigators.

unknown 1:32:30

Right.

SPEAKER_05 1:32:30

It's illegal to practice law in Alabama without a license. It's illegal to be a private investigator in Alabama without a license. So I mean the state has decided years ago that when it comes to some of these things, the subject matter demands that you have people constituted from the group that make up the profession uh to have uh input and regulation on these things because they have subject matter knowledge. And I I think that's I think that was a wise move. I think uh having a requirement that people that work in the profession be the ones that make up the regulatory money is a good idea. I'm not convinced it's a good idea to give this to somebody who having to pass a clerical exam for to work for the state and doesn't have any knowledge about what we do or the best practices and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_04 1:33:30

What's the likelihood that this is going to pass before they get out of there in April?

SPEAKER_05 1:33:36

It's entirely possible that it could pass, but uh since this is I think the third year um and and it hasn't gone anywhere so far now. It did pass the Senate uh last week, and there's a hearing next Wednesday.

SPEAKER_06 1:33:55

If you have let me interrupt you, Brian, if you have an occupational license from the state, they will have a hearing next Wednesday um in Montgomery about this specific bill, right? And you but but here's what they're doing.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:11

My understanding is the House Committee that is gonna be hearing the call the public.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:17

But if you want to speak at this hearing, you have to file notice, right? So they notice the hearing like to only give you four hours to file your notice that you want to speak. So it's it's it's done in such it is nothing different than what the PSC they tried to pull off with the PSC last month, right?

SPEAKER_04 1:34:35

But there's nothing in the papers about this. No, you don't say this.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:38

No, no, you won't. And and again, we had to get an investigative journalist to help me walk this thing through. This thing is picking up momentum. Third time around through the legislation, right? He he he's not quitting.

SPEAKER_05 1:34:51

I will say that if you want to be optimistic about it, and probably the best thing we've all got going for us who are opposed to this, is that this is an election year. And every day that they meet, that counts as another one of the 30 legislative days they're allowed to have. Pretty much every one of these legislatures wants to get out of Montgomery, get back to their district, and start campaigning, because for most of them, the decisive election is going to be in May and the primary is not in November. So these guys don't want they want to get to get out and go campaign. And I'm all for them doing that and uh leaving this to another day. And hopefully um we can defeat it then. But I you know I I if I'm gonna be optimistic, I think that's why I'm not gonna let you off that easy, buddy.

SPEAKER_06 1:35:44

I'm not gonna let you off that easy. We got just a minute or two before we're gonna have to hang this up. But as I express, there are executive directors that run these boards for all these boards in Alabama. The state does not run them, they're private entities, individuals. Tell me if I am right or wrong. You're the investigator, you're the reporter. You just tell me if I'm right or wrong that maybe there's a certain politician who is angry at an executive director. And this might be the reason that everybody's getting well, I can't say everybody because Senator Elliott has created an exemption list. There are a few licensees that do not have to go under the board's control or under this control of the UED. But am I right or wrong that number one, we may be creating a job for a legislator, and number two, my first question?

SPEAKER_05 1:36:41

Well, um we may very well be creating a job for a legislator. I'm not sure. I think a lot of that's gonna have to do with what who Greg Reed decides to hire. He may not desire to hire Chris Alien or whoever. But uh I think the thing that got this whole Hornets nest stirred up was several years ago, uh there's a firm called Smith Warren, and uh I don't think there were any charges brought, but there was certainly some irregularities uh that maybe they were padding invoices over there. And I I can understand if that was the case. But that's one might get upset. But uh, you know, when you have crabgrass in your yard, the goal is to fix that, not to go three towns over and tell them they have to pay for crabgrass mediation or whatever it is. I mean, you fix the problem that exists, there's no sense in lumping in a bunch of boards that don't have negative findings, that aren't doing anything wrong, um, and and putting them in a bucket to solve a problem that is not as big as uh some people might think it is. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:37:47

Well, Brian, this is a great story. And um I just got wind of this in the last week from Jeff Hammock and Jim Castile, who is on the board for the Private Investigators Alabama. Uh, we need to get some light on this, and we need everybody in the state of Alabama that has a professional license that would fall under this category needs to reach out to their state legislature and say, No, I'm not for this. Anyway, Brian, thank you for being a guest today. And uh uh I'll keep I'll be in touch with you soon, okay?

SPEAKER_05 1:38:21

Thank you.

SPEAKER_04 1:38:22

All right, man. Have a good day. All right, so that was Brian Hodge of Montgomery. He's a private investigator and a journalist as well. Jeff, we're talking about this professional board license and uh issue that they're trying to pass in Montgomery. Um one thing that really stands out to me um I have to fill out a renewal application every year at the state bar. Doctors fill out an application every three years, and nurses do an application every two years, I believe. And so you're asked a lot of questions now on uh a computer program. You fill out an application since you last applied. Have you committed any crimes or have you been charged with a crime? They ask all these questions. And I know for the medical board, I've had this happen. They'll say, has your license been suspended in another state? And sometimes I've had a physician say no. And what they're doing is they're chasing the system. Maybe they got suspended in California and they think that I've got been licensed in Alabama and I'll just run to Alabama to practice medicine. That's what happened in Georgia. Yeah. And so there's a computer system nationwide for physicians. Once you've been deemed in one state, it sends it to every other state. It's a flag system. And so I got a client one time, he said, you know, I applied to to reissue my license in Alabama, but I lost my license in another state. I was like, Well, you've just committed a one perjury because you lied on an application for for a professional license. Two, you you lost your license in another state. So what I'm getting at is you would have to know every statutory requirement for all these licenses for the state of Alabama to run this. And that's going to take a lot of time to play catch up.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:15

And you're going to have to have an embedded two to three employees, if not more employees per board. Per board. We're running Alabama Private Investigator Board will probably have about twelve hundred licensees anytime, but maybe 500 actively practicing. But that is 500 uh educational uh time frames we have to meet, again, our our CLEs and so forth. Look, I know we're up against time. I could go at this all.

SPEAKER_04 1:40:43

We'll talk about it some more. We're gonna talk about this and we're gonna shed light on this. Uh, folks, if you have a license in the state of Alabama, you need to pay attention to this. Final word for the week. People think running is about speed, about medals records, but running isn't about measured in numbers. It's about the fight against yourself. It's chasing the edge of pain, and the mind goes quiet. That's why we run to test the edge of the market.