The race for Alabama Supreme Court justice between Deborah Bell Paseur and Greg Shaw has taken a decidedly nasty turn lately, with each campaign accusing the other of promulgating misleading or outright false information.

The latest salvos came last week when Shaw had to deal with a Huntsville Times story that the Department of Revenue had placed a lien on a Shaw family business for unpaid taxes. (The business had been sold several years before.) The Shaw campaign and the Republican Party of Alabama accused the Paseur campaign and the Times of attacking Shaw’s family.

There’s no word—at least, not that I’ve been able to find—on who filed the lien in Shelby County Probate Court.

Before this skirmish, the campaigns had already traded shots on campaign finance, each accusing the other of taking money from oil companies and oil interests.

Well, the president of the Alabama Bar Association has had about enough. He’s summoned both candidates “to meet with a campaign integrity committee chairman before their race gets out of hand,“ Dana Beyerle writes for the Florence Times Daily.

He started it, the Paseur campaign says.

She started it, the Shaw campaign says.

Anyone want to place odds on this campaign NOT being “consumed by negative campaigning, similar to some past Supreme Court races that denigrated into charges of ‘big oil’ and ‘trial lawyer’ money influence?“

Yeah. I didn’t think so.

On a side note, at least we know what Fred Thompson’s been doing since his presidential campaign went belly-up—I’d put even money on that being his voice on Shaw’s commercial. And notice that in her ad, Paseur really, really wants you to know that she can shoot a gun.

I often wonder how the job descriptions for various political offices would read if we rewrote them based on what voters hear and see from the candidates during their campaigns.

I know this much: It wouldn’t be pretty.