Jack Burright still in the wrong

After my previous column about sheriff candidate Jack Burright and his fake diploma, I've received several letters defending Burright's honor. The latest such letter included an earnest plea to go to Burright's website and read his letter explaining his side of the story. In the interest of fairness, I did so.

Mr. Burright blames the newspaper for his current troubles, accusing the Gazette-Times of calling him a "high school dropout" and alleging that he "bought a phony college diploma without earning it." He goes on to explain that he can't be considered a dropout, because he completed his GED two years later. Okay, fine. Nobody really cares about that part. It's the bogus college degree that is the sticking point for most. Mr. Burright may believe that he earned his phony diploma, but in the real world, universities don't say, "Hey, buddy... you've done well. Have a degree!" (Unless Burright is renowned enough for an honorary degree, but I'm guessing no.)

Burright claims that he truly believed that Farington University was "an online university that could apply the college credits [he] had already earned, plus other training and experience, to earn a college diploma." He was "delighted" that Farington evaluated his life experience and previous transcripts and declared that not only was he eligible for instant graduation, but he could do so summa cum laude. (The funniest part, personally, was that Burright reflexively censored the "cum" with asterisks, so it reads summa *** laude. I wanted Obi-Wan Kenobi to step in and say, with a wave of his hand, "This is not the word you are looking for." But I'm also a geek.)

Okay, so now I've read Burright's self-defense, and it seems we are left with a choice: We either believe that Burright intentionally cheated the system and lied about it later, or we have to face the fact that he's not smart enough to distinguish between actual accredited universities and diploma mills. And he should be sheriff? Either he believes in bending the rules, or he's not a very good investigator. Anyone else want to explain why he's the man who should run our county law enforcement agency?