Good riddance to bad rubbish — Judge Roy Moore gone for good.

He has been suspended for the remainder of his term for ordering county clerks to disobey a Federal court order.

The court order was regarding gay marriage — the Federal court ruled that the Supreme Court had legalized gay marriage, so the State of Alabama had to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Judge Moore then issued an order to county probate judges telling them they didn’t need to obey the Federal court order because state judges didn’t need to comply with opinions of the United States SUpreme Court.

That, of course, is utter balderdash — that’s a question that got settled in a little fracas between 1861 and 1865, over 150 years ago. The Court of the Judiciary rightly called foul. At which point Judge Moore and his supporters started whining that the court was in the thrall of gay agenda yada yada yada.

So is it true? I read the final decision of the Court of the Judiciary, which is charged with policing the judiciary. Every single justification put forth for suspending Judge Moore for the remainder of his term (which, essentially, is forever, because he will not be eligible to run again) had nothing to do with gays or gay marriage. Every single legal justification examines specifically whether Judge Moore, in fact, ordered county probate judges to ignore a Federal court order, and whether such an order was legal or authorized by the Alabama Constitution or within his power as a single sitting judge on the Alabama Supreme Court. Furthermore, many of the members of this court don’t even agree with the Supreme Court’s June 2015 ruling legalizing gay marriage. Rather, the question was whether Judge Moore had violated the Canons of Judicial Ethics adopted by the Alabama Supreme Court, as required by the 1901 Alabama Constitution and which he had sworn an oath to obey as part of his oath of office.

Specifically:

• Canon 1, he failed to uphold the integrity of the judiciary,
• Canon 2, he failed to avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety by participating in proceedings where he had a conflict of interest,
• Canon 2A, he failed to respect and comply with the law,
• Canon 2B, failed to avoid conduct that brings the judicial office into disrepute,
• Canon 3, he failed to perform the duties of his office impartially,
• Canon 3A(6), he failed to abstain from public comment about a pending proceeding in his court.

Read the opinion for more details. None of that has anything to do with gay marriage. All of it is about Judge Moore engaging in conduct that he’d sworn an oath to not do.

The court has suspended him without pay for the remainder of his term. This means, effectively, forever, because he will not be eligible to run again after his term is over. And to that, I say: Good riddance.

– Badtux the “Goodbye to bad rubbish” Penguin

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What Would Jesus Drive?

So discussion turned to the important question of the evening, WWJD. That is, What Would Jesus Drive?

The Prius dude said that Jesus would drive a Prius. Of course. A pious Prius driver is pretty darn stereotypical nowadays.

The F-150 driver said that Jesus would drive a Ford F-150. Because you couldn’t fit twelve disciples into a Prius.

The RAM Cummins diesel driver said “pah, Jesus wasn’t gay. He’d drive a *real* truck, a *diesel* truck with a *Cummins* engine, not some gay Ford.”

Then I pointed out that Jesus hung out with twelve guys. Sounded pretty gay to me.

Dead silence.

:).

Meanwhile, back to Donald Trump and his secret plan to defeat ISIS:

The last time a Presidential candidate said he had a secret plan to end a war, it cost 25,000 American lives, the lives of half a million Laotians, Cambodians, and Vietnamese, roughly a trillion dollars in today’s money — and we lost anyhow. Yeah, I’m not fond of politicians with secret plans to end wars…

– Badtux the Secret Penguin

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This day makes me tired

I will repeat the words of a friend: “Our hearts are still heavy with the major news events of this morning, and we pray for a better tomorrow.”

I will comment more when I’ve had a chance to process it. But substitute “hope” for “pray” and you pretty much have my sentiment.

– Badtux the Sad Penguin

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Human beings aren’t on this Earth to make you “comfortable”

Y’know, as someone of a certain age born in a certain place where bigotry was just “common sense” in the air around me, there’s a fair number of things that make me uncomfortable. I’ve been privy to some talk of gay sexual practices, for example, that just completely squick me out.

But here’s the thing. I recognize that this is *my* problem, not *their* problem. It isn’t a human being’s purpose to make other human beings feel comfortable. It is a human being’s purpose to live life, grasp for the stars, love deeply, be kind, strive greatly, quest for truth, speak truth, be him or herself. It is not a human being’s purpose in life to make others feel comfortable. Indeed, the best amongst us never do. They instead challenge us to be better people, a challenge that is never comfortable.

My discomfort is no reason to create a law punishing the people who make me feel uncomfortable. To do so is to punish human beings for being human. That is never the right thing to do.

– Badtux the “People are people” Penguin

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Manically cleaning I am

So I have now tidied my bedroom and the music room, and vacuumed and shampooed the carpets.

Meanwhile, while that was all happening, the world keeps going around.

First, I decided on and implemented a new rule for my Twitter feed. If you are a Democrat and you are attacking a Democratic candidate for office, I now unfollow you. This has made my Twitter feed *much* less nauseating. The surprising thing is that I only had to unfollow ten people of the hundreds I follow in order to make my Twitter feed readable again. Just goes to show how a small handful of hyper-partisan activists can tar the image of all of a candidate’s supporters.

So now on with the news…

So apparently Harvard University has not only a rowing club and a crocheting club and a cricket club, they also have a rapists clubthat can’t admit women because, like, they’d rape them. Who coulda known? BTW for Google purposes it’s called the Porcellian Club.

Meanwhile, a whiny shop owner in North Carolina whines, “why should my store be boycotted over a law that I despise?”

He’s talking to the wrong person. The person he needs to be talking to is his governor and his state legislators, telling them how much this is costing him. Because we aren’t going to send money to North Carolina for it to be taxed to support bigotry and hate. No sir. No way.
People will continue to boycott North Carolina not only for the bathroom portion of the law that was passed, but for the anti-gay portion of the law that was passed that overturned all the local anti-discrimination laws that had been passed at the local level in North Carolina.

It’s called consequences. Actions have’em. If this guy doesn’t like’em, he needs to make sure a different Legislature and governor get elected in November, and get that law repealed. And if that doesn’t happen, clearly the only reasonable action on his point is to move to a different state where bigotry and hate aren’t written into state law. Meantime, whining to the rest of America “but it wasn’t MEEEEeeeee!” isn’t going to accomplish a thing, because it ignores the *reason* for the boycott — i.e., a desire to not reward the state as a whole for bigotry and hate. Loss of jobs and loss of tax money is all that people like his governor understand. Fine. They elected this jackass, they can un-elect him if they don’t like the consequences. Whining we’re being meeeaeaan to poor little him just makes him look like a whiny-ass diva.

– Badtux the Consequences Penguin

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What does God want?

There seems to be lots of people eager to tell me and lots of other folks what God wants. God hates fags. God doesn’t want gay marriage. God doesn’t want abortions. God this. God that.

What I can’t figure out is this: Why the fuck should I listen these people? Let me get this straight, God is omnipotent and all-seeing and all-mighty, yet He can’t give me a message directly? What, His thumbs are too big to work the buttons on his Blackberry? (Because you know God is old skool and doesn’t “do” those new-fangled iPhones and Androids, yo). Or He has a bad case of laryngitis today and so needs the God Whisperer to talk in his place? Yeah, right. If God needs to talk to me, he knows where the nearest burning bush is. Just sayin’.

There’s actually entire religions based on the notion that nobody can speak for God but God Himself. Like, the Quakers, they don’t have a “church service”. They have what they call “Meeting”, where they sit around quietly and wait for God to speak to them, or not, whatever the case may be. Because they find the notion that God would need one human being to tell another human being what He has to say to be rather, uhm, presumptuous? And actually, the Baptists used to be that way too. Once upon a time, if any Baptist had dared tell another Baptist what God had to say, he woulda have been firmly put in his place and told “no no, that’s papistry, what, you think you’re Catholic now, you think you’re the Pope in Rome that’s gonna tell us what God has to say?” The Bible was what God had to say. What God spoke to you when you prayed quietly was what God had to say. What other people claimed God had to say was just other people moving their lips and putting themselves into the place of God.

Too bad it isn’t like that still. All these God-botherers wanderin’ around claiming they and they alone know what God has to say are a plague upon the land. So if you’re gonna tell me what God has to say, I’ll tell you this — give God my phone number, and let Him IM me personally using his personal Blackberry. Oh wait, He is omnipresent and omnipotent, so He already has my phone number. So He already can IM me anytime he wishes. The fact that He hasn’t sorta tells me that He doesn’t care about any of that crap that the god botherers claim He cares about. Either that, or He is a myth invented to scare ignorant shepherds into doing what their leaders wanted them to do, but that couldn’t be, right?

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

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Did these Liberty Counsel lawyers get their law degree from a box of Cheerios?

I’m beginning to think so, because they keep behaving in ways that are unethical, incompetent, and seem calculated to keep their client in jail.

I am, of course, talking about the counsel for Chairwoman Kim of Rowan County, Kentucky and the ridiculous appeal they filed about their client being jailed for contempt of court. Since the appeal is 83 pages of Palinesque authentic frontier gibberish, I’ll summarize it:

1. Governor Brashear made me do it
2. This same sex marriage stuff won’t be upheld by the courts
3. This takes away Chairwoman Kim’s right of free speech.

Oh my, this is so much fail that I almost don’t know where to start. First of all, let’s start with #1. Kentucky law requires that the State make reasonable accommodations for an elected official’s religious beliefs. But that’s Kentucky law. The applicable Federal law, Title VII, contains no such provisions, it only covers private businesses. The appeal cites no case law allowing a Federal court to make rulings based on Kentucky law, it just contains bluster and blithering nonsense. The appeal also cites no case law allowing a county clerk to refuse to obey a court order because of failings on the part of her governor. Maybe because, well, there is no such case law. She might as well have said “the dog made me do it!” and had the same chances on appeal.

Next up, the whole “this same sex marriage stuff won’t be upheld by the courts” nonsense. First, the fact that the Supreme Court turned down an earlier appeal on that matter by this exact same legal team — and did it in such a terse and perfunctory way as to say, “quit wasting our time with this nonsense” — seems to rule against that. The Supremes are *not* going to overturn a ruling they made only two months ago. They simply won’t. Any assertions to the contrary are either wishful thinking or mental illness.

And finally, the whole free speech argument. Nobody’s taking away Chairwoman Kim’s right of free speech. She’s free to talk about how she hates faggots all she wants. Hell, she’s free to talk about how she hates niggers all she wants too, you know she uses that word in private with her relatives, all those inbred redneck white trash cretins do. What she is not free to do, as a representative of government, is to discriminate against blacks or gays in any way, form or fashion. She can talk about how evil blacks and gays are all she wants, but it’s her actions that have her in jail, not her words. Refusing to issue a marriage certificate to a biracial couple or a gay couple when it is your official duty as a government official to do so are illegal actions under the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America (specifically, the “equal protection of the law” clause). That is what the Supreme Court has decided, and that’s that.

In short, this appeal is nonsense, and I expect it to get appealed up the chain once more, and once more get rejected by the Supreme Court with a terse one-liner basically saying “quit wasting our time with this nonsense.” If the Liberty Counsel lawyers were actually competent they maybe could have put together some cites to case law that would give them a chance. But this blustering nonsense that they wrote? Man, if I were the Kentucky bar right now, I’d be looking *seriously* at whether these lawyers are guilty of professional malpractice, because their actions seem calculated to keep their client in jail rather than free her, and that’s a decided violation of every ethics code in every state of the Union.

– Badtux the Baffled-by-gibberish Penguin

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