Roy Moore - A Referendum on Alabama's Identity

Alabama Capitol

Years ago my first job out of law school took me to Mobile, Alabama, where I lived and worked for four (4) years.  I found the people to be conservative, but gracious and nowhere deserving of the horrible reputation that Alabama had in much of the rest of the country (when visiting my former wife's family in New York City, it was always interesting to see people's reactions when we said we lived in Alabama). In the legal realm, the state had updated its rules of civil procedure and was actually much more modern than Virginia's to this day very outdated rules governing court actions.   Mobile, with its Catholic majority population was very different from the Baptist dominated northern part of the state.   Most importantly, the Christofascists had not yet hijacked the Alabama Republican Party.  But this latter event came to pass and now, Alabama has become a place I barely recognize, all thanks to the evangelicals/Christofascists.  Graciousness has given way to extremism in all too many contexts and, as a piece in the Washington Post notes, the state is posed to engage in a referendum on its identity and how it will be perceived by decent, moral people across the country and world.  The referendum centers on Roy Moore, a foul person in my view and a disgrace to Alabama.  Here are article highlights:

For many Alabama voters, unaccustomed to a competitive election and the national attention that has come with it, the bitter showdown between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones has become something more personal than a race to fill an open Senate seat. It is now a referendum on the state’s identity.

Supporters of Jones say with concern that a win Tuesday by the firebrand Moore would derail the state’s efforts to escape its painful history and rebrand as a forward-thinking place welcoming to Fortune 500 companies and a highly educated workforce. And they express a nagging feeling that a Moore victory would be a deflating sign that Alabama remains beholden to its past.

“You travel across the country and you say ‘Alabama,’ and something goes right across people’s eyes every time,” said retired actor Jonathan Fuller, a 61-year-old Democrat, as he shopped at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket in the suburbs south of Birmingham. “I don’t want to apologize anymore for where I’m from because there is this pocket of stubbornness in my state.”

Supporters of Moore, meanwhile, see his candidacy as a conduit for their rejection of the national media and political elites who they believe unfairly caricature their home state as a cultural backwater. They shrug off the notion that sexual misconduct allegations against Moore — allegations that some see as a fabrication by outsiders — should make a difference. . . . He said people outside of Alabama “have no right to judge us.”

The vivid contrast between the two candidates — Moore, 70, with his apocalyptic warnings about Muslims and gay rights, against Jones, a low-key 63-year-old lawyer best known for prosecuting Ku Klux Klan members who planned the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham — has put in sharp relief the idea that the results could speak volumes about Alabama to the rest of the country — and to itself.

One pivotal group on Tuesday will be voters who feel caught between these two visions and must pick a side, especially ­Republican-leaning voters who feel pulled between their traditional values and a desire to turn the page on the uglier parts of Alabama’s past.

“We’ve got a lot of good here, a lot of people who died for equal rights. And we’ve got a lot of people who are stuck in 1930, and that’s not going to change,” Phillip Hutchins, a 67-year-old Democrat and retired aircraft worker, said last week outside a grocery store in Titusville, a heavily black neighborhood in Birmingham.

Business-minded white Republicans — a bloc that sees itself as modern and puts an emphasis on education, commerce and tradition — have been uneasy about Moore. They have recoiled, too, at the cascade of controversies that have gripped the state this year, making the current race a culmination of various discomforts rather than a sudden drama.

The competition with other states for corporate investment is fierce, and state business executives have watched closely what happened in North Carolina after its ban on gender-neutral bathrooms.  Jones has courted the business establishment, many of them Republicans, on both moral and economic grounds, urging them to abandon their partisan instincts to protect the state’s economy and reputation.

But Jones, who supports abortion rights and whose campaign headquarters has a Planned Parenthood poster on its wall, has struggled to win over Republicans such as JoAnn Turner, a 71-year-old nurse who lives in Vestavia Hills, a mostly white Birmingham suburb.

“I’ve been in Alabama for 42 years, and I’m so tired of the publicity being so bad. It’s not who we are, and it’s embarrassing,” Turner said, . . . “All that said,” Turner added, “I can’t vote for Roy Moore, and I can’t vote for Doug Jones. . . . . Turner plans to write in Sen. Luther Strange (R-Ala.). . . .

[V]eteran Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) have remained wary of the former judge who was twice removed from the state Supreme Court — and have called the allegations against him credible and disturbing.  Shelby has opted to cast a write-in vote, telling The Washington Post that he is anxious about how a Moore victory would affect the corporate world’s impressions of Alabama. 

Outside of Birmingham and in rural towns to the east — home to massive evangelical churches and family-owned barbecue restaurants that puff black smoke out of chimneys — Moore’s support is heartier, particularly in his home town of Gadsden on the Coosa River. . . . Otis Dupree, a 53-year-old retired chicken-plant worker who works part time at the Burger King in Gadsden, said he is “disgusted” with the city’s embrace of Moore.

More than 100 miles southwest on the state’s flagship campus — the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa — hundreds of students in athletic clothing and T-shirts stream out of dorm buildings and sorority mansions across the street from the school’s beloved Bryant-Denny Stadium.

As with the men and women in Vestavia Hills, many of them are financially stable and white — and Republican in a cultural sense as much as ideologically. They see themselves as Alabama’s future and are eager to define it.  Roy Moore isn’t part of that plan, according to Ella Jernigan, a 19-year-old Republican student who’s studying marketing. . . .  I can’t stand us getting pinned now as rednecks or uneducated.”  She added, “Every time you think we’re going forward, something like Roy Moore sets us back.”

Yet Another Woman Accuses Roy Moore of Groping Her

Moore's latest accuser a few years before Moore allegedly groped her in his law office

UPDATED:  The Washington Post has released a story confirming that still another accuser of Roy Moore has come forward.  This one was a high school student when Moore pursued her.  Here are excerpts:

Gena Richardson says she was a high school senior working in the men’s department of Sears at the Gadsden Mall when a man approached her and introduced himself as Roy Moore.

“He said, ‘You can just call me Roy,’ ” says Richardson, who says this first encounter happened in the fall of 1977, just before or after her 18th birthday, as Moore, then a 30-year-old local attorney, was gaining a reputation for pursuing young women at the mall in Gadsden, Ala. His overtures caused one store manager to tell new hires to “watch out for this guy,” another young woman to complain to her supervisor and Richardson to eventually hide from him when he came in Sears, the women say.

Richardson says Moore asked her out again on the call. A few days later, after he asked her out at Sears, she relented and agreed, feeling both nervous and flattered. They met that night at a movie theater in the mall after she got off work, a date that ended with Moore driving her to her car in a dark parking lot behind Sears and giving her what she called an unwanted, “forceful” kiss that left her scared.

Richardson, whose account was corroborated by classmate and Sears co-worker Kayla McLaughlin, is among four women who say Moore pursued them when they were teenagers or young women working at the mall — from Sears at one end to the Pizitz department store at the other. Richardson and Becky Gray, the woman who complained to her manager, have not previously spoken publicly.

With one Republican poll showing that GOP candidate Roy Moore may be sinking in the polls and more Congressional Republicans running from Moore like he's the plague, the last thing that Moore needs is more accusations against him for sexual molestation, yet that is precisely what happened today as yet another woman came forward with accusations against Moore.   By all appearances, Moore is that most reprehensible type of man who views women as inferiors how exist for his gratification and pleasure - the very same mindset exhibited by Der Trumpenführer, who to date has said nothing about Moore's growing sexual predator scandal.   AL.com looks at the latest accusations.  Here are excerpts:

A Gadsden woman says Roy Moore groped her while she was in his law office on legal business with her mother in 1991. Moore was married at that time.

In the past week, Moore has been accused by five other women of a range of behaviors that include sexual misconduct with a woman when she was 14, and sexual assault of another when she was 16. This is the first public accusation of physical contact that happened after Moore was married.

In recent days, Moore has publicly denied any wrongdoing, and has denied knowing some of the women.

In interviews with AL.com, Tina Johnson recalls that in the fall of 1991 she sat in the law office of then-attorney Roy Moore on Third Street in Gadsden. Her mother, Mary Katherine Cofield, sat in the chair next to her. Moore sat behind his desk, across from them. Johnson remembers she was wearing a black and white dress.

Almost from the moment she walked in to Moore's office, Johnson said, Moore began flirting with her.  "He kept commenting on my looks, telling me how pretty I was, how nice I looked," recalled Johnson. "He was saying that my eyes were beautiful."

It made her uncomfortable. "I was thinking, can we hurry up and get out of here?"  Johnson was 28 years old, in a difficult marriage headed toward divorce, and unemployed. She was at the office to sign over custody of her 12-year-old son to her mother, with whom he'd been living. Her mother had hired Moore to handle the custody petition.

Once the papers were signed, she and her mother got up to leave. After her mother walked through the door first, she said, Moore came up behind her.  It was at that point, she recalled, he grabbed her buttocks.  "He didn't pinch it; he grabbed it," said Johnson. She was so surprised she didn't say anything. She didn't tell her mother.

She said she told her sister years later how Moore had made her feel uncomfortable during that meeting. Her sister told AL.com she remembers the conversation.

AL.com located the court documents from 1991, detailing the custody transfer. Cofield's petition for custody is signed by Roy S. Moore, attorney. It lists his address as 924 Third Avenue, Gadsden.

"This is not a politics thing with me," she said. "It's more of a moral and religious thing." It has bothered her over the years to see Moore on TV, talking about his Christian faith.  She wanted to come forward publicly now, she said, because it's hard for victims of harassment to talk openly about their experiences.

"I want people to know that it's OK to finally say something," she said. "I guess I'm ashamed I didn't say nothing, didn't turn around and slap him."

It's an issue both Johnson and Thorp wanted to address.  Thorp said local women have not spoken publicly against Moore before now because he had power in town and in the state, and they didn't think they would be believed.  "Everybody knew it wouldn't matter," she said, "that he would get elected anyway because his supporters are never going to believe anything bad about him."

Johnson said the answer was even more simple.  "It's because somebody asked," she said. "If anybody had asked, we would have told it. No one asked."

 If evangelicals continue to support Moore, their moral bankruptcy will be complete.  I hope the larger society is watching and will judge them - and shun them - accordingly. 

The GOP IS Now the Party of the Grotesque

I actually did not come up with the caption for this post.  It derives from arch conservative columnist and pundit George Will.  It reflects the reality that increasingly the Republican Party and its agenda have become something hideous.  Between the party's growing - and much more explicit  - racism and religious extremism and its growing desire to harm millions of citizens, I find it dumbfounding that  otherwise seemingly decent people continue to support the GOP.  Especially those who attend "liberal" religious denominations which outwardly support a social gospel message.  Donald Trump and many of his appointees embody the grotesqueness of the party - e.g., Betsy De Vos, Jeff Sessions, the list goes on and on.  Will uses Alabama's senatorial primary as a demonstration of the party's growing moral bankruptcy.  Here are highlights:

Southern Gothic is a literary genre and, occasionally, a political style that, like the genre, blends strangeness and irony. Consider the current primary campaign to pick the Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Jeff Sessions. It illuminates, however, not a regional peculiarity but a national perversity, that of the Republican Party.

In 1986, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III — the name belongs in a steamy bodice-ripper, beach-read novel about Confederate cavalry — was nominated for a federal judgeship. Democrats blocked him because they considered him racially “insensitive.” In 1996, he got even by getting elected to the Senate. Twenty years later, he was the first senator to endorse Donald Trump, who carried Alabama by 27.7 points. Sessions, the most beloved Alabaman who is not a football coach, became attorney general for Trump, who soon began denouncing Sessions as “beleaguered,” which Sessions was because Trump was ridiculing him as “weak” because he followed Justice Department policy in recusing himself from the investigation of Russian involvement in Trump’s election.
 On Aug. 15, Alabama’s bewildered and conflicted Republicans will begin picking a Senate nominee. (If no one achieves 50 percent, there will be a Sept. 26 runoff between the top two.) Of the nine candidates, only three matter — Luther Strange, Roy Moore and Rep. Mo Brooks. Strange was Alabama’s attorney general until he was appointed by then-Gov. Robert Bentley to Sessions’s seat. Bentley subsequently resigned in the wake of several scandals that Strange’s office was investigating — or so Strange’s successor as attorney general suggests — when Bentley appointed him. The state Ethics Commission, which had scheduled an Aug. 2 hearing into charges of campaign finance violations by Strange, recently postponed the hearing until Aug. 16, the day after the first round of voting. Twice Moore has been removed as chief justice of the state Supreme Court. In 2003, removal was for defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court regarding religious displays in government buildings. Reelected, he was suspended last year for defiance of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision regarding same-sex marriages.

Yet Brooks is the focus of ferocious attacks on behalf of Strange, who ignores Moore. The attacks are financed by a Washington-based political action committee aligned with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). This Washington Republican establishment strenuously tried but fortunately failed to defeat now-Sens. Marco Rubio and Ben Sasse, of Florida and Nebraska, respectively, in their 2010 and 2014 primaries. . . . .  The attacks stress some anti-Trump statements Brooks made while chairman of Ted Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign in Alabama. For example, Brooks criticized Trump’s “serial adultery,” about which Trump has boasted.

Yet the PAC’s theme is that Brooks’s support of Trump is insufficiently ardent. Such ardor is becoming the party’s sovereign litmus test.

A runoff seems certain, and if Moore (sometimes called “the Ayatollah of Alabama”) is in it and wins, a Democrat could win the Dec. 12 general election.

“Anything that comes out of the South,” said writer Flannery O’Connor, a sometime exemplar of Southern Gothic, “is going to be called grotesque by the Northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” But, realistically, Alabama’s primary says more about Republicans than about this region. A Michigan poll shows rocker-cum-rapper Kid Rock a strong potential Republican Senate candidate against incumbent Debbie Stabenow. 

Is this Northern Gothic? No, it is Republican Gothic, the grotesque becoming normal in a national party whose dishonest and, one hopes, futile assault on Brooks is shredding the remnants of its dignity.

 Alabama is truly more dysfunctional and insane than when I lived there over 30 years ago. The major cities seem to have modernized while the rest of the state has drifted back to the Jim Crow era. 

The GOP and the Alabamafication of America

Likely soon to be removed Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore

As noted before, I once lived in Alabama many years ago - George Wallace, who I once met - was still governor at the time - and in the years since I moved away, first to Texas and then back to Virginia where my family had settled, things have gone steadily downhill on the political front in Alabama.  Not coincidental, in my view, the decline in Alabama has directly correlated to the rise in the power of the Christofascists and Republican Party in that state.  Now, an editorial at Al.com looks at how the Republican Party and its demented "conservative Christian" base are poised to take the nation down a similar road if they are not stopped.  Here are op-ed highlights:

Dear America,

Here's where Alabama currently stands: Our governor is under investigation. Our House speaker is under indictment. Our chief justice is suspended from duty and awaiting trial, again. We're one of the poorest states in the country, living off the federal dole, and we sit at or near the bottom of most empirical rankings of quality of life. Our leadership is non-existent and our government is on the brink of collapse.

But don't think for a minute that you're better than us. Donald Trump is the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, and you put him there. You're closer to Alabama than you care to think. 

Maybe you still think this Trump thing is a joke. I am here to assure you it is not.Perhaps you think voters cannot be so politically masochistic. You are wrong.

Don't hope for a minute that those behind the scenes — you know, the Establishment — can fix this game. It is beyond their control.  The Worst Case Scenario is not a possibility. It is a probability.

I have seen it. The saying "stuck on stupid" does not begin to explain our predicament. This is more like doing a handstand in a tar pit.

And this Thing that has corrupted my state, robbed us of common sense, poisoned our decency, and made us loathe our neighbors — it is contagious and you are at risk. Call it the Alabamafication of America.

Let me share with you what it has done to us.  Six years ago we elected Robert Bentley governor because most voters were under the impression that, despite lacking other qualifications for the job, he might be a good man. He was so gracious that he promised not to draw a paycheck unless Alabamians reached virtual full employment. Also, he had once been Bear Bryant's dermatologist.  Since then he has abandoned all sense — and his wife of 50 years.

There were lots of warning signs, first of which was, on inauguration day, he told a congregation in Montgomery that if you aren't Christian you couldn't be his spiritual brother or sister. During six years in office, that piety did not prevent him from groping a senior political advisor and later talking dirty to her on the phone while his soon-to-be-ex-wife recorded the conversation.

Before Bentley, there was Alabama House Speaker Mike Hubbard, who stormed the Alabama Statehouse, deposing more than a century of Democratic control there. He pushed through what was, at the time, toughest-in-the-nation ethics laws and, according to prosecutors, broke them.  Not only is he accused of breaking the laws he passed, but since then he has argued in court that the laws he passed don't apply to him because the laws he passed are unconstitutional.

On Friday, the Judicial Inquiry Commission charged [Alabama Chief Justice Roy] Moore with abusing his authority by directing Alabama probate judges to disregard the United States Supreme Court's decision that same-sex marriage is a right under the Constitution. That action means Moore is suspended from the bench and will face a trial before the Alabama Court of the Judiciary and possible removal from office.  For the second time. . . . Moore doesn't only believe God's coming back, but he thinks until then, the Almighty given him power of attorney over his affairs.  

The saddest thing is, this state has so much potential. In person — one-on-one — our people are decent and selfless. We make great music. We cook good food. We tell funny jokes. We love our children and would sacrifice everything for their futures.

But growing up in Alabama is like growing up in a broken home. We expect better of others instead of demanding better of ourselves. Rather than holding our elected officials to higher standards, we lower our expectations. We can't get over our insecurities, and we're suckers for anyone who comes along saying we're better than somebody else.

Maybe you think Alabama is a joke. I'm here to assure it's not.  If you're not careful, America, this could happen to you.

Alabama truly did not use to be this dysfunctional and corrupt.  The decline of the state directly tracts the increased influence of the godly folk and the GOP's willingness to pander to them and engage in shameless self-prostitution to them.  Now, it is happening nationwide.

Alabama Nutjobs Blame"'Atheists, Homosexuals and Tranvestites" for Legal Woes

Even as North Carolina continues to be slammed economically for the passage of North Carolina GOP backed HB2, Alabama Republicans, most notably Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore, refuse to acknowledge that it is their own bigoted, backward, ignorance embracing beliefs that are the root cause for their current legal woes.  Indeed, Alabama has regressed and become far more backward politically than it was when I lived there in the late 1970's and early 1980's.   Once again, the catalyst for the descent into lunacy has been the rise of Christofascist in the Republican Party.  A piece in The New Civil Rights Movement looks at the whining of Judge Moore - who in my view belongs in a mental institution - and his equally deranged lawyer, Mat Staver.  Here are highlights:

On Wednesday Liberty Counsel founder and CEO Mat Staver stood before the cameras and droned on in support of his client, Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore. Moore is under attack by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others for his actions surrounding the Supreme Court's marriage decision and his instructions to Alabama magistrates to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The SPLC filed a complaint.

Staver, and later at the podium, Moore claimed the complaint was "politically motivated." At stake: whether or not the complaint leads to official ethics charges by the Judicial Inquiry Commission of Alabama.

But it was their other language and attacks that were especially revealing and offensive.

Staver referred to one of the people who filed the complaint against Moore as an "admitted transvestite."

Moore slammed his critics as "atheists, homosexuals and transgender individuals." At one point he referred to a trans woman as "her," but "corrected" himself, calling her, "him."

At another point, Moore said “transsexualism is a known mental illness,” or was, until 2013, and suggested it still should be classified as such.

“We’re in a serious time in our country," Moore told the few reporters who attended his press conference. "We are at a time in our country when people who just a few years ago would have been ascribed a mental illness, a mental disorder. 

Moore claims that despite publishing an order directing Alabama magistrates to not issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, “There is nothing in writing that you will find that I told anybody to disobey a federal court order. That’s not what I said.”

That will be for Judicial Inquiry Commission of Alabama to decide.

What I find ironic is is the fact that in many ways Alabama was more moderate when George Wallace (who I had the opportunity to meet) was governor than it is now under all the "godly" Republicans.  If you want proof that Christofascists are a threat to good government, look no farther than Alabama and North Carolina. 

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore Again Proves He is Unfit for the Bench

Anti-gay extremist and modern day Pharisee Roy Moore

One of the most basic things that one learns in law school - actually in most high school government classes - is that the United States Constitution and U.S. Supreme Court rulings on federal constitutional issues trump ALL of the state constitutions and the rulings of state supreme courts.  Yet this simple concept is too much for mental midget and religious nutcase Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore who today released an order basically directing all Alabama probate judges (whose offices issue marriage licenses) to ignore the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hughes, that struck down ALL state gay marriage bans.  Moore is unfit for the bench - and I mean any court position - and needs to be permanently removed from the Alabama Supreme Court.  He is an embarrassment to the State of Alabama and makes a mockery of the judicial system.  As I have often noted, Alabama was far more sane 30+ years ago when I lived there compared to now when the state government seems controlled by ignorance embracing Christofascists.  Thankfully, some of the state's probate judges are ignoring Moore's invalid order.  The New Civil Rights Movement has details.  Here are highlights:

Wednesday morning Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore issued an order claiming the Supreme Court's ruling last June that found a constitutional right to marriage by same-sex couples applies only to the four states that were a party to the Obergefell lawsuit. It's a legal tactic the federal courts will at some point soon be forced into, but for now, according to Justice Moore, probate judges are not to be issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

Of course, if a probate judge actually follow's Moore's order, they may find themselves the defendant in a federal lawsuit.

For now, Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis, who was the subject of a related lawsuit over marriage licenses for same-sex couples, is once again refusing to issue licenses to any couples, as Buzzfeed reports. 

“Well, we have closed,” Russell Davidson, a supervisor of the court’s division that handles marriage licenses, told BuzzFeed News. “At this time, we are not issuing any licenses until further notice.”

But Montgomery County is taking a different course of action. One employee told Buzzfeed they “are issuing licenses until further notice. Our marriage department is open.”

And Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed posted this tweet in response to Justice Moore's decree:

Judge Moore's latest charade is just sad & pathetic. My office will ignore him & this.

DeKalb, Limestone, Marshall, Lauderdale, Morgan, and Franklin Counties are all issuing licenses to all couples. Madison County is accepting applications but not issuing licenses until further notice. 

Meanwhile, the ACLU has some advice for Justice Moore and the probate judges of Alabama: this has already been decided in federal court.

And State Rep. Patricia Todd, who is Alabama's first openly-gay lawmaker, notes the same, that "Probate Judges are under a federal court order to adhere to the SCOTUS decision. If they follow Moore's lead they can and will be held in contempt in federal court." She told the Montgomery Advertiser if Judge Moore "wants to waste the taxpayers' money, go ahead, but we're not going backwards."

Mobile is a very nice city and Don Davis is seriously harming the city's reputation.  I'd also add that as a member of the Alabama State Bar,  I believe it is time for the Bar to call for Moore's removal from the Alabama Supreme Court.

Anti-Gay Alabama Chief Justice's Son Arrested on Drug Charges

I don't revel in the misfortune of others, but that said, karma can be a bitch - especially for those who malign others and seek to denigrate and attack others.  Who do I mean?  Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, anti-gay bigot extraordinaire, who has attacked gay marriage and gay parenting.  It would seem that Moore is in no position to lecture others on parenting skills or to claim that heterosexual couples make better parents and provide a better upbringing to children.  Moore's son, Caleb Moore, age 24, was arrested over the weekend and charged with possession of a controlled substance and possession of marijuana.  AL.com has details.  Here are excepts:

The son of Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore was arrested Sunday for drug possession near the scene of an attempted break-in, court records show.

According to court documents, officers responded to the 1200 block of Allen Street in Troy to a report of an attempted home break-in. They found five men, including Moore, outside near a pickup truck that smelled strongly of marijuana.

After the men said there were no drugs in the vehicle, officers searched the truck and found a bag of marijuana in the glove compartment, along with Moore's passport. Several Xanax pills also were found in the bag.

Moore was arrested and taken to the city jail. He was released on bond totaling $8,500.

Moore addressed the charges in a Facebook post on Monday afternoon:

"This is nothing more than a prime example of how media and crooked police officers and critics of my dad try to not only destroy his career for what he stands for but will go as far as trying to destroy his family," he wrote. "I am not a drug user as the drug test taken today will show. As for the malicious possession charges, justice will be served."

Court records show that, in 2013, Moore pleaded guilty to drug-related charges in St. Clair County and was sentenced to probation. In 2011, he was arrested and charged with drug possession and driving under the influence in Etowah County. He applied to be treated as a youthful offender.

Would that Caleb Moore would accept responsibility for his actions.  That said, I will confess that if Roy Moore was my dad, I'd probably want to use drugs to forget for a while!! 

Alabama Supreme Court Orders Stop To Same-Sex Marriages

 Raging bigots or legal mental midgets?

It would seem that Alabama has learned nothing from its history of being on the wrong side of history just about every time an opportunity has presented itself.  Be it supporting slavery, participating in the rise of the Jim Crow laws, turning a blind eye to the lynching of blacks, banning interracial marriage, maintaining sodomy laws, and now banning same sex marriage, Alabama has been in the wrong.  Now, in a testament to the shortcomings of elected judges, the Alabama Supreme Court has issued a ruling barring state court judges from issuing marriage licenses to same sex couples.  Never mind that (i) a federal court ruled to the contrary, and (ii) the United States Supreme Court refused to block same sex marriages by extending a stay of the lower court order.  Seemingly, like Ken Cuccinelli and his cohorts here in Virginia, the Alabama justices are too stupid to grasp the concept that the U.S. Federal Constitution as interpreted by the federal courts ALWAYS trumps state law.  These justices apparently want their names remembered by history in the same vein as those on the Virginia Supreme Court when it twice upheld Virginia's ban on interracial marriage.  Here are highlights from AL.com:

Weeks after a United States District Court judge in Mobile ordered a probate judge there to issue same-sex marriage licenses, the Alabama Supreme Court has ordered a halt to same-sex marriages in the state. 

"As it has done for approximately two centuries, Alabama law allows for 'marriage' between only one man and one woman," the order said. "Alabama probate judges have a ministerial duty not to issue any marriage license contrary to this law. Nothing in the United States Constitution alters or overrides this duty."

The order gives probate judges five days to submit responses if they want to show cause why they should be able to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. 

The order also gives Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis until Thursday to argue why he should not be bound by the order. Davis has asked the court to dismiss him from the lawsuit because he had been ordered by the federal district court to issue licenses to same-sex couples. 

Only Justice Greg Shaw dissented from the order, but he made clear that he did so because he thought the case had been filed incorrectly and the court did not yet have jurisdiction to hear it. In his dissent, Shaw argued that the federal court should have issued a stay against same-sex marriages until the U.S. Supreme Court had settled the matter.

David Kennedy, one of the lawyers who represented the Mobile couple who successfully challenged Alabama's same-sex marriage ban, said he does not think the ruling would survive a challenge in federal court.

"I don't really think that they can do that. I'm not surprised, but I'm somewhat appalled," he said. "The Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the stay (on the order striking down the gay marriage ban) would expire on Feb. 9. On Feb. 9, same-sex marriage effectively became legal in Alabama."

Kennedy said he believes that probate judges act "at their own peril" if they choose to obey state courts instead of federal court. He said any couple denied a marriage license could sue in the federal district where they live.

He said the outcome should be clear.  "Whenever state law conflicts with federal law, federal law wins," he said.  

"The state is going to take such a black eye on this," said University of Alabama Law Professor Ron Krotoszynski, Jr.. "I think it's going to play very badly in the national media," he said, citing shows  like Bill Maher, John Oliver and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

"They're rejecting Judge Grenade's reasoning lock stock and barrel," Krotoszynski said.  Granade's reasoning is in line with more than 60 federal district judges who have ruled on the same issue since the U.S. Supreme Court knocked down a port of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (or DOMA) in 2013, Krotoszynski said.

The next likely step is for one of the probate judges to file an emergency stay with the U.S. Supreme Court, Krotoszynski said. The situation could be "chaotic" between now and June when the U.S. Supreme Court is to rule on the issue anyway in a 6th Circuit case, he said.

"The Alabama state Supreme Court does not have the authority to interfere with a federal court order," said HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow. "This order is outrageous and baffling, and no amount of legalese can hide the bare animus that forms the foundation of this extralegal ruling."

The GOP's Gay Marriage Dodge

For nearly 20 years the Republican Party has been welcoming the racist, homophobic Christofascists into the party and in the process causing sane, rational moderates to flee the insane asylum that the GOP has become.  Nowhere is this result of this process - I view it as a metastasizing cancer - becoming more difficult for the GOP than on the issue of gay marriage where a majority of Americans support marriage equality and upwards of 80% of younger voters support it.  Even as society has changed, the Christofascist have become ever more vociferous in their anti-gay hatred.  The craziness in Alabama is but one example of the increased insanity - and disregard for the federal courts and U.S. Constitution - that is now pervasive in the GOP base.  The few sane Republicans left find themselves trying to avoid the issue altogether.  A piece in Politico looks at the quandry.  Here are excerpts:

Republicans eyeing the presidency nearly all insist that states should make their own decisions on whether to allow same-sex marriage.  But the latest dispute in Alabama? That’s a topic they’d rather avoid.

When pressed on the fight in the Deep South state, where the chief justice has ordered county officials to ignore a federal court ruling permitting same-sex marriages, likely GOP 2016 contenders reached by POLITICO or interviewed elsewhere have largely tried to sidestep specifics.

Even some of the most conservative hopefuls prefer instead to talk more broadly about federalism and states’ rights, comments that come as the U.S. Supreme Court considers whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right applicable nationwide.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s answer is a typical example: “The problem is, I just don’t know the details of what arguments they are using” in Alabama, he said, adding that while he has “always believed that marriage has always been defined by states and regulated by states and should continue to be,” he would respect the Supreme Court decision.

The overall cautious responses to the Alabama case expose that there’s a limit to how far Republicans will go to oppose same-sex marriage as they prepare for a presidential election.

For one thing, even as the conservative base still strongly opposes gay marriage, the broader electorate is increasingly open to the idea. A May Gallup poll showed that 55 percent of Americans support same-sex marriage, while just 30 percent of Republicans and 31 percent of self-described conservatives favor it.

Although Moore says he is taking a stand against federal intrusion, a favorite rallying cry for conservatives, experts note note that his legal arguments are shaky at best. His statements also have at times been provocative, making it even tougher for Republicans to line up behind him.

The fact that the latest flashpoint is in Alabama, where the call for states’ rights was part of its civil rights-era resistance to federal desegregation orders, makes the issue more sensitive for the GOP, which has long struggled among minority voters.

Still, it’s striking to see so many Republicans tread so carefully on an issue that less than a decade ago was a big political winner.

“There’s an understanding that a focus on the marriage equality fight is, No. 1, not a winning issue” for Republicans, said Gregory Angelo, executive director of the Log Cabin Republicans.

“You’ll see more and more Republicans, like [former Florida Gov.] Jeb Bush recently, trying to carve out some middle ground,” said Richard Socarides, a former Clinton administration adviser and a gay rights advocate.

And then there’s Moore himself, who has drawn comparisons to former Gov. George Wallace, who invoked the states’ rights defense in arguing against school desegregation in the 1960s.

“There’s definitely resonances between Wallace’s opposition to federal court authority and some of the things chief justice Moore has been saying,” Krotoszynski said, noting both Wallace and Moore’s use of the phrase “tyranny” to describe federal involvement.

In an interview earlier this week, Moore said that even though he has “many friends that are homosexual,” he wouldn’t attend a gay wedding and he doesn’t believe the Supreme Court has the authority to “re-define marriage.”

The real problem with extremists like Moore, Huckabee, Santorum, et al, is that they refuse to recognize that there is a difference between CIVIL LAW marriage and religious  denomination marriage.  Churches and denominations can continue whatever myths and fairy tales they want, but those myths and fairy tales have no place whatsoever in the civil law.  Injecting them into the civil laws is in effect, an attempt to establish a religious dogma in the civil laws which violates the U.S. Constitution.

The GOP's Alabama Problem

The turmoil roiling in Alabama as some state court judges are ignoring federal court rulings allowing same sex marriages to proceed is also setting up a problem for the GOP.  The recalcitrant judges are singing the same "states rights" song that the GOP has made its national anthem of late whenever its knuckle dragging, spittle flecked base seeks to torpedo federal programs or wants majority rule to determine the rights of gays, blacks, and anyone else the cretins and Christofascists deem as "other."  Now, the GOP may be about to see the mindset it helped foment bite it right in the ass.  A piece in Politico looks ate the looming problem that lunatics like Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum try to fan the flames into a conflagration.  Here are article excerpts:

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore’s defiance of a federal court order on gay marriage is just the latest in a long line of bitter states’ rights fights on issues from school integration to the Confederate battle flag – and the latest potentially embarrassing political sideshow for the 2016 field of GOP presidential hopefuls.

In the end, some veteran Republican strategists suggest, Moore’s order barring county probate judges from issuing gay marriage licenses may serve mainly to harden the entrenched positions of supporters and opponents of a legal issue on which public opinion has been shifting with lightning speed, and which the Supreme Court seems likely to resolve by this summer.

Moore’s decision, however, increases the chances that Republican presidential candidates will be forced to discuss the issue — in the racially freighted framework of states’ rights, no less — before extremely conservative voters in the heat of a primary campaign.

“It’s really the same arguments that the Civil War pivoted on, from nullification to states’ rights and all this stuff,” said Bill Carrick, a longtime Democratic strategist and native South Carolinian with a vivid appreciation for his region’s folkways and resistance to change.

Almost 52 years ago, Alabama’s segregationist Democratic governor, George Wallace, drew worldwide publicity for his theatrical stand in the “schoolhouse door” against integration of the University of Alabama. But he knew his was a losing cause. John Kennedy federalized the Alabama National Guard and that was that.

More issued his order Sunday night, in defiance of a federal court ruling last month that Alabama’s statutory and constitutional bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional. The state is appealing that decision, but on Monday, the United States Supreme Court declined to extend a delay in its enforcement, and officials in Alabama’s more cosmopolitan quarters began issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.

The issue flies straight in the face of efforts by Republican Party chairman Reince Priebus to broaden the GOP’s appeal, if only because it also flies straight in the face of the most conservative elements of the party’s base. As Huckabee recently put it, asking some conservative Christians to accept gay marriage is akin to asking Jews to serve “bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.”

“There is a feeling of ‘Here we go again,’’’ consultant Carrick said. “Roy Moore’s trying to turn back the clock, which is his specialty. I don’t know what the party’s going to do about these guys. As hard as Reince Priebus tries to get the clown car out of the Republican parade, there’s always somebody who comes in in another one.”

The true solution for the GOP?  Kick the Christofascists out and send them into the political wilderness.  They need to become outcasts not given the time of day in polite society or in national political parties.