SWEET HOME ALABAMA

“There are Gods in Alabama: Jack Daniel’s, high school quarterbacks, trucks, big tits, and also Jesus”….Joshilyn Jackson, Gods in Alabama

There are two universal constants in the great state of Alabama. The first is that the University of Alabama’s Crimson Tide, 10 and 0 in the Southeast Conference, is ranked No.1 in college football and will play for the national championship once again in January. The second is that political insanity is alive and well. Consider the matter of Bret Talley.

Mr. Talley has been nominated by President Trump to be a federal district judge in Alabama. Mr. Talley is 36 years old and has been actually practicing law for all of three whole years. He graduated from Harvard law in 2007 and promptly went to work as a judicial law clerk. After 4 years of clerking, he became a political speech writer, first for Mitt Romney and then for Ohio senator Rob Portman. In 2015, he was appointed to be a deputy solicitor general for the state of Alabama. In January, 2017, he became a deputy assistant attorney general. Now, you need to understand that when someone is appointed deputy assistant anything, he or she is doing nothing but political work for whoever appointed him or her. It’s like being the deputy commercial attaché at a U.S. Embassy. Everyone knows that you are really working for the CIA. In any event, Mr. Talley has NEVER tried a case in court…NOT ONE….AS IN NADA…AS IN NOT EVER. Even for Trump, whose record for appointing completely unqualified people to government office is extraordinary, this appointment is truly ridiculous. The American Bar Association rated Mr. Talley as being unqualified for the office, not really an earth shaker given the circumstances. It appears that Mr. Talley’s only qualifications are that he is married to Ann Donaldson, a senior lawyer at the White House, a relationship he conveniently failed to disclose to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and that his political views are appropriately alt right. Despite his complete lack of any qualifications for the job, the Republican dominated Committee recommended that he be approved for the position on a party line vote. So much for any hope that the Republicans under the Trump administration have any interest in acting for the best interests of the Country. Which brings us to Roy Stewart Moore.

Mr. Moore’s campaign as the Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Alabama has hit a bit of a speed bump after the Washington Post published a story asserting that Moore essentially preyed upon young girls while he was a local prosecutor in his 30s. One of the Post’s sources claims that she was 14 years old when Moore sexually molested her. Of course, sexual misconduct doesn’t appear to faze Republican voters these days, unless it’s a Democrat doing the canoodling. After all, they elected Donald Trump. And Alabama Republicans have risen to Moore’s defense with a sleaze level of biblical proportions. Geneva County GOP Chairman Riley Seibenhener had no problems with Moore’s conduct, saying “other than being with an underage person, he didn’t really force himself”. Apparently Chairman Seibenhener is unaware that “being with an underage person” is a criminal act, even in Alabama. Bibb County GOP Chairman Jerry Pow told Daniel Dale of the Toronto Star that he would vote for Moore even if Moore did commit a sex crime against an underage girl because “I wouldn’t want to vote for Doug” (Moore’s Democratic opponent). Alabama’s State Auditor, a Republican named Jim Ziegler, offered a truly blasphemous defense by claiming that old men messing with young girls was biblically sanctioned: “take the Bible–Zachariah and Elizabeth for instance. Zachariah was extremely old to marry Elizabeth, and they became parents of John the Baptist…also take Mary and Joseph, Mary was a teenager and Joseph was an adult carpenter. They became the parents of Jesus”. That little snippet of Bible study will forever be known as the Ziegler defense. Criminal defense attorneys everywhere will quote Ziegler as they attempt to explain away the predatory conduct of their clients…Jesus, Mary and Joseph, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, it is perfectly normal that my 30 year old client groped a 14 year old against her will. The Bible tells us so. Even Judge Talley will have to agree.

Moore of course has taken the high road. He denies all allegations of impropriety. During a speech on Sunday night he said that he was “investigating” his accusers and threatened to sue the Washington Post. Well, how positively Trumpian. Remember when Trump threatened to sue all the women who claimed that he sexually harassed or assaulted them. The Post’s editors are no doubt quivering in their boots waiting for the arrival of the process server. Moore ended his remarks by calling on the United States to “go back to God”. “If we go back to God, we can be united again”. The danger that Moore poses to the Senate is not that he was a child molester in his youth. It is that he fervently believes that ” Christianity should order public policy”.

The First Amendment of the United States Constitution provides among other things that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. In 1974, Justice Hugo Black wrote in the case of Emerson versus the Board of Education that: “the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment means at least this: Neither a state or the federal government can set up a church. Neither can pass laws which aid one religion, aid all religions, or prefer one religion over another. Neither can force or influence a person to go to or remain away from church against his will or force him to profess a belief in any religion. No person can be punished for entertaining or professing religious beliefs….in the words of Jefferson, the clause against the establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state”. One thing is certain about Roy Moore. He does not believe in the separation between church and state. And his record proves that he is completely prepared to ignore the law to impose his religious beliefs on the rest of us.

Moore believes that “the free exercise clause of the Constitution does not apply to any religion other than Christianity”. In other words, if you are a Jew, a Hindu, A Muslim or a Buddhist, your right to practice your faith is not protected by the Constitution. In 2001, when he was Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, he ordered that a monument to the Ten Commandments be erected in the state judicial building. In 2003, a federal judge ordered him to remove the monument as it was a clear violation of the Constitution. Moore refused, saying “I consider it my duty to acknowledge God. To take down the Ten Commandments and to stop holding prayer would be a violation of that duty. I will not take down the Ten Commandments and I will not stop holding prayer”. In short, Moore refused to abide by his oath of office and refused to obey the lawful order of the federal court. He was therefore removed from office by the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. In 2013, he got himself re-elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, again as Chief Justice. In 2016, he was again suspended, this time because he directed Alabama probate judges to refuse to enforce Alabama’s ban on same sex marriages, despite the fact that the ban had been ruled unconstitutional. He has demonstrated utter contempt for the rule of law, claiming he need answer only to God’s law. He is a dangerous religious fanatic who will not hesitate to use the power of any office that he holds to impose his evangelical beliefs on the rest of us…no different than an Iranian Mullah.

It may well require divine intervention to keep Roy Moore from winning the special election in December. Those of us who don’t live there can only watch the spectacle unfold, like a slow motion train wreck. 262,641 Alabamians voted for Moore in the primary runoff. The Bible thumpers, snake healers and every other kind of fundamentalist fascist will be going to the polls to, as Moore so often counsels, “worship with your vote”. Will the Christian soldiers be marching in lockstep, persuaded that God is on their side? We can only hope that Gust Avrakatos, the CIA operative in the movie Charlie Wilson’s War, was right: “Well, reasonable people can disagree, but I don’t see God anywhere within miles of this”.