2nd
Alabama judge under attack by SPLC, Federal
court admits 1st Amendment impacted by censorship demand, by Bob Unruh,
10/1/16, WND
Bob Unruh
joined WND in 2006 after nearly three decades with the Associated Press, as
well as several Upper Midwest newspapers, where he covered everything from
legislative battles and sports to tornadoes and homicidal survivalists. He is
also a photographer whose scenic work has been used commercially.
A federal
judge in Alabama has admitted that the First Amendment has been compromised by
a demand from the leftist Southern Poverty Law Center to censor a state Supreme
Court justice, but he’s not going to make a decision now, according to Liberty Counsel.
So the
non-profit legal group is filing an appeal on behalf of Justice Tom Parker’s
challenge to a restriction on speech in the state’s judicial code and the state
Constitution’s provision that automatically removes a judge from office based
on nothing more than an unsubstantiated allegation.
The case
is just the latest in a war against conservative judges in the state by SPLC,
which publicly slams as “haters” anyone who does not subscribe to its
pro-homosexual and same-sex “marriage” agenda.
SPLC even
put Dr. Ben Carson, former GOP
candidate for president and one of the most admired men in America, on its list
of “haters”
because of his views on marriage.
And the
organization was linked to a domestic terror case in Washington, D.C., when a
gunman, Floyd Corkins, relied on its “hate group” list to attempt mass murder.
SPLC
filed a complaint with the state’s Judicial Inquiry Commission against Parker
for his comments on an American Family Radio talk show about the U.S. Supreme
Court’s creation of same-sex marriage.
The JIC
has not issued any complaint based on SPLC’s statements, but if it does, Parker
could be removed from office based on the allegations.
He filed
a federal court lawsuit to overturn Canon 3, which includes a broad speech
restriction of the type the American Bar Association contends is a violation of
the First Amendment. And he wants the automatic suspension provision
overturned.
Liberty
Counsel said U.S. District Judge Keith Watkins “acknowledged ‘the First Amendment
issues that arise when the SPLC, in a political season, attempts to use an
agency of state government to suppress speech with which the SPLC disagrees.'”
But he
said he was abstaining from a decision, so Liberty Counsel immediately filed an
appeal to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Justice
Parker should not have to wait to be charged and suspended in order to
challenge an unconstitutional restriction on his speech,” said Mat Staver,
founder of Liberty Counsel. “The judicial canon that prohibits judges from
commenting on any case anywhere in the country is patently unconstitutional.
Every judge who teaches law school students is silenced by this broad
restriction on speech. This speech restriction and the automatic removal
provision must be struck down. We will now take this case to the court of
appeals. This urgent matter affects every judge.”
State
officials this week chose to “ignore the law and the rules” and convicted him
on ethics charges started by the SPLC and brought to the Court of the Judiciary
by the politically aligned Judicial Inquiry Commission, which hired a
representative of the SPLC to prosecute the case against Moore.
He was
accused of telling probate judges to violate the law, but his lawyers have
argued that’s incorrect and have charged that SPLC is simply attacking those
who hold opposing political views.
SPLC’s
attack and subsequent abrupt change of course on Carson was described in a
commentary by Joseph Farah, founder and editor of WND.
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“Apparently, the racketeering outfit
that poses as a ‘progressive’ civil liberties group realized it had
crossed a bridge too far in its smear efforts against, quite possibly, the most
respected black leader in America (and, yes, I include Barack Obama and all
members of his administration and frequent White House visitors such as Al
Sharpton),” he wrote.
“The
group’s stock-in-trade is raising hundreds of millions of dollars through
fanning the flames of phantom threats posed almost exclusively by those who
love America and its Constitution. The others are a collection of actual
scum-of-the-earth racists, neo-Nazis and other certifiable lunatics who, through
guilt by association, are intended to reflect badly on the liberty proponents
and Christians and Jews on the list, who are the SPLC’s real targets.”
He noted
SPLC posted Carson on its hate list, then removed him. “Think about how
shameless SPLC really is: [retired Lt. Gen. Jerry] Boykin and [Tony] Perkins
[both now with the Family Research Council] are still on the list despite the
fact that the group inspired a domestic terrorist and would-be mass murderer to
conduct an armed attack on their Family Research Council years ago with the
intent of shooting and killing every single employee and leaving a Chik-fil-A
sandwich on their corpses. That guy, by the way, now serving time in an attack
that resulted in a non-fatal bullet wound to FRC’s black security guard, never
made it to the SPLC’s ‘hate’ list, despite getting his marching orders from the
group,” Joseph Farah wrote.
Liberty
Counsel, which also has been targeted by SPLC, said in a report last fall that
by “falsely and recklessly labeling Christian ministries as ‘hate groups,’ the
SPLC is directly responsible for the case of a man who intended to commit mass
murder targeted against a policy organization in Washington, D.C.”
“On
August 15, 2012, Floyd Corkins went to the Family Research Council with a gun
and a bag filled with ammunition and Chick-fil-A sandwiches. His stated purpose
was to kill as many employees of the Family Research Council as possible and
then to smear Chick-fil-A sandwiches in their faces (because the founder of the
food chain said he believed in marriage as a man and a woman). Fortunately, Mr.
Corkins was stopped by the security guard, who was shot in the process. Corkins
is now serving time in prison. Mr. Corkins admitted to the court that he
learned of the Family Research Council by reading the SPLC’s hate map.”
Corkins
was sentenced to prison for domestic terrorism after admitting on video he
accessed SPLC’s recommendations to pick a target for his attack. SPLC
identified FRC as a hate group because it holds to a biblical definition of
homosexuality.
WND reported a video showed Corkins entering the FRC
offices and confronting Leo Johnson. FRC officials repeatedly have
explained that they adhere to a biblical perspective on homosexuality but are
not “anti-gay.”
“Consistent
with his statement to the FBI, a … search of Corkins’s family computer revealed
that on the afternoon of Sunday, August 12, Corkins used the computer to visit
the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, as well as the websites for the FRC
and the second organization on his handwritten list. The FBI later recovered
from Corkins’s home several printed Mapquest and Google maps, dated August 12,
2012, for directions to the FRC and the second organization, as well as the pad
of stationary paper used by Corkins to create his handwritten list of targets,”
the government explained in its court case against Corkins.
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