JUDGE MOORE BACK IN ACTION

He’s back! No, I’m not talking about Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, the drug lord that seamen from the Mexican Navy recaptured and sent back to the Antiplano prison where he escaped from last summer. I’m talking about Roy Moore, the Chief Justice of the Alabama Supreme Court, who was suspended from the court in 2003, then removed from office later that year for failing to abide by federal court orders, then re-elected to the court in 2012 by the good citizenry of Alabama who apparently approve of the notion of having a Supreme Court justice who shows no respect for the rule of law. You’d think that a judge who’d been given another chance would act differently the second time around, but when it comes to Roy Moore, you’d be wrong – dead wrong!

Roy Moore is the guy who owned (he still might) a 5300-pound granite monument of the Ten Commandments that he placed at the state judicial building in Montgomery, Alabama and refused to remove when directed to do so by federal courts. Many in Alabama regard Judge Moore as a folk hero and a messenger from God, but to those with respect for the constitutional rule of law in a democratic society, Moore is nothing more that a self-serving demagogue with an over-inflated sense of ego. Unfortunately he is still the top state court judge in Alabama and he still loves to throw his weight around.

Moore’s current shenanigans centers around one of his favorite political and religious targets: gay couples. Despite last June’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court upholding the legal right of gay couples to marry, Judge Moore issued an order this past Wednesday directing probate judges in Alabama not to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, a clear violation of federal court orders and binding court decisions to the contrary. Now, probate judges around his state are left in a quandary as to which court’s directives they must follow – the United States Supreme Court or Judge Roy Moore. Once again, Moore has set himself above the rule of law, and to what end? Motions and lawsuits challenging his order will surely follow. Alabama taxpayers will end up wasting millions defending Moore’s pointless crusade and eventually gay couples will be allowed to marry there again.

Judge Moore claims that he is following the rulings of a higher power. That’s baloney!

Notwithstanding his own inflated ego, Judge Roy Moore is not a messenger from God. He is simply a state court judge who swore an oath to defend the United States Constitution. If he cannot honor that oath he should resign, but you and I know that’s not going to happen. With any luck, the Alabama Court of the Judiciary will remove Roy Moore from the Supreme Court bench again and give the rule of law a temporary respite from the antics of its highest judge. I say “temporary” because you know that Judge Moore would make it back to the Alabama Supreme Court again. He always does.