Impoeachment is too good for this imbecile...

Richard Cebull, chief judge for the U.S. District Court of Montana, took the nation to a new low road last week by forwarding a set of remarks regarding our President to six of his “buddies.” The judge gleefully sent a racially offensive email that made jokes referring to President Obama’s mother as a woman who had engaged in sex with dogs. The email features a scenario where Barack Obama asks his mother why he is half-White and half-Black. The story ends with her sharing with her son that “from all she can remember from that party,” he should be glad that he doesn’t bark.

So, here we are in Montana, the state that really does not want to be a state, with a judge who has made decisions that impact the lives of countless people of color who had no difficulty nor felt there was something basically wrong about sending out an email implying that the President of the United States of America is of mixed race because his mother was a drunken, sexually wanton and promiscuous woman who enjoyed sex with dogs.

What really frightens me about this however is that I know there are millions of Americans who hate our President primarily because of his race and that the sentiments expressed in this horrific email are in sync with their hatred of him. Moreover, those same Americans are confused as to why this email is considered a sad and revealing conception of much of White America’s long-held perceptions of Black people. African-Americans since the founding of this country have had to deal with their being compared to monkeys, their being recognized as somehow less than human (the 3/5 compromise) and given extraordinarily long and disproportionate prison sentences when compared to their White counterparts. It is judges like Richard Cebull, driven by their own deeply rooted racism, who have contributed to the almost inhumane challenges that families of color face still today in their effort to simply survive.

Deeply embedded in the psyche of White America is the historical reality of slavery, an institution that lasted for 400 years primarily because the defenders of slavery believed deeply that Black people are sub-human and consequently do not deserve being treated with a sense of basic dignity to say nothing of “inalienable” human rights.

Since the exposing of this infamous email, Judge Cebull has attempted to apologize and characterize this whole sordid event as a harmless error in judgment—something that Black people hear over and over again—however the fact remains that this issue has far deeper ramifications than even the most vicious racist would readily admit. And that is that there simply is no way, with any sense of reality or acceptance, that the American people should be expected to maintain their faith in a justice system that makes it possible for the standard bearers of common decency and political leadership to make jokes about Black people having sex with animals. The sickness and the ignorance that facilitates this kind of environment is beyond understanding.

The Code of Conduct for United States Judges, published by the U.S. Judicial Conference, calls for judges to “act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.”

Needless to say, this judge’s actions do not inspire confidence in his integrity or his impartiality. Cebull’s colleagues on the bench should be among the first to demand that he immediately step down. This should be a non-negotiable and immediate demand since his actions reflect miserably on the entire judiciary, not just himself. In addition, his fellow Republicans must realize that disregarding this kind of behavior only serves to hamper their attempts at recruiting minorities to their party’s tent.

Every week seems to have another national headline about some under-or-over-the-radar Republican getting caught forwarding a racist-joke email or making a nationally publicized comment such as from the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity or Glenn Beck.

Each of the Republican candidates for office around the country, up to and including the ones running for President should have come out immediately with a statement that repudiated Cebull and distanced themselves from this kind of visceral racially motivated attack. Also, where is the press on this? I have not seen one story on mainstream TV and/or radio news nor have I read about it in my local newspaper. If not for a colleague relating the story to me and then the internet to do the research, I might never have known about it.

The time has come for all of us to begin the process of learning how to judge a man not by his race, but as Dr. Martin Luther King stated, “…by the content of his character.” America is a nation that despite the outrageous and offensive behavior of idiots like Cebull and other right wing hate mongers, is attempting to move forward through the greatest economic crisis this country has faced in almost a century and none of us is made better or whole when we compare Black people to dogs.