Judge Cebull Needs To Go

This morning I posted on my Facebook page a link to an article in the Missoulian (our daily newspaper here in Missoula) about an offensive e-mail circulated by Montana's Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull. Judge Cebull has apologized for having forwarded the "joke" e-mail (which I have no intention of reproducing here; it was vile)* and has asked the Montana bar to commence an ethics investigation. I said this morning that an apology was insufficient and that Cebull should resign, and I stand by what I said. We don't need no stinkin' investigation; in this case, we've got all the facts we need.

Meanwhile, and predictably, the story has gone national. Ed Schultz on MSNBC highlighted it this evening, calling for Cebull's resignation or dismissal; Common Cause, a nonpartisan citizens' watchdog group in Washington DC, issued a call today for Cebull to be impeached. Not long ago, we here in Montana were proud to receive national attention when our state Supreme Court ruled against corporate involvement in elections. Now that pride gives way to embarrassment, only somewhat mitigated by the fact that Judge Cebull is an appointee of George W. Bush; it's still not the sort of publicity we want for our state.

Judge Cebull insists he is (a) not a racist and (b) an impartial judge. He says he forwarded the e-mail not out of racism but because of its anti-Obama message; he does not, he confessed, like our current President. He's certainly entitled to dislike this or any other President, and to vote for whomever he likes; as a sitting judge, however, he's not entitled to openly display such brazen contempt for the nation's Chief Executive. That the e-mail in question was supposed to remain private, circulated only to and through Judge Cebull's friends and acquaintances, is beside the point; his duty as a judge upon receiving the e-mail was to delete it immediately (after indulging in an appreciative chuckle, of course). He chose to forward the e-mail, it became public, and he's stuck with the consequences.

If Richard Cebull has any integrity at all,** he'll resign forthwith rather than compel an investigation. He's made his feelings about President Obama clear. Let him retire to public life, then, where he can freely speak out about those feelings and where he can act on his political convictions without sullying the office he currently holds. Like so many of his fellow Republicans, he can then feel free to lecture the rest of us about Obama's encroaching tyranny and war on religion, and about how the American way of life and the nation's very soul hang in the balance. And the rest of us will feel free to consider the source and to ignore anything that the disgraced former Federal Judge Richard Cebull ever has to say.

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*I also believe that the true vileness of the e-mail has been misread by commentators who have portrayed it as "racist". Racist it may have been, but more than that, it was specifically a despicably crude and misogynistic slander against President Obama's mother. Apparently, it's not just Rush Limbaugh who thinks it's acceptable, either in public or in private, to hurl epithets and sexist taunts against women; even Federal judges, supposed pillars of propriety, are doing it. I wonder what it is about strong independent women that upsets these men so much?

**Don't ask me; I don't know the guy.

Comments

[Mike Kincaid]

Jack: This article was on page B1, under the fold, of the local section of the Missoulian and was the second or third story on Ed Schultz and Democracy Now. I guess some folks think this is an important national story and others think it is a bit of local color. Huh. Mike

[Jack Shifflett]

Thanks for weighing in on this from Idaho. It's nice to hear from the neighbors, especially when they agree with me.

[J.E. Hopkins]

I do not hail from Montana, but from that bastion of the russet potato next door. I agree that Judge Cebull crossed the line ethically and politically. Certainly he is entitled to the right of speech and if possible some thought behind that speech. But when he took the oath as a federal judge he accepted the high standards that came with that position; including censoring low, disgusting comments about anyone. Such statements about the President should have been a no brainer.
What worries me is what it says about the US when the educated and supposedly responsible citizens, the people who occupy positions of public trust, act and talk more like the lowest most disreputable and ignorant members of society. Cebull should do the honorable thing; resign. If not, he defines how low the standard for federal judges has fallen.