A newspaper in Alabama has this report on followers of Roy Moore running for the state Supreme Court in Alabama and loudly advocating his position that the states should be able to ignore any Federal court ruling that they disagree with:
The theme was sounded in an op-ed piece Parker wrote in The Birmingham News criticizing his colleagues for their ruling.
"Conservative judges today are on the front lines of the war against political correctness and judicial tyranny," he wrote. "State Supreme Court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are precedent."
The slate's campaigns contend that truly conservative judges have an obligation to fight what they see as judicial tyranny.
This is extraordinarily dangerous to our constitutional system, and it's an idea so loony that even hardcore conservatives like William Pryor, now a Federal judge but formerly the Alabama attorney general who refused to go along with Moore in ignoring a Federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building, can't stomach it. Pryor agreed with Moore that the ruling was unjustified, but understood that you cannot simply ignore a higher court's rulings when you don't like them.
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I'm a little perplexed by this part:
What exactly is, in their world, the "literal interpretation" of the 14th Ammendment?
Will these people never learn? Their logic, followed to its logical conclusion, will result in a replay of events of the mid-1800s. I believe that the superiority of the federal government over the states was settled at that time. I hope it can be settled again in a more peaceful fashion. Perhaps we can hope that the people of Alabama will not follow their irresponsible leaders down that path again.
I think state governments should start erecting monuments to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in court houses. This will remind people of where our laws really come from.
It's interesting that Bible-beaters are ever eager to gloat about their rejection of "political correctness" (another phrase that needs to be retired to the same rhetorical shitheap as "activist judge"), yet are always the first to yammer "ME VICTIM! ME VICTIM!" whenever someone treats Christianity with something less than 100% reverence or even moves in such a way as to stave of notions of theocracy. There are hypocrites at each end of the political specturm and everywhere in between, but because religious zealots have become so emboldened under the current administration and so many of these are in turn idiots, their uniquely flagrant and mindless brand of hypocrisy has been thrown repeatedly into BAS-relief.
I posted about Parker's lunacy a while ago, here: Theocracy Watch II: Judicial Tyranny Edition.
The next time a conservative starts complaining about "activist judges", we should point them to this story. The real activist judges are the ones claiming they should disregard existing precedent and rule based on their personal opinions, and the only ones proposing that are conservatives.