News (USA)

State supreme court justice in Alabama calls DADT judge a ‘threat to national security’

State supreme court justice in Alabama calls DADT judge a ‘threat to national security’
VIA SPLC
Tom Parker (center)

A state supreme court justice in Alabama has compared U. S. District Court Judge Virgina Phillips to the Islamic extremist terrorist group Al-Qaeda.

Justice Tom Parker, a Republican who has spent nearly $1.5 million dollars on his campaign for reelection for the state’s high court, recently released an advert in which he said:

“Recently, U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips ordered a worldwide injunction to overturn the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy on homosexuals serving in the military.

With a stroke of a pen, this Clinton appointed judge — who got her law degree at Berkeley — unilaterally made the biggest single change in military policy in American history … Most people believe that Al-Qaeda is one of America’s biggest security threats, I think it’s time to add liberal activist judges like Judge Phillips to that list.”

Full audio clip here:
[audio:https://abuwjaawap.cloudimg.io/v7/_lgbtqnation-assets_/assets/2010/10/Tom_Parker_2010.mp3|titles=Tom_Parker_2010]

An Alabama newspaper’s editorial opined:

“Of all the filthy campaign ads we’ve seen and heard over the last few weeks of the 2010 campaign, this one is the worst.

“Parker’s foul comparison of a federal judge to terrorists is outside the bounds of fair campaigning, good taste and thoughtful judicial behavior. This ad reinforces this page’s recommendation of Parker’s opponent in Tuesday’s election, Mac Parsons, a Democratic circuit judge from Birmingham.”

Parker has angered some judicial watchers by running as a self described protege of Roy Moore, the Alabama chief justice ejected from his job after defying a federal court order to remove his two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court rotunda.

The Southern Poverty Law Center reported Parker made his way to the Selma home of Pat and Butch Godwin in July of 2004, who were holding a birthday party to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy slave trader who became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. (Forrest also presided over the massacre of some 250 black prisoners of war at Ft. Pillow, Tenn.)

The Godwins run Friends of Forrest Inc., which owns a Forrest statue the Godwins spent two years unsuccessfully trying to place on public property.

Standing on his friends’ Confederate battle flag-bedecked front porch, Parker rallied the crowd. Later, one listener lauded him as “a man not afraid of the flag.”

The Godwins are tried and true neo-Confederates. Pat Godwin’s latest crusade is to block any acknowledgment on the Capitol grounds of the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery civil rights march — a goal of the Alabama Historical Commission.

In a July E-mail, Godwin railed at “the trash that came here in 1965,” complaining that those who honor the civil rights movement are aiding and abetting the ultimate goal of the ONE WORLD ORDER — to BROWN AmeriKa and annihilate Anglo-Celtic-European culture!”

The picture accompanying this article depicts Parker [center, holding Confederate Battle Flags] next to Leonard Wilson, a segregationist and national board member of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens, on his right, whom once described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity,” and on his left, Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

Parker has also vigorously denounced actions by his own court as toadying to the special interests of the United States Supreme Court in which he described as that court’s activist judges in a 2005 editorial.

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