Poor WATB.
It seems that the Montana Judge who praised and sent a racist email suggesting that President Obama was the product of his mother having drunken sex with a dog is feeling some heat and cannot think of what else he can do to clean up his shit pile:
“I sincerely and profusely apologize to you and your family for the email I forwarded. I accept full responsibility; I have no one to blame but myself, Cebull wrote in a letter to the President, adding that the action will “never happen again” and that he referred his conduct to the Judicial Council of the Ninth Circuit. “Honestly, I don’t know what else I can do.”
An obvious next step for the Judge would be to RESIGN.
He is unfit for office, but he is also a racist wingnut in a robe, so the obvious answer will never come to him. Instead it seems he has decided that his next step should be to try and create a space where he is a victim because he was caught being a racist asshole. I still think that RESIGN YOU FUCK STICK is the best advice he can be given, but I’m sure that others will disagree and/or have a better idea of what Judge Cebull could and should do next.
Cheers
mclaren
Resignation is too easy. Impeach the sonofabitch. He’s unfit to act as judge. Impeach him, throw him out of judicial robes, then disbar the scumbag.
Here’s a little news flash about America’s so-called “justice system” — a disproportionately huge percentage of the people convicted and sentenced to prison in America are black. A disproportionately huge percentage of the prosecutors and judges in America are white. America has already got a serious problem with racism in its so-called “justice” system.
Overt racism like this makes a judge unfit to serve. Get rid of him.
Jerzy Russian
If I were a darker-skinned person, I would not feel like I would get a fair shake should I ever appear before his court. He should step down.
By the way, I keep getting the mobile version at irregular intervals.
smintheus
I think he should legally change his last name from “Cebull” to “Racist”.
Citizen Alan
As loathsome as this guy is, racist and misogynistic emails do not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors. Also, he has life tenure at a job for which he gets paid probably in excess of $180,000 a year plus benefits. He is not going to resign. Doing so would be a sign of character, and if he had that, he wouldn’t have sent the email in the first place.
Jewish Steel
Relocate and serve out the rest of his time at 25th and California in Chicago. You’ve been in lily white Montana too long, dog.
bemused
Conservatives have a problem anticipating the consequences of their actions on themselves. Many of them don’t have any interest in the consequences of their actions on others but they seem equally indifferent to their own. Why is that?
cathyx
This is the issue exactly. He’s proven that he won’t make an unbiased decision.
Hill Dweller
We’re also supposed to believe this is his first time forwarding racist email.
Frank
@Jerzy Russian:
Which is exactly why he has to resign. Otherwise, there has to be automatic appeals anytime there is an African-American before this judge.
Wag
Change the last name to Cebullshit.
Mary G
I think the worst that might happen is being forced to undergo some “sensitivity training,” but he might choose a strategic retreat to Betty Ford or somewhere. “The alcohol made me do it” is a common excuse among these people.
ETA: Of course, I think he should resign. I just don’t think he’ll have to.
cathyx
He should recuse himself every time a person of color is before the bench.
scav
Wonder if this difficulty with the whole sentencing phase of judgement has plagued him for his entire career? I suppose inquiring minds could like, inquire?
andy
He should resign or be impeached. But he will never go on his own, lacking even a basic sense of pride or shame. The modern right wing is missing what even Nixon had. So I suspect he’ll try and ride this one out, because he’s nothing without the office, without the juice that only a judge has. He would just be another faceless wingnut with an internet connection, and that shit we got in plenty.
JoyceH
@Citizen Alan:
There are circumstances in which he would. And that’s if the GOP House starts getting pressure, and I mean unrelenting pressure, to impeach him. Don’t get into the weeds with a lot of ‘does this rise to the level – blah blah blah’ – they should have thought of that before they impeached Clinton! No, call them and tell them to impeach, make the issue a nuisance that disrupts their office and wastes their time.
Then they’ll start getting on the phone and urging him to resign for the good of the party, eventually getting to ‘please don’t make us impeach you’.
Call your Congressman and demand they impeach this disgrace in a black robe.
If not, Cebull will be Exhibit B of this year’s theme – Republicans Hate Women. (Exhibit A, of course, is Rush Limbaugh.)
Down and Out of Sài Gòn
“Honestly, I don’t know what else I can do.”
Seppuku?
MB
Why would this guy step down? Lifetime job security, and zero chance of getting impeached over this. He’ll be embarrassed for a short while and move on. Hell, he might even be positioning himself for elevation during a future GOP presidency.
CoastalMike
It really isn’t about the racism. He says it was about his dislike for Obama’s policies. I believe him. So how is he going to hear federal cases, when he has so much hostility towards the head of the federal government that he would jeopardize his job by sending such an email? How can a federal judge recuse himself from every case directly or indirectly involving the President of the United States and his administration? He has to resign.
burnspbesq
@cathyx:
I’m sure you’re about to back up this assertion with a sophisticaed, multi-variate regression analysis that shows beyond any doubt a statistically significant difference in the way litigants of different races are treated in cases tried in his court.
Oh, you’re not?
If y’all can hound this guy out of office, then the bad guys can hound good judges out of office.
Citizen Alan is dead right on this one. Judicial independence is the more important long-term value. This guy will be gone in a few years.
Smiling Mortician
@bemused: The tone of his letter of apology indicates that he was genuinely startled to discover that the person he was insulting turned out to be POTUS. On some level, bigots like this guy don’t just fear and hate the black president, they deny his existence. Until they can’t because they’ve been caught. And then it’s all “I didn’t really mean to do anything wrong, and gosh, what else do you want me to do? Jeez, I said I was sorry.” Hmm, I wonder if that tactic works with the defendants who come before him.
Citizen_X
First off, never mind the judge: let’s get Rushbo to spin himself up into a froth over this. Then every Republican will be duty-bound to stand with the Party Leader.
As for the judge, every dark-hued convict who got a slightly questionable decision from this guy needs to be contacting his lawyer now. This guy should become an expensive embarrassment for Montana.
KG
@mclaren: high crimes and misdemeanors is the standard for executive branch impeachment. For the Courts, it’s “good Behavior”
Cluttered Mind
Suppose he does resign. It’s not like Obama would be able to replace him. The Republicans would just filibuster anyone he puts forward for the position until they take back the white house and replace him with someone worse. Unfortunately what we have here is a problem with the judicial branch that goes far beyond one bad judge.
cathyx
@burnspbesq: I agree with everything citizen allen says. But I’m all for hounding bad judges out of office. Let’s get started on the activist Supreme Court Justices, and work our way down.
bemused
@Smiling Mortician:
I’m surprised that they always seem to be so surprised, in total shock that they got caught. Over compartmentalization.
Keith G
@burnspbesq: Prepare to be attacked.
KG
@KG: also, too… a common charge against judges facing impeachment is “bringing disrepute to the federal judiciary” though that is generally a thrown in charge that accompanies something else.
tulip
fuck stick… that does has a certain epic ring to it, doesn’t it?
As for the judge, he won’t resign, nothing is going to happen to him, if anything he’ll be praised for saying what everybody who identifies as a Republican is thinking. Just another day for the GOP.
Jenn
Wow. I had a very different reaction – this is the only Republican apology I can remember for a very (very very) long time that hasn’t been some sort of waffly pile of crap not worth the paper it was printed on. This is exactly what I WANT people to do, who have screwed up as badly as he has. He took responsibility professionally, and apologized personally. No, I doubt this was the first piece of garbage email he’d forwarded, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it were his last. And who knows, maybe this experience will make him a better person and a better, more humble judge.
The Dangerman
WATB with ODS.
barkleyg
I DEDICATE this to John Cole, and I hope he reads it.
Racist Judge, SIMPLE Paragraph.
This is from Robert H. Jackson, A Supreme Court Justice from 1942-1954.
http://www.roberthjackson.org/the-man/speeches-articles/speeches/speeches-by-robert-h-jackson/the-federal-prosecutor/
“In the speech, Jackson, who had been Attorney General for only three months, offered his views on what constituted proper, ethical conduct by federal prosecutors.”
AND, here is the Greatest Punchline regarding ETHICS, Evah!
PIGL
@burnspbesq: what, in your learned view, would be sufficient grounds to remove a sitting judge from the bench? Would a dead girl and a live boy be enough? Or would your impressive devotion to standards of evidence prevent one from acting on the obvious?
Judicial independence my ass. It simply enshrines partisanship.
maus
Jesus coastalmike, how could someone who thinks having sex with a black man is tantamount to fucking an animal not be racist?
gbear
Link. Is anyone on earth more clueless than this dickhead?
edit: crap. wrong thread.
Strandedvandal
On the flight from Inchon to Manila last week, I watched Hari-Kiri – Death of a Samurai. I suggest Judge Cebull watch this fine film and do whatever comes to mind.
Keith G
@Jenn: Thanks for being so elegant with ideas I have been tossing around for a bit. Nothing can change the fact that what this guy did was seriously fucked up. I do wonder if we have drifted into being a “one and done” society where every misstep earns a nuclear option.
There are two main problems with this. First, the fragility of the human intellect and, two, return fire can be a bitch. Also, even though I gave up Christianity for Lent (several decades ago), it occurs to me that this Jesus guy, whom I respect, had some words for times such as these.
PurpleGirl
burnspbesq: A question, really three:
1) If the judge resigns what happens to his pension and benefits? Does he still get them?
2) If he is impeached and convicted, what happens to the pension and benefits then?
marv
I severely dislike a guy who says he is profusely apologizing, as if it’s his call. Other people, like the ones he offended, can be the judge of that, but I suppose he’s not used to that sort of thing. “As one judge said to the other: Be fair, and if you can’t be fair, be arbitrary.”
General Stuck (Bravo Nope Zero)
Not an impeachable offense. And the sanctity of an independent judiciary trumps any wishes to get rid of him. Once you start down that road, then politics enters into the judicial branch as well, and we are done for.
James Gary
@burnspbesq:
If y’all can hound this guy out of office, then the bad guys can hound good judges out of office.
The quality of a “good judge,” at least in my opinion, involves a certain even-handed maturity and restraint–let’s call it “good judge-ment”–that would cause such a hypothetical individual to not send such e-mails in the first place.
Steve
I believe it was that learned student of the judicial branch, Newt Gingrich, who thoughtfully opined that racist judges should resign.
Gus
@Frank: He’s in Montana. That ain’t gonna happen much.
JGabriel
@Jenn:
I would feel the same way if he hadn’t undercut his own apology with the whinging and self-pitying modifier, “Honestly, I don’t what else I can do.”
That’s a statement that practically invites people to respond with: “Resign.” It also implies that his motivation for apologizing is a desperate plea to save face and reputation, rather than coming from any true sense of contrition.
.
jefft452
“Honestly, I don’t know what else I can do.” – Judge Cebull
“Oh Mr. Block, you were born by mistake
You take the cake, you make me ache
tie a rock on your block and then jump in the lake
Kindly do that for Liberty’s sake!” – Joe Hill
AA+ Bonds
I do agree that his failure to resign immediately means something has shifted in our culture from perhaps twenty years ago or so
scav
I think we can pull it apart several ways. Won’t argue he’s likely a racist, certainly a misogynist and lacking respect for the president-ist, but I’m thinking we’ll need evidence to back up that racism, etc. impacted the quality of his decisions from the bench. Thoughtcrime isn’t quite enough. Then there’s the whole lacking good judgement in forwarding the mail, bringing disrepute upon the bench issues and those have to be decided by the official channels. I’d say he certainly blew it here and would sure as hell like to know more about the local usual channels to be able to gauge if he’ll only get a quiet chuckle and thump on the shoulder but that may be a foregone conclusion given class and neck of the wood realities.
Keith G
@James Gary: You might want to pick up a biography of Associate Justice William O. Douglas before you bang that “judge”-ment gong too loudly.
AA+ Bonds
On a passive aggressive note, it’s really depressing when people in an industry do everything they can to cover for other people in the industry on the mistaken belief that they are all part of a cross-class brotherhood looking out for each others’ asses
Such as lawyers who come on here to lay down flak for everyone working in the courts no matter what they say or do
AA+ Bonds
Then again I think Robert Byrd should have been hounded out of office instead of allowed to grow doddering and sanctimonious with a “D” next to his name
Fair? Maybe not. Good for America? It would’ve been
Liberty60
C’mon, Doug, the email touched his heart when it called the President’s mother a dogf*cker.
TOUCHED HIS HEART, do you hear?
AA+ Bonds
Another important factor is that certain justices have gone out of their way in the recent past to abuse their tenure which makes a lot of people on the bench figure we’re back to the Good Ol’ Days
James Gary
@Keith G:
You might want to pick up a biography of Associate Justice William O. Douglas before you bang that “judge”-ment gong too loudly.
Are you referring to his womanizing? Really? Do you honestly think that cheating on one’s wife indicates a strong bias toward an entire class of people in the same way this particular e-mail does?
rumpole
He ain’t resigning. You can’t be kicked out except by impeachment (never happen with this congress), and once you serve a certain term you retire on your full salary. Plus, no one ever tells you what to do. That’s what lifetiime appointment means.
The only good news is that he’s in montana, so one would hope he’d have fewer opportunities to put his bias into practice. But it’s clear that no person of color is going to get a fair shake in front of him–no matter how hard he protests otherwise.
feebog
Did you all know there is actually a code of conduct for Federal Judges? And that they are held to a higher standard than the rest of us:
As far as I am concerned, this judge has seriously crosed the line in terms of personal behavior, and should immediately resign. How is he ever going to hear a case involving an African American without an automatic request for recusal based on his email? How is he ever going to avoid an appeal based on his obvious bias against people of color? Resign, now.
Jenn
@JGabriel: Yes, perhaps it does invite such comments. I took it at face value – and still do. Honestly, he doesn’t know what else to do. And if someone says, “for what you have done, for the sake of peoples’ faith in the judiciary, I think the best thing you can do is resign,” well, ok. For myself, in his apology, I saw my own. Thank goodness I haven’t had gazillions of people parsing my words at such times!
__
For me, at the end of the day, we have here a man who screwed up badly, recognized that he had done so, and apologized sincerely. Given the legions of assholes out there who are entirely missing those last two steps … I’d rather focus my ire on them.
AA+ Bonds
@feebog:
A combination of lazy attorneys, attorneys who try and fail, and time
VividBlueDotty
@maus: To these people, I am not racist=I have never burned a cross or lynched anyone. I can almost hear this jerk saying, “It’s true that I may denigrate people of other races, and I may insult them and treat them with disdain, and in a professional capacity, I may discriminate against them in some way or another whenever possible, but for heaven’s sake, I am CLEARLY not a racist.”
pseudonymous in nc
As I said elsethread, I’ll take the apology. What matters is bursting the nasty little bubble of wingnut chain emails — use him as an example when a colleague or a relation sends one your way.
Keith G
I donno. Might his serial womanizing (he makes Newt look like a piker) be a manifestation of a chronic misogyny? After all, why does he so blatantly objectify 51% of the US population?
AA+ Bonds
@pseudonymous in nc:
Old people love chain emails and older people forget this stuff – my friend at an auto dealership got called into his boss’s office recently. . . my friend was told to talk to his father (formerly an employee at the same dealership) about the racist chain emails that said father was sending to people at my friend’s workplace . . . from an office email account from the VW dealership down the road . . .
My friend’s boss really liked my friend’s dad, and that’s why he did it, because he didn’t want friend’s dad to get fired again
PhoenixRising
It’s obviously more complex than “make a stink until he steps down”, if for no other reason then because motions for recusal in a bar as small as MTs are going to be…dicey.
I’m going with Jenn on this: I was pleasantly surprised by both the apology and the corrective action he took.
Really, what are we looking for? He fucked up, asked for the forgiveness of the people he offended and turned himself in to his professional licensing board. Unless you think that seppuku is a reasonable expectation, I’m thinking lets be happy we have made a society in which he has to express contrition and learn something from his mistake.
Do I want my daughter to marry the likes of him? I do not. And should she be brought before him*, Id urge her attorney to ask for a closed pretrial hearing to explain that one doesnt want to move to recuse but…it looks like he can’t be fair to mixed race Americans.
That said, he apologized. So take Yes for an answer.
* on the charges connected to chaining herself to a bulldozer headed into Yellowstone to lay pipe for the energy development, or something like that, natch…
AA+ Bonds
@PhoenixRising:
He should step down because he should feel, beyond personal guilt, immense shame in the eyes of American society and fear that he will suffer from its effects
But he doesn’t feel that shame or that fear or at least not strongly enough and that’s our collective fault as a country
PhoenixRising
@AA+ Bonds: Agreed. So there is plenty left to do….
pseudonymous in nc
@PhoenixRising:
And pragmatically, I prefer that. Having seen the chains, and seen people be called out for forwarding them, I treat it as dumb thoughtlessness more than active malice, and the dumb/thoughtless can be rehabilitated.
gian
With respect to his pension. Can we not join the tea baggers in wanting to unwind a contract and make a dismissed government employee forfeit the money they’ve essentially paid into their pension plan while opted out of social security?
Feebog
Sorry, an apology is not enough in this case. This is a Federal Judge we are talking about. Look, I serve as a Civil Service Hearing Officer in one of the largest countys in the country. I am held to a similar standard. Everyone I know who is in a similar position would feel the same way, this judge must go,
Diana
Bear in mind that one of his personal friends to whom he sent this email was so disgusted by it that he did something to make it public. So there’s that, right in the guy’s own circle.
Fwiffo
At least it’s not some half-apology, or one of those phony “I’m sorry you’re so sensitive” fake apologies.
Lojasmo
@PIGL:
Not a live boy. IOKIYAAC.
Lojasmo
@feebog:
Burnsie evidently did not.
different-church-lady
@Jenn: That’s because you’re a reasonable person. And as such, you have no place in modern American politics, where no apology is good enough and whoever pouts the loudest wins.
Anonymous At Work
As a lawyer, yes, I’d be asking for a transfer from his courtroom for every civil rights case, every non-white defendant, anything “politically charged” and I’d put in for appeal before trial (interlocutory), which both gums up the system and slams the judge’s credibility.
feebog
@ Anonymous At Work
You are exactly right. I would do the same. This guy has shredded any facade of impartiallity that he may have once had. Enough appeals for transfer based on bias, and the pressure could drive him out.
For those who think the apology was “enough”. It is not. Judges, Hearing Officers. Administrative Law Judges and Arbitrators are all held to a much higher standard than the general public.
Dennis G.
@Fwiffo: His letter was somewhat contrite, but in other comments he tried to justify it because he is opposed to President Obama. That ‘excuse’/rationalization of his actions is just about as bad as his email and another reason why he should not be a Judge.
Cheers
LosGatosCA
Judges are just politicians in robes. Anyone who believes otherwise is a fool or just too frail too handle the truth. If judges were partisan they might steal a presidential election for their party, which we know they would never do.
Ilia
Honestly, I commend this guy for apologizing (and he looks sincere about it, too). I’m pretty sure that if Obama wins a second term, the next time something like this happens the conservative Id will be so blinded by hate that this guy will pull an Arpaio and say he’s being prosecuted for telling it like it is.
TenguPhule
I understand it is a custom to fall on one’s sword after such a disgrace.
*beat*
-Whips out a blunt sword-
Your move, Cebull.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@pseudonymous in nc: “… I treat it as dumb thoughtlessness more than active malice, and the dumb/thoughtless can be rehabilitated.”
I wonder how much thoughtlessness is involved in not just passing on the chain email but adding a note to it telling everyone how it “touched” you prior to doing so. This racist fucker is a disgrace to the legal profession, full stop.
I’m sure that his “I don’t know what else to do” is a line he is used to hearing from defendants who have tried to right their wrongs prior to judgment and sentencing.
I hope it works for him as well as it did for them.
ottercliff
The next step cowards like him follow, when they sense that their insincere apology is not enough, is to enter a two day detox program.
WaterGirl
@Frank: @Jerzy Russian: I am hoping that the ACLU or the innocence project or some organization is able to question the outcome of every trial of anybody who goes before this judge and is not white. It would also be great if they would go back and start challenging the results of old cases under this racist judge.
brantl
@andy: Nixon didn’t have it, he knew he was going to be thrown to the wolves if he didn’t resign, his party told him so. He got the pardon and the pension, which he knew were all that he could get. He knew it was quit and go home, or try to tough it out and go to jail. Nixon only ever cared about Nixon.
brantl
@burnspbesq: The post right above yours sticks the pin in the hot air that you are spewing.
brantl
@AA+ Bonds: You seem to have missed that Byrd changed on his own, apologized, and changed how he voted and championed in the Senate. Do you really know that much about Robert Byrd?