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Alabama Supreme Court Justice Compares DADT Judge To Al-Qaeda

Alabama Supreme Court Justice Tom Parker, a disciple of disgraced former Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, released a campaign ad comparing the judge who recently struck down the unconstitutional Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy to Al-Qaeda:

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.

Listen:

Parker’s hyperbolic claim about American history would come as a big surprise to the actual framers of the Constitution, who generally shared the view that the mere existance of a permanent standing army invites tyranny, but this kind of absurd and bigoted rhetoric is nothing new for Justice Parker. The picture above depicts Parker with two local hate group leaders. One is Leonard Wilson, a segregationist and national board member of a group called the Council of Conservative Citizens that has described African-Americans as “a retrograde species of humanity.” The other is Mike Whorton, Alabama state leader of the neo-Confederate League of the South.

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(As the Wonk Room recently explained, Parker is not the only candidate with ties to the League. Martha Dean, the GOP nominee for Connecticut Attorney General, is apparently taking cues from one of the League’s co-founders, right-wing pseudo-historian Tom Woods.)

Nor is Parker’s radicalism limited to hatred towards gay men, lesbians or other minority groups. In a op-ed published during his tenure as a justice, Parker attacked his colleagues for “passively accommodat[ing] — rather than actively resist[ing] — the unconstitutional opinion of five liberal justices on the U.S. Supreme Court.” The same op-ed elaborated that he objects to the U.S. Supreme Court because they look down on “pro-family policies” and “Southern heritage.”