Jindal And Landrieu Call For Ouster Of Racist Judge-- Does Vitter Have A Diaper Stuffed In His Mouth?

Which one would you address as "Your honor?"

Ken and I were both somewhat shocked and completely appalled by a story coming out of swampy Tangipahoa Parish in Louisiana, flush up against Mississippi, that a justice of the peace, Keith Bardwell, had refused to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple. We'll get back to that in a moment. First let's look at a bit of context.

In recent years Tangipahoa Parish has been dragged into court seven times for promoting religious doctrine in public schools. The Tangipahoa Parish School Board should have been a chapter in Charles Pierce's Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free. One of the cases involved a warning sticker the school board decided to put on science books railing against evolution. Justice of the Peace Bardwell must have taken the warning against evolution to heart-- and resisted with all his might. The parish is one of the poorest and least educated in Louisiana. It's a solidly Republican area although almost 30% of the population is black (and Democratic). In 2004 Kerry won 36.5% of the parish's votes but last year Obama took only 33.8%. Part of the 1st congressional district-- and represented by reactionary lunatic Steve Scalise (R)-- the median income in Tangipahoa Parish is less than half of the $40,948 for LA-01. Bardwell has been the Justice of the Peace there for 34 years. He was first elected as a Democrat but soon realized that his beliefs were more aligned with the new anti-Lincoln Republican Party and he switched and was re-elected as a Republican. It isn't likely he'll be finishing his current term, which would end in 2014.

You probably know that Bardwell-- who insists he isn't a racist having "piles and piles" of black friends who use his bathroom-- refused to sign the marriage certificate for 30 year old Beth Humphrey, who is white, and 32 year old Terence McKay, who is black, based on a claim that children of black-white interracial marriages aren't accepted by either black or white society. He must have neglected to read the newspapers since the last presidential election-- either that or he spends his days watching the anti-American broadcasts from Fox News or listening to Hate Talk radio. In any case, the law on this matter was settled by the Supreme Court in 1967 (Loving v Virginia, which ruled that miscegenation laws are unconstitutional).

Both Louisiana's Republican governor, Bobby Jindal (who once represented backward Tangipahoa Parish in Congress), and Lousiana's Democratic senior senator, Mary Landrieu, have called for Bardwell's ouster. Interestingly, two of the state's most overt racist politicians, junior Senator and sexual predator David Vitter and Rep. Scalise, have been uncomfortably silent on the episode. The local newspapers seem split between those generally outraged by Bardwell's racist attitude and those who are embarrassed that his actions shined a spotlight on Tangipahoa Parish's backwardness. They have, after all, been electing and re-electing Bardwell, not to mention Scalise and Vitter.

And apparently this isn't the first interracial couple Bardwell has illegally refused to marry. Three other couples have stepped forward to say they've had the same problem with him. This one probably would never have been reported either except for the national discussion of racism going on now because of the very public racist antics of media bigots Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. We'll let you know-- at least via twitter-- as soon as Vitter takes the diaper out of his mouth and condemns Bardwell.

Here he is-- Keith Bardwell, a good example of why people like David Vitter get elected to public office: