Is there a newspaper publisher left in Alabama or America with any brains or courage at all?

If so, I would like to meet you. Let's do lunch.

There are so many issues in the press these days being covered as if we as a people know absolutely nothing about history, science or the law. It's enough to make intelligent readers lose their Sunday lunch. And that includes all that Easter chocolate - a major contributor to America's status as the most obese nation on the planet.

Where to begin a diatribe this Sunday morning? That is the question.

How's this for starters.

No matter what you think of lawyers generally, the Alabama Bar Association did something quite remarkable this past week. Not that a single editorial writer in this "God fearing" state took notice.

The bar association's 72-member governing board unanimously inducted Hugo Black into the Alabama Lawyer's Hall of Fame.

But when the newspapers and TV stations covered the story, they highlighted the criticism of his induction by none other than Ten Commandments Judge Roy Moore's pick for state Supreme Court Chief Justice, Tom Parker.

In a statement that ran in every version of the story in every newspaper and on every TV news show in the land, Parker called Black's induction a "shameful disgrace to the people and state of Alabama."

Why does he feel that way?

Because he said Black "personally launched the war to kick God out of the public square in America."

Parker, a Republican candidate for chief justice, also called Black "one of the worst justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court . . . I would never look to Hugo Black as an inspiration."

According to the Associated Press account, Black grew up in Ashland and served in the U.S. Senate before President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed him to the Supreme Court in 1937. Black died in 1971 after serving 34 years on the court, where he influenced the court "through a period of social change." In case you lack the ability to read between the news lines, that is a classic bit of understatement.

Black was a strong defender of First Amendment rights and always carried a copy of the Constitution around in his pocket. He described himself as a "strict constructionist" and a "literalist."

But he was seen as a liberal proponent of integration in public life. And he was a staunch defender of the doctrine of the separation of church and state - a doctrine under attack on many fronts in America these days by a bunch of people whose life reading list is, let's just say, a bit limited.

Black was inducted into the Hall of Fame Friday along with the late Alabama Supreme Court Justice Oscar Adams, the first black on the court and first elected statewide since Reconstruction; William Douglas Arant (1897-1987), who was state bar president 1936-37; and Harry Toulmin (1766-1823), who was appointed by Thomas Jefferson as a judge in the Tombigbee District and was elected as one of the state's first circuit judges following statehood.

Parker will meet Nabers in the Republican primary on June 6 and the winner will advance to the general election Nov. 7 against Democrat Sue Bell Cobb, a judge on the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals.

Also according to the AP account, Parker was elected to the Alabama Supreme Court in November 2004 not long after being appointed as Special Projects Manager for The Foundation for Moral Law, where he coordinated a federal legislative effort, under Article III, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, to combat "liberal" judicial activism.

Parker was appointed by Chief Justice Roy Moore to be the Deputy Administrative Director of Courts in January 2001, where he served as General Counsel for the Alabama court system.

Parker graduated cum laude from Dartmouth College, in Hanover, New Hampshire, according to his online overblown resume, and he received his Juris Doctorate from Vanderbilt University School of Law in Nashville, Tennessee. He apparently won a Rotary International Fellowship to study law at the University of Sao Paulo School of Law, where he was ostensibly the first U.S. student in Brazil’s law school.

Parker also served in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office under Jeff Sessions when our now Bush-ass kissing Senator held that office.

Before that, he was a partner in the Montgomery law firm Parker and Kotouc.

He claims to have been the founding executive director of the Alabama Family Alliance (now the Alabama Policy Institute), and the Alabama Family Advocates, that strange group with ties to the radical Dr. James Dobson and his weirdo group "Focus on the Family."

In a profile for the Legal Times newspaper, Parker was described as "a man at war with the U.S. Supreme Court."

Books on prominent display in his office are Mark Levin's conservative attack on the U.S. Supreme Court, "Men in Black," and Phyllis Schlafly's "The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It."

He was sworn into office in Alabama by none other than the Uncle Tom Clarence Thomas, the token conservative black on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Parker is now famous for an op-ed piece he wrote for The Birmingham News, in which he attacked the high court's "blatant judicial tyranny."

"State supreme court judges should not follow obviously wrong decisions simply because they are precedents," Parker wrote. "After all, a judge takes an oath to support the Constitution - not to automatically follow activist judges who believe their own devolving standards of decency trump the text of the Constitution."

Exactly, except that only applies in the screwed up minds of these anti-court conservatives when "liberals" follow precedent. When conservatives step all over precedents - which are part of the living Constitution, believe it or not - they do not call that "activism."

They somehow think their reading of the Constitution trumps the reading by courts past, including Hugo Black's far more educated reading of the text and history.

So what is needed now? A bit of public and press activism to stop this idiot from being reelected to the state Supreme Court.

Where are you activist members of the public who care about the future legal direction of your state and nation? Where are you newspaper editorial writers?

Editor's Note: When we first posted this story, the Alabama Bar Association press release pdf file link was not working. I e-mailed them and it was fixed on April 19. So here's the bar association press release pdf file. It's a pretty minimal document. It would have been nice to see a longer profile on Hugo Black and a full explanation for why he was chosen.