It’s Friday! It’s the day you’ve been waiting all week to arrive. Not only is it Friday but it’s also open thread time. It’s almost too much excitement!
All I can say about this is that David Vitter should be target #1 for national Democrats in the Senate. This is absolutely unbelievable:
Vitter graduated Tulane Law School in 1988. Loving v. Virginia, decided in 1967, was a unanimous Supreme Court decision that declared state anti-miscegenation (interracial marriage) laws unconstitutional. It is one of the bedrock civil rights cases, right up there with Brown. It is simply not credible for any lawyer to claim ignorance when asked about Loving.
Even us non-lawyers know about Loving v. Virginia. It’s an extremely famous Supreme Court case. I would expect any lawyer to be familiar with this case.
I’m sure you recall the case of the racist judge in Louisiana who refused to marry an interracial couple citing concern for their hypothetical children. Most Louisiana politicians were quick to condemn the judge, all except Vitter who (eventually) gave a very legalistic statement:
First, Sen. Vitter thinks that all judges should follow the law as written and not make it up as they go along. Second, it would be amazing for anyone to do a story based on this fringe, left-wing political hack’s blog — he’s been handcuffed and detained in the past over his guerrilla tactics.”
[ed. note – he’s referring to Mike Stark in the quote] Mike Stark caught Vitter on camera again and asked him about Loving v. Virginia:
So I decided to concentrate on the first half of the question. I emailed Vitter’s Press Secretary and asked if Vitter believed Loving had been decided correctly or if it was a case of unwarranted judicial activism. I let them know that if they sent me back a clarification, I wouldn’t have to ask the Senator on camera. Of course, if I did see the Senator before I received their statement, hopefully he would be prepared to answer the question.
Almost a month had passed when I ran into the Senator yesterday.
Here is the result:
He doesn’t know?!?