Chief Judge Richard F. Cebull makes a speech during a Naturalization Ceremony at the James F. Battin Federal Courthouse on June 23, 2011. Cebull is under fire for a racist email he forwarded to six friends from his work computer.James Woodcock
Did you hear the not-so-screamingly funny one about the senior U.S. federal judge who decided it was appropriate to circulate a joke suggesting the president's white mother fornicated with dogs not just black men?
Montana's senior federal judge, Richard Cebull, has since reversed himself but only after a national furor erupted when his taste for bestial and racist humour regarding the President Barack Obama's parentage became public.
"Normally I don't send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching," the silver-haired judge wrote in an e-mail to a half-dozen of his "old buddies." He wrote he just wanted "all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine."
After one of those friends, or maybe a friend's friend, forwarded the judge's 'joke' to journalists, Mr. Justice Cebull started backtracking.
At first he claimed: "It was not intended by me in any way to become public," adding that he wasn't racist. "I'm not that way, never have been," said the judge who was appointed in 2001 to the federal bench by President George W. Bush after a bi-partisan nomination from both the Democrat and Republican senators in Montana.
He become the state's chief judge in 2008.
"I am not a fan of our president," explained Mr. Justice Cebull, when the joke became public amid a rising chorus demanding his resignation. Online petitions attracted thousands of signatures.
Rights groups and congressional leaders called for him to quit.
"I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is," the 67-year-old conceded. "I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."
The White House declined comment.
The judge, apparently sensing that his initial bit of vague backtracking in which he "apologize(d) to anybody who is offended ..." wasn't enough, opted for an all-out prostration.
In a letter to the president that he made public, Judge Cebull is now begging but not offering to resign.
"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 … I can assure you that such action on my part will never happen again. ... Honestly, I don't know what else I can do. Please forgive me and, again, my most sincere apology."
Apparently considering himself unable to decide whether his position has become untenable, the judge also asked the chief judge of the next most senior court – the ninth circuit court of appeals – to launch an investigation into what he admitted was "misconduct."