On the heels of this horribly one-sided editorial in the Virginian-Pilot on Friday comes an article today about an interview conducted by Norfolk State Senator Nick Rerras (R-6th) of Mary G. Commander, a candidate for a Juvenile and Domestic Relations judgeship. In order to speak out, Ms. Commander resigned as a substitute judge in the juvenile and general district courts. The text of her letter to Rerras was posted yesterday at VB Dems.
I am ashamed to admit that my current representative in the state senate is Nick Rerras. I have no reason to disbelieve Ms. Commander. The questions asked of her were totally inappropriate, even by his own admission.
But even more troubling is that the decision rests in the hands of a single individual. There is something wrong with our system when one person is able to decide whether to advance a candidate’s name for consideration for a judgeship. Our judicial system is supposed to be fair and independent, but when the selection process involves a litmus test, those ideals get thrown out of the window.
No one is asking Senator Rerras to hang up his morals and his conscience simply because he is an elected official. On the contrary, having morals and a conscience is a good thing – for an individual. But that’s not who elected officials represent. I expect someone who is elected to represent me take into account the wide range of opinions of those who elected him. That is the responsibility of an elected official.
If Mr. Rerras is unwilling and/or unable to represent the 6th Senate district in its entirety, it is time for him to leave elected office. We already have an alternative: Dr. Ralph Northam.
And kudos to Ms. Commander for speaking out. If you had not done so, we would be totally unaware of this despicable behavior.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
Vivian:
I wrote about the unfortunate lack of diversity in the judicial selection process in recent years (yes, that translates since the Republicans became the majority) in a post on my blog following last year’s election of judges by the General Assembly. “http://changeservant.blogspot.com/2006/03/52-of-population-deserves-better-when.html
I haven’t had time to complete my analysis of this year’s nomination and election process, so I don’t know yet whether the record this year is any better.
Also, Rerras is not the first Republican to embarass the party and a judcial candidate by his questionning. In an open meeting of House Courts of Justice, then Delegate Paul Harris asked then lawyer and later Chief Deputy AG Elizabeth McClanahan, who was visibly pregnant at the time, how she expected to handle the duties of a judge and her responsibilities as a new mother.
The more things change the more they stay the same.
CG2
Add this to Senator Rerras’ publicity —
State senator denies blaming mental illness on sin and demons
By LOUIS HANSEN, The Virginian-Pilot
© November 1, 2003
http://www.theologyweb.com/forum/printthread.php?t=13335
The article states … ” Bob Armstrong, a member of the Norfolk Community Services Board, was sitting near Rerras when the conversation turned to mental illness. Armstrong, who has a daughter with mental illness, was chairman of the Norfolk chapter of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill for about 15 years before recently stepping down.
During the discussion, Rerras said he believed mental illness was caused by demons, according to Armstrong and another person who heard the conversation. Neither Armstrong nor the other participant are associated with the Protogyrou campaign.
Rerras also said he believed that God may be punishing families by giving children mental illnesses, according to the other person who heard the conversation. Armstrong and the second witness said the people who heard it were shocked. “We hadn’t heard that kind of stuff in 30, 40, 50 years,” Armstrong said.
Rerras recalls the conversation differently. As he remembers it, he did not say all mental illness is caused by demons. He said he asked the group whether demonization was a possible explanation for illnesses such as multiple personality disorders.
Armstrong said Rerras called him within the past two weeks and acknowledged that he made the comments and apologized. In interviews this week, Rerras declined to answer several questions about whether he believes mental illness has spiritual causes. “Mental illness is a valid illness,” he said. Most problems are physiological, he said, but “we’re more than flesh and blood.”
Sounds like sensible voters are past due to “Give Nick the Kick!”. Tell us more about Dr. Northam.
Interesting post. First, I know little of Nick Rerras or Mary G. Commander. Second, I believe judges are bound by their oath to support and defend the constitution.
I do not believe the personal opinions of a judge on what ought to be the law should matter. What should matter is what a judicial candidate understands the law to be and whether or not that judicial candidate is honorable enough to interpret the law as he or she believes it to be.
That said, here are some observations.
1. One person controls nominations to the US Supreme Court. That appears to be the mechanism in this case. Someone has to decide which candidates get voted on, and it is a lot easier to get one person to make a decision.
2. Our courts have, unfortunately, become a means for legislating laws. The Supreme Court’s decision on abortion is the most outstanding example of this. If you think that the abortion decision was based upon the law, then I think the pot is calling the kettle black. Like you, Rerras just wants judges who advocate his point of view.
3. Our differences over the judiciary result from the fact that people have hung up their morals and consciences. Judging in accordance with our own desires and beliefs is easy work. Only judges with high moral and ethical standards will make impartial decisions in accordance with existing law.
In the past, the US Senate did not interview judges. They just looked at their records and verified the proposed candidates decided cases honestly. However, during several periods in our history, the selection of judges has become highly politicized. We had certain case before the Civil War that Southern judges decided their way in order to advance the cause of slavery. FDR, in order to implement his social programs during the Great Depression, bullied the court to expand the role of the Federal Government. Now we have wrangling over abortion law and an agenda to secularize public life. That such abominable nonsense has spread to local courts is disgusting, but not surprising.
I think you’re holding the agenda upside down, CT. I’m pretty sure that the agenda is to inject religion into public life by all means possible.
Just tryin’ to help.
~
I suppose we should give Rerras credit for saying out loud what others only presume . . .
I don’t like that the president is the only one who can nominate judges for SCOTUS, either. Talk about power! We all know that power corrupts.
I don’t want judges advocating any position. That should not be their jobs. They should be advocates of the law. So, it’s not the pot calling the kettle black.
I like that slogan, BS. “Give Nick the Kick!” As for Northam, I’ll pass along more information on him as I get it.
MB — I do not think I have to work very hard to make a convincing argument that the courts have played an active role secularizing public life. Without any new legislation, the courts have made decisions requiring less religious activity in the public square.
With respect to the subject of religion, our government is supposed to be neutral. Unfortunately, the bigger we make our government, the more “public” funding we spread around, the harder it is to keep government from influencing what should be personal and private decisions. As a result, we have intense feuding over the religious aspects education, birth control, monuments, and so forth.
Keep in mind that secularism is itself a religious preference.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/secularism
Taken to the extreme, secularism becomes atheism, the official religion of most communist states. That is why our government does not require public life to be secular. Instead, our government is prohibited establishing a religion.
Is that really a structural problem, having a single nominator? I’d say that until the To Hell With Constitutional Duties Congress of 02-07, the nomination and confirmation process had generally worked. Not always the best results, I’ll grant you, but by and large I think it’s a better process than nominations by committee or somesuch. In any event, if the nominator knows that she’ll be facing an actively interested confirming body, you can be sure that there will be some input from that body prior to the actual nomination.
And that’s where I suspect things break down, in Virginia. They’ll take the nominators choice without question, for the most part. Instead of actually, you know, doing their job.
Tom, you seem to be under the impression that your God has been in the public square until the Awful Court System threw him back into a closet or something. Read up on some history.
The result of all this “feuding” is that you, and many like you, seem to feel quite comfortable in trying to impose your flavor of religion on the rest of us. If you’d quit trying to do that, all this “feuds” would pretty much disappear.
I wish you really DID mean it when you say you want to keep government out of personal and private decisions. Instead, we’ve got an entire party dedicated to inserting government in the matter of who we fuck, how we fuck, what we do with our bodies, and forced indoctrination of our kids into a favored religion.
Oh, and you know the Red Scare is over, right? I think the last time shouting “Communist!” in a discussion actually worked, it was 1986. And it was between two Solidarity workers in Poland.
MB – I am familiar with the history. Christians established the government of this country, and they worked very hard to set up a government that imposes no one’s religion on anyone. The way the system is suppose to work means I cannot use the government to impose “my God” on you and you cannot use the government to impose your beliefs (whatever they may be) on me.
Stable societies remain stable by avoiding extremes. The extreme early Americans feared was religious strife between Christians. As a result, our society learned to fear immoderate Christian activism, and we even bent over backwards to protect people like you. Now, as your angry agitation well illustrates, we are threatened by the opposite extreme.
Tom, your own words give lie to your claim to know much about American history or the personal beliefs of the founding fathers. Get yourself a library card.
But you do get one thing right – the system IS supposed to prevent anyone from using government to impose their religious beliefs on another. And yet here we are, a couple of months after a vote to ensure that I don’t have the same rights you do. Why? Because you want to impose your religious beliefs on me. [insert example after example after example].
My angry agitation? Hardly. I’ve simply decide to stop putting up with the inane shit that people like you spout because society generally tries very hard to be respectful of religious beliefs. You and yours have taken that very decent construct and beaten the hell out of the rest of the country with it. And I am fucking tired of it.
MB – just curious.
Why so much profanity and vulgarity?
It feels generally appropriate in response to such profane ideas and actions. Further, it strikes me as a rather minor question of form in comparison to the much more important substance. There’s no small irony in that the crowd that gets the vapors over a bit of profanity is the same that has absolutely no compunction about supporting and advancing profane and vulgar agendas.
MB – As a tree is known by the character of its fruit, the character of your mind is known by the language you use.
I’ll stack my language against your moral bankruptcy in front of most any jury, Tom.