Alabama Senate candidate Judge* Roy Moore....a special kind of odd.
*Is it proper to still call someone who has been a judge twice, and been removed from his bench twice, "Judge"?
If you keep up with the news at all you'll know that "Judge" Roy Moore is the Republican candidate running to fill the unexpired seat of former Alabama Senator and now Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It's said he would be by far the most conservative member of the Senate if elected, which would make him someone the Republicans could count on to vote with their bare majority on things like tax reform, health care reform, etc. He was their darling....until it was alleged he molested a girl back in 1979, when he was 32 and she was only 14.
That girl, now all grown up, is Leigh Corfman. She has given details of the incident, and has friends from that time who say she told them of her "relationship" with Moore, but as of now it's legally nothing more than he-said-she-said. There is no stained "blue dress" such as the one that tripped up Bill Clinton.
Judge Moore says he didn't do it and that it's all politically motivated, asking why all this has come out now, just weeks before the special election? Fair point.
Background: Mr. Moore is a graduate of West Point, and went on after his military academy graduation to serve as a MP, including a tour in Vietnam. There he was so unpopular with his men (he was a Captain by then) that he admitted sleeping on his cot surrounded by sandbags, worried they would "frag" (kill) him with a grenade while he slept.
He later went to the University of Alabama where he received his Juris Doctor degree. He eventually worked his way into the judiciary where he was twice elected to the Alabama Supreme Court, and twice removed, for not enforcing laws he personally objected to.
In 2002 he founded the non-profit Foundation For Moral Law, and between 2007 and 2012 personally received over $1M from his foundation, which somehow exceeded the amount of revenue listed on its public tax filings.
Here we are today, with candidate Moore being accused of sexual misconduct appearing on the Sean Hannity show, defending himself. He did a pitiful job of it. When asked if he dated teenage girls when he was in his 30's he said it "would have been out of my customary behavior". He went on to say, "If I did, I’m not going to dispute these
things, but I don’t remember anything like that".
Ahh, not exactly a convincing denial there, Roy, but as mentioned, there hasn't so far been any evidence presented that a court could use to convict. That's what his supporters are basing their undying support for him on. "Prove it" they say. Should you vote against someone just because they've been accused of something?
Think of it this way: If your job required you and your family to relocate to another city, and you needed to find a new OB/Gyn for your daughter, would you send her to a doctor who had been accused of sexual misconduct with a 14-year-old girl?
With the Alabama Senate seat likely to be the one to cast the deciding vote on many crucial social issues the Republican's will put forward next year, the country needs a thoughtful civil servant. Judge Roy doesn't seem to fit that description IMO.
Still, he could win election. Then the issue will be whether the Republican-controlled Senate will vote to seat him (Article 1, Section 5 of the Constitution says each house of Congress is the final arbiter of who it seats) or accept him and his all-important vote while gritting their teeth and keeping him at a distance from the rest of civil society....even the suggestion of sexual abuse of an underage minor is something hard to ignore. This could get very interesting.
The conundrum is, it's impossible to prove a negative...you can't prove you didn't do something that never happened. But, regardless of his ideology, if you were an Alabamian, would you vote for Judge Roy Moore for the US Senate, or let Dr Roy Moore be your daughter's OB/Gyn?
S
