| Online: | |
| Visits: | |
| Stories: |
| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf Under Fire for Blog Post Lambasting SCOTUS Hobby Lobby Decision
The Los Angeles Times reports:
A federal judge turned part-time blogger who garnered unwanted national attention this week after using a profane expression to tell the Supreme Court to, effectively, “shut up” has decided to take his own advice and shut up for a while.
“Blogging will be light while I figure this out,” U.S. District Judge Richard G. Kopf of Nebraska said this week after coming under fire from fellow jurists and legal experts for writing a blistering criticism of the high court's recent ruling in the Hobby Lobby case.
Kopf told readers Monday that he was prompted to curtail his Internet musings by a note from a lawyer he held in the highest respect who explained to him that people “expect judges not to be publicly profane, lewd or disrespectful.”
The Hobby Lobby decision, which gave religious business owners the right to refuse to provide contraceptive coverage for female employees, had many critics. Kopf's July 5 blog post focused on how the court's five male, Catholic, Republican-appointed justices handed down a ruling that “looks stupid and smells worse. To most people, the decision looks stupid 'cause corporations are not persons, all the legal mumbo jumbo notwithstanding.”
He ended with a bit of advice to the justices: “As the kids say, it is time for the Court to STFU,” he said, providing a link to a definition of the four-word phrase.
Last year, Kopf, an appointee of President George H.W. Bush, took senior status with a reduced case load and started his own blog, “Hercules and the Umpire,” with the aim of describing the job of a federal trial judge.
The Hobby Lobby posting was not the only one that raised eyebrows. He got into trouble earlier this year with an overly candid account of a day in court, describing “a very pretty female lawyer who … wears very short skirts and shows lots of her ample chest. I especially appreciate the last two attributes.” He added that he has been “a dirty old man” for most of his life.
A few readers praised Kopf's candor for standing up to the Supreme Court, but others said he should resign or be impeached. . . .
Source: http://www.fedsocblog.com/blog/u.s._district_judge_richard_kopf_under_fire_for_blog_post_lambasting_scotus/
