Thousand of black people being shot by police: “They should have obeyed the law.”
One Christian clerk violating several court rulings including a direct order being temporarily put in jail until she complies: “OMG PERSECUTION!!!111!”
BTW, not to be outdone by Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee has announced that he’s going to Kentucky to “stand with Kim Davis”. We’re all hoping he means “in jail”.
Christie and Carly have come out in favor of government officials following the law. I guess that’s the end of their campaigns.
Most of the Repliopathidates came out squarely in favor of Jesus and Kim Davis and against sodomy, but Jeb! is hedging his bets. He thinks the gays should be allowed to marry wherever they want AND Kim Davis should be allowed to refuse their marriage. Deep thinking isn’t a strong suit for the Bush family.
Is it too early to help President Ted Crazed or Mike Hackableep plan their cabinets? Kim Davis should be the shoo-in for Secretary of State. Joe Arpaio would make a fine Attorney General. Any other suggestions?
I composed a different sentence, then after an edit, simply forgot to remove the apostrophes. It was a simply oversight. Having never made an oversight yourselves you can never know the true depth of the shame I feel. All I can do is prostrate myself before you ladies and beg your forgiveness that your poor eyes should have been exposed to the horror that is a typing error! Please accept my humblest apologies, in future I shall strive to emulate your ways that I too may reach punctuation perfection!
I don’t understand why her “refusal” to leave could be relevant to anything. He didn’t make her authorization a condition on her no longer being jailed.
It is my understanding that she is not issuing any marriage licenses at all, whether to gay couples or straight couples. This is clearly against the law and I am not defending her actions.
However, the judge’s remedy is to basically divest her of her powers in regards to issuing marriage licenses. I don’t think that is the proper remedy, but let’s roll with that.
If the judge has said, “I am divesting your of your marriage licensing powers, and ordering your deputies to issue licenses no matter what you say” then there is no reason to hold her in jail. Let the deputies issue the licenses regardless of what she says. Yes, clearly, if she shows up to work tomorrow and the deputies refuse to issue licenses (which I cannot see how after telling the judge that they would) then arrest her and possibly the deputies as well.
But the situation is the same whether she is in jail or not: She is ordering the deputies to refuse and the judge is telling them to issue; they have agreed to issue. How does she purge herself of contempt? Just by saying that she won’t engage in the now meaningless act of telling her deputies not to issue marriage licenses?
IOW, the judge has effectively removed her from office with regards to the authority to issue marriage licenses. Her power in this regard is gone. She has no more authority (lawful or unlawful) to direct her deputies from issuing marriage license than I do. Jailing her serves no purpose.
ETA: What if she fires all of her deputies? What if they show up for work today with pink slips in their inboxes? What if she closes her office today? Did the judge address any of this?
I’m reading a lot of posts today (on Twitter, for example) where people are comparing her to a modern day Rosa Parks. Are these people serious? That’s so ridiculous, I don’t know where to start. Even just mentioning Kim in the same sentence as her is a huge insult to Rosa.
The judge doesn’t technically have the authority to strip away her powers. His powers are limited to fines and jail for civil contempt. He’s telling everyone in the office that their choices are to provide the licenses or be jailed for contempt.
Kim Davis can (and has, I believe) tell the staff to not issue licenses, but it’s now up to them to choose which order to violate.
I assume that would be her right as the elected clerk, but I’m not sure. It depends what rules the county has in place for terminating employees at the clerk’s office.
On the other hand, none of this would get her out of jail and eventually it seems that the legislature would have to do something. As is typical with a county clerk’s office, the one in Rowan county apparently also handles land records, voter registration, and motor vehicles, and other public records in addition to marriage (divorce, lien release, etc). Fees for all this fund the county government, so that’s one problem if she fired everyone and she was in jail. Another problem is the citizens who couldn’t do things like real estate transactions and vehicle licensing.
In other words, if she goes full nuclear it will eventually cost her the job because she’ll be causing problems for a much larger segment of the county, not just those trying to get married.
The judge hasn’t, and can’t, remove her power to issue marriage licences. If she is released from jail and goes back to the office, she still personally has the power to issue marriage licences. And she’s said she won’t. That’s still being in contempt.
She also could turn up at the office and try to tell her staff not to obey the court order. That’s also contempt.
No way. She will eventually fold and let others issue the licenses while claiming she is still standing by her beliefs and won the fight.
If it’s true as someone stated that her mother was also the county clerk and her son works for her, she won’t be willing to give it up. Better to be a big fish in a small pond than a little fish for her 15 minutes in the big pond of national politics. The county clerk’s office is her family legacy and almost certainly makes her an important person even prior to this kerfuffle in county of only 20-some-thousand people.
Either that or she’ll resign, try to make some money for a bit, then win the seat again and quietly let the office continue to issue the licenses.
I found an article in which she suggested as a remedy that her name be removed from marriage licenses/certificates. It seems to me that there’s a very easy way to accomplish that; for her to resign her post.