Birther Wins Judgeship in California
Behind Orly Taitz, Gary Kreep is probably the most relentless and prominent of the birther attorneys — and he is on the verge of getting on the bench in California as a superior court judge. He got 50.1% of the votes in his district, finishing with 56 more votes than opponent Garland Peed. But since it’s so close, I would be surprised if there isn’t a challenge brought to the tally and a recount demanded.
daved:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:34 am
I’m almost afraid to ask about his campaign slogan, if any. “Put another Kreep in office?”
d cwilson:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:37 am
Rachel Maddow played excerpts from the birther video he was peddling back in 2009. All I have to say is, wow, someone that crazy shouldn’t be allowed to practice law, much less serve on the bench.
Tualha:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:43 am
Says a lot about the electorate in that district. All bad.
Assuming he survives the recount, I anticipate another Roy Moore moment coming up. In California, of all places.
slc1:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:49 am
Yet another reason why electing judges is a thoroughly bad idea.
frog:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:50 am
I’m sorry, but my inner 12-year-old boy can’t stop laughing at both candidates’ names long enough to let my adult brain say anything sensible.
Eskeptrical Engineer:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:51 am
It looks like the absentee ballots haven’t all been counted yet, so it’s possible Peed could still win.
http://www.sdcounty.ca.gov/voters/results/transform.htm?paramVal1=superior_court.xsl
Eskeptrical Engineer:
June 8th, 2012 at 11:59 am
And since that link will get updated, at the time I’m posting, 108,000 absentee/provisional ballots need to be counted. Kreep is leading Peed 50.02% to 49.98%.
So yes, your individual vote is important! A spread of less than a tenth of a percent will probably decide this.
Eskeptrical Engineer:
June 8th, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Oh wait, it’s actually Peed leading Kreep 50.02% to 49.98%. Still too close to tell.
Modusoperandi:
June 8th, 2012 at 12:24 pm
Kreep & Peed sounds like a folk band. Add a “The” in front of it and it’s a pub.
Rip Steakface:
June 8th, 2012 at 1:14 pm
Replace that “The” with an “A” and it sounds like a drink.
Skip White:
June 8th, 2012 at 2:41 pm
The name “Gary Kreep” sounds like some D-list Batman villain from the 60′s. No comment on the other guy.
Nentuaby:
June 8th, 2012 at 3:12 pm
Hmm. The link you posted says Peed won. Last minute reprieve by the absentee ballots, I guess?
Shawn Smith:
June 8th, 2012 at 3:44 pm
d cwilson said,
And she could barely get through the segment without turning into a nine-year-old boy herself. And that was a few months after the on-air dressing down she gave her staff when they were cracking up like Beevis and Butthead when Chuck Todd was describing the FL primary and drew an oval around the northern part of the state.
Chris from Europe:
June 8th, 2012 at 3:56 pm
It doesn’t matter what the outcome is, electing judges remains wrong and in my view violates the guarantee of a republican form of government.
Ichthyic:
June 8th, 2012 at 8:04 pm
I gotta side with Chris on this one.
nominating judges by people who aren’t judges is bad enough.
electing judges by the general populace?
seems a bad idea on the face of it.
What if we had the general populace voting on whether a grad student should get a PhD or not?
would that make any sense?
StevoR:
June 9th, 2012 at 5:04 am
So would people in California like a Kreep for a judge or would they prefer to be Peed upon by their Justice in cheif?
Yep, both very silly names!
Then again, KREEP is found all over the moon as a major lunar rock type.
As for electing Judges is electing the politicians that make the laws any sillier or smarter than electing thos ewho help enforce them? It gives people their democratic say and input.
StevoR:
June 9th, 2012 at 5:23 am
PS. ^ That’s about consistency and democracy and relies on having a well-informed public making intelligent choices. In prinicple I’ve nothing agianst the idea of elcting Judges. Or congresscritters and POTUSes and Aussie Prime Ministers.
In practice, it seems you’re ending up with some very dodgy drongoes in positions that have all too much power. This birther clowns being exhibit A.
Perhaps we need to have a caveat of soemkind that only some peopel get tovote having passed some tests of ability to think rationally before people are allowed to vote or be ruled by an Asimov style Council of Science a la the Lucky Starr novels but that’s heading towards dangerously totalitarian territory isn’t it?
Chris from Europe:
June 9th, 2012 at 5:53 am
@StevoR
I think the evidence is pretty clear, both within the United States and in comparison with other countries, that electing judges is the worse system.
The criteria for judges should be solely their professional qualification. They shouldn’t be forced to adapt their decisions so they increase the likelihood of reelection.
Yes/No elections putting judges into office are thus the least worst, but all others, all types of reelection (including retention) are unacceptable.
I think nothing leads to clearer examples of mob rule as electing judges (see California).
No, a republican democracy with a strong, hard-to-change constitution with good procedures protecting basic rights and proportional voting should be entirely sufficient.
And why oligarchy and/or aristocracy (in literal meaning) are not a good idea has been elucidated over two millenia ago.
We need better education, including civics and similar supposedly not business-relevant subjects, and regulation against media concentration. And as we’ve seen in the last week, we need to enable people without much money to have fair access to election ads, both through strong public financing and discounted access to advertising in broadcasting.
Ichthyic:
June 9th, 2012 at 7:07 pm
We need better education, including civics and similar supposedly not business-relevant subjects, and regulation against media concentration.
+1
Western society has failed to participate in democracy; I blame our own educational systems for failing to get across just how important it is.
…and I of course DON’T mean just “voting”.
Ms. Daisy Cutter, Gynofascist in a Spiffy Hugo Boss Uniform:
June 13th, 2012 at 4:06 pm
Peed and Kreep are even funnier than Semon as names in politics.
I kind of hope Jeff Semon, who seems to be another right-wing Catholic, gets some national attention. Dan Savage wouldn’t have to do anything with his name except point and laugh.