BILLINGS, Mont., March 1 (UPI) -- Common Cause Thursday said a federal judge who sent a vulgar and racially charged e-mail about U.S. President Barack Obama should resign.
At the same time, a spokesman for U.S. Rep. Denny Rehberg, R-Mont., said Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull of Billings planned to apologize to Obama and has asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the matter, the Billings (Mont.) Gazette reported.
Mary Boyle, spokeswoman for Common Cause of Montana, said Cebull violated the Code of Conduct for U.S. Judges by forwarding an e-mail containing a joke the judge has acknowledged is racist, the Gazette reported. Cebull told the Great Falls Tribune Wednesday he sent the e-mail Feb. 20 from his official courthouse e-mail address to six friends.
The newspaper said Cebull, 67, starts off his e-mail by saying he doesn't forward many items, but was sending this one with "hope it touches your heart like it did mine."
"A little boy said to his mother, 'Mommy, how come I'm black and you're white?'" the e-mail joke reads. "His mother replied, 'Don't even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you're lucky you don't bark!'"
Cebull said Wednesday the e-mail's content was racist but he does not consider himself racist, just anti-Obama.
"It was not intended by me in any way to become public," Cebull said. "I apologize to anybody who is offended by it, and I can obviously understand why people would be offended.
"The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan. I didn't send it as racist, although that's what it is. I sent it out because it's anti-Obama."
Cebull was nominated to the federal bench by President George W. Bush in 2001 and has been a chief judge since 2008.
Travis McAdam, executive director for the Montana Human Rights Network, told the Tribune sending the joke was inappropriate for a federal judge.
"We have a hard time believing that a legitimate criticism of the president involves distributing a joke that basically compares African-Americans with animals," McAdam said.
Montana immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath, who is in an interracial marriage, told the Tribune he found Cebull's e-mail "deeply troubling."
"The reason why I think it's so troubling, is it espouses the deeply racist view that interracial sex is equivalent to bestiality," Haque-Hausrath said. "For a federal judge to be equating the two, and say since Barack Obama is of mixed racial background, that his mother was somehow committing acts of bestiality is incredibly racist and troubling."
Cebull said the e-mail, which was passed along to the newspaper, was meant to be private and was "very poor judgment on my part."
Cebull said he has never considered himself prejudiced against people on the basis of race.
"All I can emphasize is I've treated people in my courtroom all these years fairly," he said. "I don't think I've ever demonstrated racism. Nobody has ever even implied it."
