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Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm pulled no punches with this tweet earlier today.
If I was still Attorney General and Andrew Shervill worked for me, he would have already been fired.
In an interview on CNN’s AC360 last night, Attorney General Mike Cox was still defending the right of his assistant attorney general, Andrew Shervill, to continue his off-the-clock anti-gay cyberbullying of University of Michigan’s student body president Chris Armstrong, saying “He’s clearly a bully, absolutely. And is he using the Internet to be a bully? Yes. But is that protected under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution? Yes.”
According to CNN’s legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, Cox’s decision not to fire Servill is more likely to be a result of Republican politics rather than any constitutional analysis.
COOPER: [Toobin] said that this is more about you than about Shirvell. And he said that Shirvell is a political ally of yours who worked on your campaign, and that the — you know, you campaigned on family values and weren’t very supportive of — of, you know, gay rights, and to fire him would be politically difficult for you, and that that plays a part in this story.
In the interview, Cox did indicate a willingness to take action if Chris Armstrong, the young gay man being cyberbullied/stalked by assistant attorney general Andrew Shervill, were to obtain a restraining order.
COOPER: So, if there was a restraining order or something filed or there was a lawsuit by Mr. Armstrong against Mr. Shirvell, you might look at this differently or that might change your ability to do something?COX: Absolutely. You know, it’s — there’s a spectrum between pure speech and actual physical actions. Now, clearly, if he was stalking him and violating the criminal law, action could be taken against him.
Chris Armstrong filed a request for a restraining order on Shervill two weeks ago. Judge Nancy Francis, who denied Armstrong’s request for immediate issuance of the order, will consider Armstrong’s request at a hearing on Monday, October 4th at 1:30 p.m..
Related:
* Attorney General Mike Cox: Michigan’s Top Anti-Gay Bully
* State AGs: Sexless Marriage is Counterfeit, Same-Sex Version Would Destroy Marriage
18 Comments
Why not an immediate issuance?Certainly the plaintiff has proof that the other party(hereafter titled “The Douche’) has stalked, slandered, tatgeted and made efforts to make the plaintiff a potential target for others, plaintiff being a member of a minority group protected by Federal statute and said minority group being recognised as a specific object of violence.
Whereas the party known as “The Douche” has appeared on television defending, acknowledging his actions, and clearly indicating his intention to continue if not to escalate his conduct, the plaintiff certainly has the reasonable expectation of immediate relief by the courts.
But then, of course, there is the fact that if you oppose the party known as “The Douche” the weight of the office of the AG(hereafter referred to as the Anti-Gay) might possibly fall upon the judicial official(s) involved.
A special prosecutor would seem to be indicated in this matter.
Nice to see you keeping up on the homefront, LurleenAnd Atty. General Cox still can’t admit that he was at a certain notorious party at the Mayor’s Mansion in Detroit years ago either…
but I digress…
Let’s hear it for all of these gay friendly GOP elected officials…
Ain’t that right, Ken Mehlman?
I guess GOProud, who’s done more and better work on gay rights in the past 10 years than any gay organization EVAH is satisfied.
Public school?I don’t know all of the details, but is the person being threatened at a public school?
If he is, seems to me that Shirvell should be fired. It doesn’t matter if he is doing this as a private citizen, he is still a very public Assistant AG (or whatever he is).
It would be like if a Board of Ed member threatened an 18 year old public school student privately.
University of Michigan is a public schoolThe may Shervill is stalking/bullying is an undergrad at U-M. Shervill has shown up in front of his house, too.
IIRC, Jennifer Granholm can fire himI remember the whole subject of the Governor’s powers over elected officials in the state of Michigan coming up during the Kwame Kilpatrick scenario.
I believe that Granholm, technically, has the power to fire any elected official in the state.
Let me go look up the law for a sec (although Jennifer Granholm wouldn’t do that, as she didn’t in the Kilpatrick case)
Shirvell banned from UM Campus
Finally!
Andrwe Sherville Scorecard:Heroes: Anderson Cooper, Gov Jennifer Granholm.
Zero: Mike Cox.
Yes, Granholm can do it…but it would involve some long drawn out hearings.
And in an election year….please, that ain’t happening.
But governors have ousted elected officials in the state of Michigan before.
And under Michigan law, the Governor is the tribunal.
Now I believe what we would need here is a crime.
http://www.clickondetroit.com/…
His creep blog is down by the wayIt transitioned from open to “Invitation Only” this afternoon.
Should be that the Governor has the powerto remove any elected official.
question…..The Anderson Cooper report stated that the Asst AG was finding info about the student and his friends by reading entries on their FaceBook pages.
Can someone explain to me how someone who is not invited (friended) onto a Facebook page can read entries there to find info about people?
In this day and age and environment are there still people lax enough about their own security to have their Facebook pages open to anyone in the world to read them?
We really need to move awayfrom this ongoing meme that the First Amendment trumps everything else in the Constitution. Yes, Shirvell has First Amendment rights. Yes, he’s entitled to freedom of speech. And I suppose if it comes to formal proceedings against him, he’ll bleat about freedom of religion, too. But the First Amendment is only one very brief section of the Constitution. Or to put it another way, Chris Armstrong has constitutional rights too–the right to equal treatment, the right not to be libeled, the right to live safely without being stalked–and Shirvell’s First Amendment rights don’t supersede any of them. We all know that old saw that “Your right to swing your fist ends where my nose begins.” But Shirvell, Cox and all their kind seem to think that their rights give them a right to trample everyone else’s. We need a court to weigh in on this, and to do so emphatically.
Exclusively ShrivelledLook at what one now finds at The Shrivel’s stalk-blog, ‘Chris Armstrong Watch’:
I guess he got tired of people born after the year 1300 looking at his nonsense and applying non-flat-earth logic thereto.
Google is your friendIf you drop the URL into Google, the live returned links go to the locked blog but if click that little cache link at the end of the text, you can see the cached. Doesn’t help with what he’s saying now but you can see the old stuff.
CoxIs what he’s saying honest. I find it hard for him to be so Wallacesque (my view of former gov. of AL on his change from being a devout racist) and be believed.
The AG doesn’t know whether behavior is criminal? Fire HIM!Okay, so there is no question whatsoever exactly what is going on, or at least there is a clear public record of it that can be examined in heartbeats.
The ATTORNEY GENERAL makes the comment that he essentially doesn’t know what to do, because: “Now, clearly, if he was stalking him and violating the criminal law, action could be taken against him.”
Let’s make the clear distinction between “violating the law” and “being convicted of violating the law.”
Some schlub managing a McDonalds with 20 employees might have a valid point if he said he wasn’t sure of what the law was and needed the authorities to make a decision before he took action like terminating someone. (Of course, having an assistant AG publicly and visibly cyberbullying someone is essentially the equivalent of having a McDonald’s employee publicly and visibly spitting in someone’s food, and the manager would make a pretty quick decision there!)
But the AG is saying that he can’t know whether someone who works for him is breaking the law unless there is a lawsuit or a restraining order? What sort of incompetent is HE?
What scares me about this man…is that he’s clearly unstable and emotionally stunted and he landed the job he did.
A LOT of our politicians/pundits are mentally ill, more often than not suffering (or rather we do the suffering) from narcissistic personality disorder (e.g. Palin, Beck, O’Reilly). This guy has crazy in spades.
Too weird…As a resident of Michigan I object to this guy being on the State’s payroll