There is a federal judge out by Kansas way named Julie Robinson, and she is my new genuine American hero. She has been presiding over the lawsuit brought by the ACLU against Kris Kobach, the Kansas Secretary of State and the nation’s most prominent vote-suppressor. At issue was Kobach’s pride and joy—a law that required any Kansan to provide a proof of citizenship before they are allowed to vote.

(This law combines two of the larger bats in Kobach’s belfry—that America is being overrun by illegal immigrants and that millions of them are voting.)

The law is nakedly unconstitutional and clearly designed to keep from voting those people whom Kobach finds inconvenient. Luckily for those people, however, Kobach decided to argue his own case and, in doing so, revealed himself to know less about the law than anyone who simply watches reruns of Law and Order.

He ignored orders from the court. His team botched rudimentary rules of evidence and discovery so egregiously that Judge Robinson appeared ready to apply the gavel to their watery heads. Then, on Monday, she brought an even bigger hammer down on them, tossing the law as far as judicial discretion allowed her to throw it. From The Topeka Capital-Journal:

“This trial was his opportunity to produce credible evidence of that iceberg, but he failed to do so,” Robinson said. “The court will not rely on extrapolated numbers from tiny sample sizes and otherwise flawed data. Dr. Richman’s estimates were not only individually flawed and wildly varied, but his refusal to opine as to the best method of estimating the iceberg renders them all suspect.”

But that’s not what makes Judge Robinson my new genuine American hero. What makes her my new genuine American hero is that, as part of her ruling on the case, in addition to shredding Kobach’s political love child, as well as shredding all the purported “evidence” Kobach brought to court, she also ordered him to…go back to law school.

Robinson also takes aim at Kobach for “repeated and flagrant violations” of court procedures during the March trial. His repeated last-minute efforts to introduce new evidence showed a pattern of “flaunting disclosure and discovery rules that are designed to prevent prejudice and surprise at trial,” she said. As a sanction, Kobach must take six hours of continuing law education in addition to any hours required for his law license.

This is utterly tremendous. Kobach has been cruising for this kind of paddling for over a decade. I would have ordered him to go back to law school in a dunce cap while sitting at a grade-school desk. But I’m a law-and-order type of guy.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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