with friends like these..........

Tom Parker (center) poses with Leonard Wilson (left), a board member of the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, and Mike Whorton (right), Alabama state leader of the neo-secessionist League of the South.

Honoring the Confederacy In Alabama, a well-known Supreme Court candidate lauds an antebellum slave trader and appears with hate group leaders
By Heidi Beirich and Mark Potok

Tom Parker, Republican candidate for the Supreme Court of Alabama, isn't shy about touting his conservative credentials. He despises "liberal judges" who are "trying to take God out of public life." He is an "ardent opponent" of gay marriage, and "a national leader in the fight against Political Correctness." He underlines his close ties to Christian Right leaders like Phyllis Schlafly and James Dobson.
Most importantly, of course, Parker is running as the protégé of Roy Moore, the Alabama chief justice ejected from his job after defying a federal court order to remove his two-ton Ten Commandments monument from the Supreme Court rotunda.
But Tom Parker has some other friends, too. It's just that he doesn't spend much time bragging publicly about this batch of colleagues and supporters.
In July, Parker made his way to the Selma home of Pat and Butch Godwin, who were holding a birthday party to honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, a wealthy slave trader who became the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. (Forrest also presided over the massacre of some 250 black prisoners of war at Ft. Pillow, Tenn.) The Godwins run Friends of Forrest Inc., which owns a Forrest statue the Godwins spent two years unsuccessfully trying to place on public property.
Standing on his friends' Confederate battle flag-bedecked front porch, Parker rallied the crowd. Later, one listener lauded him as "a man not afraid of the flag." ...........