“A little boy said to his mother, ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?’ His mother replied, ‘ Don’t even go there, Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!’ ”

That racist joke about President Obama, his mother and bestiality wasn’t told by some backwoods white supremacist sporting Ku Klux Klan regalia. The Great Falls Tribune reports that “joke” was contained in an e-mail forwarded to six friends, called “old buddies,” by Richard Cebull, the chief U.S. district judge of Montana. The e-mail was sent, from all places, from Cebull’s judicial chambers.