That's right, it's time again for me to assist you with fulfilling your dreams of sartorial splendor.  Today is headwear day at Simple Justice.  There once was a time when every well-dressed man and woman wore a chapeau.  As a result, rules were developed to distinguish when it was appropriate and when it was not.  These are very important rules, and surmount such mundane concerns as religion.  Of course, back then everyone was Christian, so it really didn't implicate any external concerns other than hat head,

While the fedora days are done (boater in the south), the rules remain.  Lisa Valentine, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, via Court-o-Rama (the least dangerous blog), thought she need not concern herself with proper headwear etiquette, apparently assuming that her Muslim belief in headcovering absolved her of fashion compliance.  Let that be a lesson to all:  Proper dress surpasses such trivialities as religious demands.  At least in Georgia.

Valentine said she was accompanying her 19-year-old nephew to address a citation Tuesday morning when she was stopped at the metal detector and told she would not be allowed to enter the courtroom with a head scarf.

Valentine, an insurance underwriter, told the bailiff that she had been in courtrooms before with a scarf on and that removing it would be a religious violation.

Frustrated, she turned to leave and uttered an expletive. She said the bailiff then told her she could take the matter up in front of the judge. She said she was handcuffed and taken into Rollins’ courtroom.

“They were putting me in there like I was some sort of criminal,” she said.

The judge ordered her to serve 10 days in jail, where she was forced to remove her headscarf.

Like some sort of criminal?  Am I the only one who noticed that she's an "insurance underwriter?"  Does AIG ring a bell?  Connect the dots, people.  Exactly how many billions of dollars must be lost before we recognize a headwear conspiracy?

The rule prohibiting headwear in a courtroom has been ridiculed as capricious by such luminaries as Eugene Volokh, who writes: 

And this, it seems to me, makes perfect sense, especially when the concern is simply about decorum and not juror prejudice. (Note that this case didn't involve a jury trial.) Whatever might be the symbolism of wearing a normal hat indoors, surely there's no disrespect that's usually intended, or likely to be reasonably perceived, when someone is wearing religiously mandated garb. A judge need not feel insulted by an Orthodox Jew's wearing a yarmulke, or a Muslim woman's wearing a hijab.

Apparently Gene is unaware of the Hasidic command that all New York Yankees baseball caps be worn slightly askew.  That may be fine with him, but must the rest of us be subjected to this reverse religious discrimination?  Hmmmm, I think not.

Of course, for all the hubbub about this hijab, inadequate attention has focused on Ms. Valentine's verbal reaction when told by the court officer to take a hike, whereupon the turned and "uttered an expletive."  Notably, the bailiff only then acted, as she was on her way out the door to take up the issue with the ACLU, no doubt on retainer with a local haberdasher.

Might the expletive have had a little something to do with her being handcuffed and held in contempt?  We don't know what she said to the bailiff, though Eugene takes a vicious stab by attributing a Randazza-like word that is highly unlikely to come from the lips of a hat-wearer. My guess would be that the word was much more benign, though I am too refined to tell you which one it is.

My issue with accepting at face value the claim that it was the hijab that brought a 10 day contempt sentence down on Ms. Valentine's head was that she had reluctantly acquiesced in adhering to this most critical rule in the prevention of society's descent into anarchy by leaving.  No harm, no foul.  On the other hand, no self-respecting Georgia Bailiff will allow a woman to utter such language in his presence unless she is also possessed of ample décolletage.  Lacking a photograph of Ms. Valentine, we will assume that she bears no likeness to Daisy Duke.

While the use of epithets is constitutionally protected in 27 of 50 states, one's understanding of its impact on the fragile psyche of a courtroom bailiff must necessarily be taken into account.  After all, this woman was an insurance underwriter.  To expect the bailiff not to crack under the pressure asks far too much.  But as has become far too commonplace these days, the main stream media would prefer to blame it on the headwear, being comprised as it is by fashion Philistine liberals.