War on the Judiciary
stcynic | August 15, 2005Well last night was Demagogues on Display "Justice Sunday II", at which some of the most prominent religious right leaders - James Dobson, William Donohue, Tony Perkins, etc - threw red meat to their followers by railing at those evil judges out to destroy everything good and decent in America. Along the way they displayed some highly dishonest rhetoric. Like this:
Dobson evoked the framers of the Constitution, saying: "These activist, unelected judges believe they know better than the American people about the direction the country should go. The framers of our great nation did not intend…
stcynic | August 5, 2005Vikram Amar has an excellent essay on Findlaw debunking this notion that you can't ask judicial nominees about specific cases. He points out that confirmation hearings should dig much deeper than the usual judicial cliches about "legislating from the bench" and "judicial restraint" because those phrases really don't tell us anything meaningful about how a justice will do his job:
The problem with the metaphor of judicial legislation is, of course, that no one knows (or at least agrees on) what it means. So too with "judicial activism," "strict construction" and the like. For instance,…
stcynic | April 25, 2005It's nice to see some of the more decent and consistent conservatives going after Tom DeLay, James Dobson and the rest of the folks going after judges with a meat cleaver. The latest to do so are Ted Olson and Charles Krauthammer. Olson represented President Bush before the Supreme Court in the election case in 2000 and then served as his Solicitor General when he took office. He is also thought to be on the short list of candidates for a future Supreme Court nomination. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he said:
It is time to take a deep breath, step back, and inject a little perspective…
stcynic | April 21, 2005Marci Hamilton's latest column skewers Tom DeLay and Bill Frist for their cavalier and hypocritical demonization of the courts. She writes in part:
DeLay catered to the far right when he led the charge to enact "Terri's Law," which enabled her parents to return to a federal court that had lacked jurisdiction to hear their case. (DeLay is as cynical as he is catering, however: An earlier version of the bill would have given the parents new rights, not just a forum. But DeLay and other Republicans compromised and agreed to remove those new rights from the bill in order to get it passed.)…
stcynic | April 20, 2005Ah yes, the war on the judiciary continues, led by our old pal Tom DeLay. Here's his latest bit of stupidity:
"Absolutely. We've got Justice Kennedy writing decisions based upon international law, not the Constitution of the United States? That's just outrageous," DeLay told Fox News Radio on Tuesday. "And not only that, but he said in session that he does his own research on the Internet? That is just incredibly outrageous."
No, what is outrageous is someone who claims to be a "strict constructionist" wanting to go against the clear intent of Article III of the Constitution and gut…
stcynic | April 14, 2005Yes, Tom Delay apologized today in a press conference, not for what he said but for the way he said it:
"I said something in an inartful way, and I shouldn't have said it that way, and I apologize for saying it that way.
But if you want a perfect insight into just how ignorant the man is of the constitution and of separation of powers, look no further than this interview in the Washington Times. Try this one on for size:
I blame Congress over the last 50 to 100 years for not standing up and taking its responsibility given to it by the Constitution. The reason the judiciary has been able to…
stcynic | April 14, 2005I swear there must be some sort of office pool at Religious Right headquarters to see who can come up with the most ridiculous and hyperbolic rhetoric against judges. Here's the latest from Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council:
"The court has become increasingly hostile to Christianity, and it poses a greater threat to representative government -- more than anything, more than budget deficits, more than terrorist groups," he said last week.
Can rumors of late night rituals where they drink the blood of children be far behind?
stcynic | April 12, 2005Leave it to the uber-moron Joseph Farah, founder of the Worldnutdaily, to up the ante even higher in the race to see who can be the most ridiculous and extreme in their anti-judicial rhetoric. In this article on the Schiavo situation, he makes numerous false statements about the case and then urges that the Federal judges who opposed him in the case be thrown in jail. No, I'm not making that up:
Members of Congress were huffing and puffing about the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals after its decision to ignore the will of Congress. Yet there has not been a move by the most powerful branch of…
stcynic | April 11, 2005The rhetoric coming from some portions of the right concerning the judiciary continues to grow ever more vitriolic and unbalanced. Ruth Marcus has an interesting piece in the Washington Post today that includes some comments that are constitutionally dubious at best and downright delusional at worst:
At the same time, there is reason to fear that something has changed in the national climate when the chief of staff to a U.S. senator -- even if that senator is Tom Coburn of Oklahoma -- tells a public gathering, "I'm in favor of mass impeachment if that's what it takes." An "easier way," the…
stcynic | April 8, 2005I don't think this prediction is worth claiming the mantle of Nostrodamus or anything, but just a few days ago I predicted that Tom Delay, with his public standing taking a beating from numerous ethics violations, will become increasingly shrill in pandering to the far right. And here we have a report of his appearance, on videotape, at a conference called "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" in Washington, wherein he ups the ante even further in the right's war on the judiciary:
Mr. DeLay faulted courts for what he said was their invention of rights to abortion and prohibitions on school…
stcynic | April 7, 2005Senator Jon Cornyn is doing the foot-in-mouth two step, backing away from his comments the other day about violence against judges while, of course, claiming he didn't really say what he is now making clear he didn't mean. So let's take a look at what he said on Monday, with the transcript from his own website:
Finally, I don't know if there is a cause-and-effect connection, but we have seen some recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country -- certainly nothing new; we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that has been on the news. I wonder whether there…
stcynic | April 6, 2005The right's war on the courts continues to heat up. In addition to the various court-stripping bills in front of Congress and Sen. Cornyn warning them about serial rapists killing them for failing to do what Congress wants, we now have this threat from Rep. Steve King of Iowa on NPR last week:
Rep. KING: Congress created all of the courts; all the federal courts, Congress grants them jurisdiction. So whatever Congress gives, they can take away. If we wanted to abolish the 9th Circuit, for example, we could do that. Now I'm not going to say I think that's the prudent thing to do. We could…
stcynic | April 5, 2005I neglected to award a Robert O'Brien trophy for the month of March, so let me do so belatedly now. March's winner, for comments made in April, is Sen. John Cornyn of Texas. On the floor of the Senate yesterday, Cornyn delivered a ridiculous speech to an almost empty chamber in which he blamed the recent incidents of violence against judges on judicial activism:In a Senate floor speech in which he sharply criticized a recent Supreme Court ruling on the death penalty, Cornyn (R-Tex.) -- a former Texas Supreme Court justice and member of the Judiciary Committee -- said Americans are growing…