Retribution for judges?

[2centsworth]

Unlike some conservatives, I think retribution for judges is one of the worst ideas I've ever heard. Dick Cheaney seems to agree.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A23666-2005Apr3.html?nav=rss_politics/administration

[desflood]

Don't worry, some conservatives also think this has the potential to be a not-so-hot idea.

[FromWayDowntown]

It's complaining about the absence of judicial activism, if you're talking about backlash from the Schiavo matter. The right's quarrel with Judge Greer is that he applied the law as written and did not give way to the emotional/policy arguments begging for some sort of equitable result. I disagree with most of the right's talking points on judicial activism, but I'll say this: if your problem is about "judicial activism," Judge Greer should be a poster boy for resisting that temptation. Instead, because the right didn't like the result, they're ignoring their own rant!!

[Extra Stout]

It's complaining about the absence of judicial activism, if you're talking about backlash from the Schiavo matter. The right's quarrel with Judge Greer is that he applied the law as written and did not give way to the emotional/policy arguments begging for some sort of equitable result. I disagree with most of the right's talking points on judicial activism, but I'll say this: if your problem is about "judicial activism," Judge Greer should be a poster boy for resisting that temptation. Instead, because the right didn't like the result, they're ignoring their own rant!!Well, it's the Religious Right that is threatening the warpath against these judges, and it is conservatives who oppose judicial activism. I hope the Schiavo case has taught us that conservatives and the Religious Right are distinct groups under the umbrella of one party.

[2centsworth]

It's complaining about the absence of judicial activism, if you're talking about backlash from the Schiavo matter. The right's quarrel with Judge Greer is that he applied the law as written and did not give way to the emotional/policy arguments begging for some sort of equitable result. I disagree with most of the right's talking points on judicial activism, but I'll say this: if your problem is about "judicial activism," Judge Greer should be a poster boy for resisting that temptation. Instead, because the right didn't like the result, they're ignoring their own rant!! did you totally ignore my post? I think you're right on Judge Greer, but understand a lot of people are letting emotion get the best of them which is understandable. Nevertheless, I think a large percentage of people on the right will agree with you that the law was followed, and that's all anyone should want. I will fight against any type of retribution against judge Greer.

[FromWayDowntown]

I wasn't aiming at you 2cents. I read your post and understand your viewpoint.

My post was aimed at those who don't see it your way.

[Nbadan]

the Religious Right are distinct groups under the umbrella of one party

Republicans are responsible for exploiting the fanatical religious right and now the Terry Schiavo case has come back and nipped them in the arse. How fitting. Unfortunately, guys like Tom Delay aren't going to give up power so easily. A recent memo from Delay's office effectively threatened Republican legislators to fall into lock-step regarding his on-going ethics violations investigation. If you don't think that Delay is a fanatic consider that he still possessed the pretentious gall to threaten Judge Geer, appointed by Bush41, and one of the most conservative Judges in the South, but because he had the nerve to follow the rule of law and disagree with the RR fanatics, like Delay, on Terry Schiavo, so Judge Greer is now 'an activist judge who will someday get his'. It's crazy.

This is what the Republican party has become though thanks to voters who can't look past party labels.

[2centsworth]

Republicans are responsible for exploiting the fanatical religious right and now the Terry Schiavo case has come back and nipped them in the arse. How fitting. Unfortunately, guys like Tom Delay aren't going to give up power so easily. A recent memo from Delay's office effectively threatened Republican legislators to fall into lock-step regarding his on-going ethics violations investigation. If you don't think that Delay is a fanatic consider that he still possessed the pretentious gall to threaten Judge Geer, appointed by Bush41, and one of the most conservative Judges in the South, but because he had the nerve to follow the rule of law and disagree with the RR fanatics, like Delay, on Terry Schiavo, so Judge Greer is now 'an activist judge who will someday get his'. It's crazy.

This is what the Republican party has become though thanks to voters who can't look past party labels.
unfortunately Dan, the democrats are a joke of a party. Too bad to because this country needs a decent 2nd party.

[Nbadan]

See, that is exactly what I was saying about Conservatives not being able to look beyond Party labels. Say Hello to the American Taliban and good-bye to God-less Judges, Courts, and Law...


Tired of waiting for the Second Coming to enforce Christ's rule on Earth? Fortunately, so is your Congress and they know how to "bring it on."

Just when you thought the corporatist/Christian Coalition had milked the 9/11 "surprise" for all it was worth in powers, profits and votes, we regret to report that you may have to think again. Just in case you've briefly fallen behind on your rightwing mailing lists, you might have missed the March 3rd filing of Senate bill S. 520 and House version is H.R. 1070, AKA the "Constitution Restoration Act" (CRA).

In the worshipful words of the Conservative Caucus, this historic legislation will "RESTORE OUR CONSTITUTION!", mainly by barring ANY federal court or judge from ever again reviewing "any matter to the extent that relief is sought against an entity of Federal, State, or local government, or against an officer or agent of Federal, State, or local government (whether or not acting in official or personal capacity), concerning that entity's, officer's, or agent's acknowledgment of God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government." [Emphasis demanded - see full text here.]

In other words, the bill ensures that God's divine word (and our infallible leaders' interpretation thereof) will hereafter trump all our pathetic democratic notions about freedom, law and rights -- and our courts can't say a thing. This, of course, will take "In God We Trust" to an entirely new level, because soon He (and His personally anointed political elite) will be all the legal recourse we have left.

This is not a joke, a test, or a fit of libertarian paranoia. The CRA already has 28 sponsors in the House and Senate, and a March 20 call to lead sponsor Sen. Richard Shelby's office assures us that "we have the votes for passage." This is a highly credible projection as Bill Moyers observes in his 3/24/05 "Welcome to Doomsday" piece in the New York Review of Books: "The corporate, political, and religious right's hammerlock... extends to the US Congress. Nearly half of its members before the election-231 legislators in all (more since the election)-are backed by the religious right... Forty-five senators and 186 members of the 108th Congress earned 80 to 100 percent approval ratings from the most influential Christian Right advocacy groups."

This stunning bill and the movement behind it deserve immediate crash study on at least 3 different fronts.

1. Its hostile divorce of American jurisprudence from our hard-won secular history and international norms. To again quote the Conservative Caucus: "This important bill will restrict the jurisdiction of the U.S. Supreme Court and all lower federal courts to that permitted by the U.S. Constitution, including on the subject of the acknowledgement of God (as in the Roy Moore 10 Commandments issue); and it also restricts federal courts from recognizing the laws of foreign countries and international law [e.g., against torture, global warming, unjust wars, etc. - ed.] as the supreme law of our land."

Re the last point, envision some doddering judges who still revere our Declaration of Independence's "decent respect to the opinions of mankind," and suppose they invoke in their rulings some international precepts from the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Covenant on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women or, God forbid, the Geneva Conventions. Well, under the CRA that would all be clearly illegal and, thank God, that's the last we'd ever hear from them.

2. The political implications of replacing "we the people" with a Christian deity as the "sovereign source" of all our laws.

Imagine hyper-zealous officers or "entities" of the Federal, State, or local government (like a governor, legislature or school board) that mandate Christian prayers, rituals and/or statuary in public buildings under their control. Were this to happen, some local Jews, Muslims and/or Buddhists might be moved to hire a lawyer and legally object. But if the CRA passes, their objection would be beyond any court's jurisdiction and that's the last we'd ever hear of that. It in fact demands "impeachment, conviction, and removal of judges" who dare to even hear a case that challenges its "Last Days" morphing of Christian church and state. (Just how our new Sovereign Source of Government's advocacy of public executions for adultery, gay-ness, contraception and blasphemy will fit into our current corrections system still remains to be seen.)

3 The incessant mainstream media blackout on the bill's existence and import.

The potential impact of the Constitution Restoration Act on American life, law and politics is so radical and vast that you would expect a boiling national debate. Yet just as with the crimes and questions of 9/11, everyone in the media seems terrifically busy looking the other way. If you want yet another dramatic metric of US journalistic dysfunction, try Googling "Constitution Restoration Act" in their News category and see what you get. Today, three weeks after the bill was filed, I find a grand total of three throwaway mentions in Alabama's Shelby County Reporter, the Decatur Daily, and the Massachusetts Daily Collegian. ("Terry Schiavo" in contrast will net you over a thousand news hits, and "Michael Jackson" just passed 36,000 with a bullet.)

If the Alabama paper interest seems a little odd or sponsor Shelby's name a bit familiar, you should recall that this old boy AL senator was high among those same wonderful folks who kicked off the 9/11 cover-up. As his Senate bio proudly relates:

"From 1995 to 2003, Senator Shelby served on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In this capacity, he and the other committee members provided oversight of the intelligence community, and following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, Senator Shelby served diligently to investigate the intelligence failures that led to those attacks." [Emphasis demanded again.]

Got that? First he "oversees" intelligence for six years before 9/11, then "diligently investigates" its bizarre "failures" for two years more, and finally finds--in a no-fault judgment--it was all due to "deep institutional defects" and "systemic miscommunication" that he'd apparently never noticed or heard about before. Having so brilliantly defended the country before 9/11 and the official story since, some seem to find it comforting that he's now busy defending our court-harassed Constitution with a legally bulletproofed God. Some, alas, do not -- feel comforted, that is, either by Shelby's blurry oversight or fundamentalist agenda, not to mention the Orwellian performance of our autistic corporate press.

In the meantime, however, before the CRA takes force and reduces legal education to a Bible study course, what say we undertake a little Constitutional defense of our own? To get up to speed on the current Christian right agenda, Moyers' "Welcome to Doomsday", Katherine Yurica's "The Despoiling of America" and John "The 9/11 Truth Candidate" Buchanan's "Fixing America" are excellent places to start.

None of these analyses offer a silver bullet or paint a pretty picture, but as students of 9/11 now know, spreading the courage to face the truth is really the only hope we've got.

W. David Kubiak is a Project Censored award-winning journalist and executive director of 911truth.org. He can be reached at david(at)911truth.org. (He is indebted to John Buchanan for the latest heads-up on this story and the Shelby office call.)
Z-Mag.org

[Nbadan]

Is Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn actually inciting violence against Judges in this recent speech as The Nashua Advocate (http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/04/nashua-advocate-calls-for-sen-john.html) insists?


I]t causes a lot of people, including me, great distress to see judges use the authority that they have been given to make raw political or ideological decisions. And no one, including those judges, including the judges on the United States Supreme Court, should be surprised if one of us stands up and objects.

And, Mr. President, I'm going to make clear that I object to some of the decision-making process that is occurring at the United States Supreme Court today and now. I believe that insofar as the Supreme Court has taken on this role as a policy-maker rather than an enforcer of political decisions made by elected representatives of the people, it has led to the increasing divisiveness and bitterness of our confirmation fights. That is a very current problem that this body faces today. It has generated a lack of respect for judges generally. I mean, why should people respect a judge for making a policy decision borne out of an ideological conviction any more than they would respect or deny themselves the opportunity to disagree if that decision were made by an elected representative?

Of course the difference is that they can throw the rascal out--and we are sometimes perceived as the rascal--if they don't like the decisions that we make. But they can't vote against a judge because judges aren't elected. They serve for a lifetime on the federal bench. And, indeed, I believe this increasing politicalization of the judicial decision-making process at the highest levels of our judiciary have bred a lack of respect for some of the people that wear the robe. And that is a national tragedy.

And 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, but we seem to have run through a spate of courthouse violence recently that's been on the news. And I wonder whether there may be some connection between the perception in some quarters on some occasions where judges are making political decisions yet are unaccountable to the public, that it builds up and builds up and builds up to the point where some people engage in violence. Certainly without any justification but a concern that I have that I wanted to share.

[2centsworth]

Is Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn actually inciting violence against Judges in this recent speech as The Nashua Advocate (http://nashuaadvocate.blogspot.com/2005/04/nashua-advocate-calls-for-sen-john.html) insists?

Do you not want any type of dialogue. Trying to give you some respect but you continue to post other people's opinions. Next time you don't answer me directly man I'm going to ignore you like most others do.

[Al Sharpton]

I don't agree with the way the judges handled the whole situation, But if they are going by the laws we have set today? I must admit they did what was expected from them. On the other hand? If there is a time to bend the law a bit it was this case, Not many times do you have the president of the United States asking for a favor and he gets turned down, Funny this whole ordeal reminds me of the movie Crimson tide. both commanders of the nuclear sub were right and wrong, with there actions on that day,

I found out the hard way there are only two ways to go through life, Change the law if you don't like the law. Or move to Canada. I stop asking Kori and other webmasters how to run their websites, I just don't post as much, it seems to work.

[Ocotillo]

Cornyn's remarks are inappropriate and open to interpretation of condoning violence. How the heck does Brian Nichols give a rats rear about judicial activism?

[2centsworth]

Cornyn's remarks are inappropriate and open to interpretation of condoning violence. How the heck does Brian Nichols give a rats rear about judicial activism?
Did you forget to read the last sentence where Cornyn states that violence is "Certainly without any justification but a concern that I have that I wanted to share".


Your quote is classic taking someone's statements out of context.

[Newman]

Isn't John Cornyn doing the same thing that got Ward Churchill in trouble?

[Ocotillo]

His remarks are what I said, inappropriate and open to interpretation of condoning violence. He needs to make a public apology.

[Nbadan]

unfortunately Dan, the democrats are a joke of a party. Too bad to because this country needs a decent 2nd party.

The Democrats appear too be only a joke because members of the DLC have sold out to the Bush Administration policies, especially the idea of pre-emptive war. To the winners go the spoils in any war, but the dirty little secret that wasn't mentioned in the movie F/911 is that there were many Clintonistas who also profited handsomely from the shady dealings of the Carlyle Group.

[2centsworth]

Isn't John Cornyn doing the same thing that got Ward Churchill in trouble?
yeah, comparable to justifying the killing of 2500 people and then calling them Little Eichmans. GMAFB.

[2centsworth]

The Democrats appear too be only a joke because members of the DLC have sold out to the Bush Administration policies, especially the idea of pre-emptive war. To the winners go the spoils in any war, but the dirty little secret that wasn't mentioned in the movie F/911 is that there were many Clintonistas who also profited handsomely from the shady dealings of the Carlyle Group.
See we agree more than you think. Majority of Dems and Reps are really only interested in power and not what's right. We're going to disagree on the war, but we should be hard on both parties and not blindly support one. BTW, I do respect your researching abilities.