Posted on 06/23/2016 3:42:45 PM PDT by Yashcheritsiy
"The Judicial Branch must be independent of other branches of government, but not independent of the nation itself. It is rightly responsible to the people for irregular and censurable decisions..." – Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Archibald Stuart, 1791
Unquestionably, one of the greatest dangers to the liberties of the American people – from among the great multitude of such threats we face today – is that of unaccountable, out-of-control federal judges. Not a week goes by that some federal judge, somewhere, takes it upon himself or herself to judicially (and therefore unconstitutionally) amend the Constitution through a judicial decision that runs completely contrary to the plain reading of that document. Federal judges are enabled to exercise this complete disregard for the rule of law and the Constitution because there is effectively no oversight placed upon them once they are on the federal bench. This state of affairs has resulted because of precedents which depend on spurious and ahistorical miscomprehensions of the principle of "judicial independence," which is taken to mean that judges have complete plenary power to act as they see fit on the bench, and to solely determine "what the Constitution means" (which is in complete opposition to the many, many, many times that various of our founders stated that all three branches had co-equal power to interpret and apply the Constitution).
However, the bad behavior of federal judges on the bench does not stop with "irregular and censurable decisions." Increasingly, we have seen that judges have taken to acting as despots within their courts, completely disregarding sound ethics and the rule of law such that they end up blatantly violating the constitutional rights of those who come before them, and present a danger to the principle of the rule of law itself.
For instance, take the case of Justice Murray Snow, a federal district court justice for the federal District of Arizona. Judge Snow is most famous for the fact that he is presiding over the trial of Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio, who has long drawn the ire of both the radical Left and their lackeys in the "conservative" Open Borders crowd, faced a lawsuit from the federal Department of Just-Us alleging "racial profiling" by the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office against Hispanics. As Arpaio himself noted in the hearings, since Hispanic illegal immigrants comprise the majority of those who commit both violent and drug crimes in the county, it would stand to reason that they would also be the ones his department would be mostly likely to investigate. However, for Judge Snow, simply logic and reason were ineligible for a hearing in his courtroom, and he issued an order restraining the MCSO from enforcing federal immigration laws, as well as censuring Arpaio and his Office for "racial profiling."
Essentially, what this amounted to was an order by the judge for the MCSO to stop doing its job of protecting public safety. Obviously, the Sheriff's Office wasn't going to endanger the lives and properties of Maricopa County's four million residents, so they continued to "profile" Hispanics by arresting people who committed crimes – of which Hispanics made up the majority. In May of this year, Judge Snow found Arpaio in contempt of court for refusing to stop doing his job of protecting the people of his county.
However, this isn't all there is to the story. See, one of the things that Arpaio's legal team did once it appeared that Judge Snow was beginning to launch his vendetta against Arpaio and his department was to hire private investigators to scrutinize witnesses who had informed Arpaio's legal team about comments made by Judge Snow to his wife, which were then relayed to the witnesses by Snow's wife. These investigators found out, among other things, that Judge Snow's wife had made public comments to several dinner companions to the effect that her husband hated Arpaio, and wanted to "do anything to get Arpaio out of office."
Well now. Upon receiving this information, Arpaio's legal team did the natural and logical thing, which was to file a request that Judge Snow recuse himself from the case, since it was pretty obvious that he could not rule impartially on the case. Judge Snow refused to recuse himself, which is a major ethical error. Indeed, according to Chapman University law professor Ronald Rotunda, who is an expert on judicial ethics, Snow's comments present an incurable conflict of interest.
However, the problems with Snow's judicial impartiality go beyond this. As part of the judicial proceedings surrounding this case, Snow's wife will eventually have to give testimony about the comments she made to the witnesses mentioned above. By refusing to recuse himself from the case, Snow will have to preside over the testimony given by his own wife, which is a major violation of the code of conduct under which federal judges are supposed to operate, but which Judge Snow appears set to breach if he continues to refuse to recuse himself from the matter. Snow had already demonstrated questionable legal judgment earlier this year when he stepped in and personally diverted an evidentiary hearing being held on April 23 and 24 to his own ends. The hearing was supposed to be about evidence relating to issues concerning the original racial profiling charges and the alleged continued enforcement of immigration laws. However, he stepped in to personally question Arpaio (which is unusual in such a proceeding) about the investigation his department made into the comments made by Snow's wife, as well as other topics not relevant to the case at hand, but which were interjected in such a way as to "poison the well" in the case. Hence, a federal judge seems to have been personally acting to both derail and to taint an evidentiary hearing in a case over which he was sitting as judge.
Our next judicial miscreant is Judge Gloria Navarro, who is a federal judge for the federal court district for Nevada. Judge Navarro is the jurist who is presiding over the federal government's prosecution of Cliven Bundy on charges relating to his defense of his herd and other property back in 2014. What earns Judge Navarro a spot on this list is her continued refusal to grant Bundy his constitutionally-guaranteed right to his choice of counsel. Navarro has twice refused to allow Bundy to add Larry Klayman to his defense team. Klayman is a well-known conservative attorney who has successfully defied the federal government in a number of cases. Citing a ginned up bar proceeding against Klayman in the District of Columbia which has no bearing on the Bundy case, Navarro has used this to prevent Bundy from benefiting from his choice of legal representation which the 6th amendment guarantees to him. Because Klayman has been a thorn in the side of the federal government, including having pursued a successful lawsuit against the federal government regarding its surveillance of our cell phone data by the NSA, it strongly appears that Judge Navarro is simply using her position to try and prevent Bundy from obtaining a lawyer who has very successfully fought the Feds and won. In the process, she is blatantly violating the Constitution and Bundy's 6th amendment and due process rights.
If it seems like Navarro has an inappropriate interest in this case which is causing her to unjustly deny Bundy the representation of his choice, that's because there's a good case to made for her doing just that. See, there's some back story to the Cliven Bundy case that is very relevant to this matter. It just so happens that the land on which the Bundy family were grazing their cattle was land which Harry Reid's son Rory wanted so he could sell it to Chinese investors who were interested in developing a solar power facility on it. Harry Reid sought to facilitate this land transfer by using his clout in Washington to swing the deal. Bundy's refusal to vacate the land led to the "Bundy Standoff" of 2014 and killed the solar farm deal. Now, Judge Navarro is pretty much a creature of Harry Reid's. She first obtained her nomination, and then confirmation, through his agency in Washington, and enjoyed her promotion to Chief Judge of the District of Nevada to his patronage as well. It's not surprising that she would owe a few favors to her patron in DC, favors such as hamstringing Cliven Bundy's legal defense.
Our third and final judge is Judge Gonzalo Curiel. Curiel was in the news recently when he became the target of criticism by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. Trump questioned the impartiality of Curiel, who has been presiding over the Trump University fraud case, intimating that because Curiel is of Mexican heritage, he would be less than fair towards Trump, whose campaign has made an issue out of illegal immigration, which large comes from Mexico and Central America.
While Trump took a lot of flak for his comments, there are a number of reasons to believe that Trump was in fact entirely correct in asserting that Curiel would not be able to preside impartially over his case. First, while the judges ethnicity (Hispanic) in and of itself may not present such a cause, there is the fact that Curiel belongs to a group called the La Raza Lawyers Association of California, which is affiliated with the national La Raza organization. La Raza – whose name means "the race" – is a racist and revanchist Mexican supremacist group. The founder of this group is on record as stating that California should be an "Hispanic state" and that whites should "go back to Europe" (one wonders if he even knows where the colonizers came from who made California and Mexico "Hispanic" to begin with...). La Raza is the group that you always see in the news waving Mexican flags and demanding to "Make America Mexico Again." Because of his associations with this group, Judge Curiel should not be on the bench. If it would be unacceptable for a judge to sit on the federal bench and be in a group associated with the Ku Klux Klan, then it is likewise unacceptable to have a judge associated with La Raza occupying such an office as well.
I can't imagine why Donald Trump would think that a judge who is a member of a Mexican supremacist organization which routinely lobbies for open borders and no enforcement of our immigration laws, and whose own parents may well have been illegal immigrants, could potentially be biased against a presidential candidate running on a platform of strict enforcement and ending illegal immigration. Can you?
Further, Curiel is a member of the National Hispanic Bar Association...which happens to also be affiliated with La Raza, and also happens to be the group bringing the lawsuit against Trump. The NHBA issued a press release in July of 2015 in which is stated that it would "target the business interests" of Donald Trump. So now one of their members is presiding over a case against a defendant which they have specifically said they are targeting. This is a huge conflict of interest. It may explain why Judge Curiel "accidentally" unsealed documents relating to the Trump University case (which he should not have done), a blatantly political move designed to try to embarrass Trump and his organization by allowing media access to classified court documents containing unsubstantiated accusations against the defendant. This move certainly crossed the line into the realm of unethical behavior on the part of the judge.
It would not necessarily be surprising to see unethical behavior from Judge Curiel, however. Back in 2014, Curiel served on the La Raza organizational board that awarded a scholarship to an illegal alien, which is aiding and abetting someone who has violated federal law. In the very least, this also is a violation of the federal judicial code of conduct, as well as making the judge an accomplice to actual bona fide law-breaking. This, coupled with his obvious conflicts of interest, make Curiel extremely unfit to hold office as a federal judge, and certainly disqualifies him from presiding over the Trump University case.
Judges such as these three present a clear and present danger to the rule of law and the dignity of the judiciary in this nation. The sort of biased, partial, and unprofessional behavior demonstrated by these three jurists (and others like them) has helped to denigrate the judicial system in the eyes of the American people, bringing it into contempt and derision. This creates a widespread mistrust of the courts in general, and the federal court system in particular, and it can fairly be said that this trust level continues to drop every year. The sort of political monkey-business done by these judges does great damage to the rule of law and to the administration of genuine justice in this country.
The Left hates Thomas Jefferson, and has no interest in following his ideas. They think his ideas are crap, his vision born of racism and religious bigotry, his words the words of a dead white male racist.
The court system is nothing but a super-legislature for them. Useful as long as it can be used to leverage their power. At the first opportunity, they'll throw the judicial system right in the toilet.
Like they've done in Venezuela ?
If they hate Jefferson, I’m guessing they don’t like John Adams ether.
This kind of research will come in handy, soon.
For those who think this is limited to trial judges, you're in for a shock. 2/3 of Federal Appellate Courts have institutionalized due process violations, and the SCOTUS has refused to address the problem since 1976
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