I recommend that tainted judges also be banned from being lobbyists, from entering Washington DC [to prevent underground lobbying], from educating college students, from entering college property [to prevent underground education], from accepting money from speeches, from book advances, from being involved in the writing of college text books [like Woodrow Wilson], and from even being a small claims court judge let alone any other kind of judge. They may be lawyers, but not in federal courts.
The Chief State Executive could write lists of federal and state court opinion that should be tainted.
[I add ‘state’ because voters in some states are frustrated with their own courts and might ask for some help in overcoming brazen judicial-activism even at the state level. Remember those notorious words in New Jersey? “The law is silent,” Lousy-berg’s illegal campaign against Doug Forrester. And court meddling of state budgets and prisons. Just an option for state legislators to ponder.]
‘Tainted’ would mean that the court opinion is arguably unconstitutional and is currently not a worthy ‘precedent’ in a court of law. The majority of legislators [in each state] have three options. They might support the entire list as ‘tainted’, agree to a partial list as ‘tainted’, or reject the list outright.
Each tainted opinion counts as a mark against the judge who either wrote the opinion or concurred with it.
But the judge can appeal to the state attorneys general if the tainted opinion had sited precedents that were not themselves tainted at the time of that opinion. If the state attorneys general agree, then they must make a speech with the video archived online.
The Chief State Executive may also decide in advance to pardon the judge for any particular ‘taint’ [since it is arguably due to a flawed precedent]. Then needless angst is avoided, and that taint would not ever count as a mark against the judge.
If a judge accumulates three marks, he or she is suspended without pay for three months and then personally tainted, impeached, and removed by default. The three months is an opportunity to have marks removed if possible and avert personal tainting.
So ultimately the marks will stack up against the ‘pioneers’ of unconstitutional interpretation.
There is the matter of federal court vacancies, especially early-on. Just imagine it. President Ebola could parade a thousand radicals that are all rejected by the Chief State Executive.
One solution would be to allow the House to nominate supreme Court justices competitively. Then the President's nominee could debate the House nominee until the CSE chooses one.
As for the Senate, that body has lost a lot of respect lately. So what role it might play, I don't suggest any at the moment. When there is national debate, critics could verbally punch so many holes in the senate that it looks like Swiss cheese when you think about the creepy nominees the Senate so eagerly approved in both the executive and the judicial branch.
I think there's a high probability that the Republicans in DC are going to let us down. And they are likely to be stubborn about doing little more than ‘dole out’ feeble gestures. That has been their pattern of behavior since 2011. So here is how we can gear up to “hold them by the nose and kick them in the pants”.
Imagine if five governors, four senators, thirty House members, hundreds of state legislators, and countless other mayors, state attorneys general, county sheriffs, etc. all united behind a single challenge to a battery of debates about state empowerment.
Such a challenge would be impossible to ignore. And why negotiate a watering down of these debates? Five debates, equal time, no-holds-barred, no moderator, each gets 10 three minute turns during each debate — what's unreasonable about that?
Once over a hundred conservative state legislators, governors [etc.] unite they should reach out to whatever sanity-loving congress members they find to first appeal to and then confront McConnell and Bone-head with this plan [which would require targeted suspension of congress's constitutional amendment rules — and that's the easy part compared to super-majority congressional support].
So long as they set the legislation in motion in the next two years we know they are serious. But we should plan that they will not.
When one of those two leaders snubs this this united conservative front they can build momentum by getting behind a single skilled debater who casts the gauntlet — the five-debate challenge. Then we have a public leader who people can rally behind.
The supporters should belittle the cowardly McConnell or Bone-head [or both] who is so scared of fair debates. Whether or not the challenge is accepted, this simple focus will continue to build momentum.
Other supported debate challenges could put spotlights on other key congressional leaders too until there's a congressional leadership overthrow that paves the way. Either that or the biggest primary fight in US history — or worse.
Rush, Hannity, and Beck would have tremendous combined clout. They can unite for leverage because if they ever agree that conservatives should abandon the Republican Party and form a ‘Ronald Reagan Party’ that would be strong enough support to topple the GOP. If even two of those ‘Big Three’ talk radio hosts simply agree to make a ‘new party’ threat, then the GOP might get cooperative.
The other option is more difficult, but it's overdue anyway. Regardless of whatever else is happening, state-level legislators need to get on the stick and reform their primary systems BEFORE the next primary if they really care about our nation. It's the primary process that can strengthen the GOP and thereby solve problems.
Here are the necessary reforms:
1. Perhaps along the lines of Louisiana to ensure that only majority support within the party wins. More importantly they should ban crossover votes. Democrats and Republicans should be required to stick to their own parties.
2. The ‘qualification’ standards [to be on the ballot] are a joke in some states. Here in the Virginia 2012 primary, our only choices were Romney, President Ebola, and Ron Paul. Remember all the other nominees? Their paperwork was nitpicked to oblivion. That kind of dirty politics MUST come to an end.
One last thing — states could also threaten the federal government with the ‘Utah Option’ [a ‘nuclear option’ that dissolves the entire federal government along with the judicial branch]. But the DNC would most certainly call their bluff. To democrats, this plan we have here is completely unacceptable. But still, it's an ‘unknown’ which certainly does increase state leverage.