Posted on 12/29/2003 6:45:21 PM PST by WrightOnTarget
The nominees were many, but the real choices were few. Every year, there are plenty of potentials, usually coming down to some politician caught in a compromising position with the public trough, and well over half of Hollywood.
To win the award, the bar is set high, but, fortunately, the three-member panel of California's Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals spent the better part of the year strengthening their legs for the "Idiot of the Year" high jump.
The Ninth Appellate is a collection of left-wing bacteria swabbed from the throat of Beatnik and '60's hippie ideology, placed in a culture dish, and allowed to grow to an enormous size – at least until a higher court comes along with penicillin. It's as if Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky had love children after a torrid affair on the Isle of Numbskull, and sent them off to law school.
You may remember the Ninth Circuit as the one that ruled that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional when recited in public-school classrooms, because it contains the phrase "under God." The ruling applied to nine Western states – 10 if you counted "shock."
Then, they delayed the voting in California's recall election. That ruling was, like many of their other decisions, superseded by people who weren't brain damaged by constant over-the-head beatings with a hardcover coffee-table edition of Karl Marx's "Das Kapital."
Frequently turned away by higher courts, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals often ends up as the judicial equivalent of the wandering "bra-clasp come hither" hand of an overzealous teenage boy with his date on prom night – slapped away in abject failure and embarrassment.
The Court was back at it again late this year, ruling 2-1 that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba should have access to the American court system and lawyers. In a way, I agree. Terrorist suspects should have ready access to the American court system – by moving them all into the homes of some of these judges.
To the Ninth Circuit, the Guantanamo detainees deserve the best defense your money can buy. You, on the other hand, will only be able to afford representation from your Uncle Earl, who once had half a semester of business law at Paducah Junior College.
It's a good thing these judges weren't around in the '40s, or else the Nuremberg trials would have ground to a screeching halt with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals running things. Once they were told that the steps leading to the courthouse weren't properly swept, which made Hermann Goering take a tumble and impale himself on the "good luck swastika" he kept in his shirt pocket, he would have been released and awarded $4 million for pain and suffering.
This would have encouraged the likes of Speer, Hess, von Ribbentrop, Keitel, et al, to follow in the goosesteps of Goering. Knowing the mindset of the judges, they could have easily played on their sympathy by claiming the allies intentionally inflicted shell-shock, or pointed out that their captors served them only milk to drink, even though it was made known they were lactose intolerant. Their fear of heights, along with pre-existing conditions of vertigo, would have been frighteningly aggravated by continual threats of hanging, and lawsuits would be filed against "big tobacco," claiming many Nazi crimes to be entirely the fault of "nicotine rage."
Now, thanks to the Ninth Circuit ruling that detainees in the war on terrorism can have access to our courts and lawyers, citizens seeking justice in their own courts may have to wait in line behind non-citizens, who just weeks ago may have been trying to figure out new and exciting ways to give Americans a colonoscopy with a stick of dynamite.
For the time being, we'll sit back and wait for the first lawsuit to be brought by a suspected terrorist – perhaps a claim of sexual harassment against a soldier for inappropriate frisking, or an argument that the MOAB, Mother Of All Bombs, caused irreparable hearing loss.
Maybe a detainee will bring a lawsuit against Microsoft, claiming that Windows XP often crashed, interfering with planning sessions in terrorist chat rooms, costing them time and money. Fast-food restaurants and their piping-hot coffee, Boeing and Martha Stewart are also quite vulnerable to lawsuits.
Congratulations to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on being named 2003's "Idiot of the Year." If they win again next year, we'll rename it the "Jerry Baker's Garden Soil Award," solely to honor that which is frequently overturned and filled with vegetables.
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By Doug Powers
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