Posted on 03/12/2006 6:49:12 PM PST by blam
Former top judge says US risks edging near to dictatorship
· Sandra Day O'Connor warns of rightwing attacks
· Lawyers 'must speak up' to protect judiciary
Julian Borger in Washington
Monday March 13, 2006
The Guardian (UK)
Sandra Day O'Connor, a Republican-appointed judge who retired last month after 24 years on the supreme court, has said the US is in danger of edging towards dictatorship if the party's rightwingers continue to attack the judiciary.
In a strongly worded speech at Georgetown University, reported by National Public Radio and the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin, Ms O'Connor took aim at Republican leaders whose repeated denunciations of the courts for alleged liberal bias could, she said, be contributing to a climate of violence against judges.
Ms O'Connor, nominated by Ronald Reagan as the first woman supreme court justice, declared: "We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary."
She pointed to autocracies in the developing world and former Communist countries as lessons on where interference with the judiciary might lead. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."
In her address to an audience of corporate lawyers on Thursday, Ms O'Connor singled out a warning to the judiciary issued last year by Tom DeLay, the former Republican leader in the House of Representatives, over a court ruling in a controversial "right to die" case.
After the decision last March that ordered a brain-dead woman in Florida, Terri Schiavo, removed from life support, Mr DeLay said: "The time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behaviour."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Thank God she is gone from the United States Supreme Court. She was a disaster.
The really sad thing is that when most people these days talk about the Constitution and their rights (especially lawyers), they are referring to the legal Don Quixote fabricated by the leftists on the SCOTUS the past 50 years, not the real Constitution.
The real Constitution protects political speech absolutely (including campaign contributions) but extends no protection to abortion or sodomy. They have stood the real principles on their head, infantilizing the political meaning of the document and giving a great example of how to institutionalize despotism and get away with it.
Thank God O'Connor is gone. But it looks like she has learned a lot of lessons from the Dems: like shooting off her mouth when she should stay quiet, and thinking that she is the fountain of all wisdom.
Her lasting imprint on the court will be her recent opinion where she favored affirmative action. She believed it would be necessary (Constitutional) for another 25 years. How something can stop being Constitutional in 25 years is reasonable only in the minds of those who believe the Consittution has no enduring meaning.
I'd have to hear her remarks or read them in context before I'd belive the Guardian's reporting of her speech.
I'll pay her recreational drug bill if she can show me where the Constitution gives the right to kill an innocent person to anyone. I'm not a big Pro Terri guy - but the killers in this case were just too darned weird.
I suppose the right may belong to the States.
Funny how a time of reconning is exactly how the Christian Right would phrase the same outcome.
She is crackers.
agree that!
sounds like she was a socialist sleeper masquerading as a moderate to get appointed
She's one who liked to rule, not by our the U. S. Constitution - but by fr*ging European Law!!??
She helped the SCOTUS become a dictatorship - take just one example - the dictatorial, unconstitutional eminent domain ruling
LOL
I gotta remember that one!
I know! It had me ROTFLOL!
Riiggghhht. Those poor ol' federal judges, those poor ol' guys.
The 800 odd judges who run this country like an oligarchy.
The ones who can "carry" anywhere they want to, unlike the peasants who would be disarmed if the majority of federal judges got their way.
The ones who get this headline in the Lame Stream Media:
"A federal judge today ruled..." - as if a federal judge's opinion was Handed Down From The Mount.
Yeah, they're REALLY disadvantaged.
O'Commie went over to the Dark Side.
Yes, folks, she said these things. Several other news outlet have reported it. http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1593959/posts
Hi Sandy AKA Sandra D.O'. I thought you retired to have more time for your family. What happened?
You beat me to it. Great minds........:>)
So much for her type democracy....So if the right is the majority rule through the election process. I guess she thinks she's the saviour of the democracy. Give me a break.
For those who think Reagan could do bo wrong and Bush can do no right please remember who put her on the Supreme Court
"We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary."
We must be ever-vigilant against the judiciary that would strong-arm the liberty of a free people.
That makes her asking Americans to refrain their use of the 1st amendment even more horrifying.
"edju4647@att.net"
Amen! The old bag is maybe out of our harm's way! She should retire to a nice estate in North Korea. Their politics would be agreeable to her.
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