Posted on 10/27/2006 6:20:52 AM PDT by seasoned traditionalist
From April 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, Americans fought and died to end that rule of kings – only to have their meek and timid heirs submit to a rule of judges.
A tiny minority of judges in America now dictates to the Great Silent Majority.
Of all these outrages and idiocies, one thing may be said: No legislature, no executive at the state or federal level would have survived imposing such measures upon us.
For 50 years, this nation permitted the Warren Court, and its successors and imitators in the state courts, to create a body of judge-made law that has altered the character of our country, very much for the worse.
(Excerpt) Read more at worldnetdaily.com ...
Yes, I realize that with an article by Buchanan and it coming from World Net Daily (which many here ascribe as being one step below the NY Slime) give this 2 strikes against it.
However, I encourage ALL to put aside their prejudices as even a clock "is right twice a day," and this instance, Pat nails it.
Moreover this is a subject near and dear to all (I think; I hope?) of our hearts: Judicial Activism!!
Finally, IF, there remains any Cut And Run Conservatives here, who may need just a little push in the right direction to reconsider their decision to stay home on Nov. 7th (which HAD been my intent up until a few weeks ago, when I realized that the future of our Judicial nominations and confirmations was at risk, which is as important as the WOT) this article may just be the catalyst and reminder of just what's at stake with the possible change in the control of Congress.
Pat is 100% right on here! The judiciary must be reined in, or we may as well just do away with the other branches of government.
If I were the NJ legislature I'd give the court 180 days to change its mind. I think we need to develop a new system where court decisions that create or require new law should have to be ratified by the legislature. If the ruling is not ratified it is sent back to the courts and the courts have the option of sending the ruling to the people for a referendum. Also legislatures should be able to delay the implementation of such ruling for up to a year to give them adequate time to craft amendments to the constitution as a response to a ruling. Also a ruling would be forbidden from going into effect once an amendment has been crafted and ratified by the legislature until the time it can be voted on by the people. We need a basic structural change to make sure that the will of the people is preserved.
This, I think provides a good balance for a government by the people for the people while preserving the role of the courts. Trying to get a judge removed for a bad ruling is almost impossible. We need a requirement such as this so that judges do not have the advantage in these matters.
Now maybe Pat go go on his liberal PBS talk show the McGAG group and stop doom and glooming the GOP.
If Pat wants non activist liberal judges the GOP needs to hold congress.
Pat get off your Quisling byline and pump up the GOP.
See, common sense always prevails over intellectual sophistry.
Excellent proposition, friend.
Now, if we could only fashion some sort of mechanism to put this into place Nationwide (both at the State and Fed Level) it would certainly go a long way to reign in the runaway judiciary.
Sadly, I don't see any possibility of this ever coming to fruition.
Yep..."stopped clock ping".
Horse manure.
Sturmbahnfuhrer Pat is at it again. God bless John Marshall, the Federalist Chief Justice of the US from 1801-1836, who established that judges could NOT be impeached for political or ideological reasons when he thwarted Jefferson's attempt to impeach staunch Federalist judge Samuel Chase. Citing the Constitution's Article III stipulation that judges are to sit on the bench as long as they meet the requirements of having served "during good behaviour", Marshall won a battle that is ensuring that the Reagan/Bush judges will have a long-term impact on our courts.
Marshall knew that once judges could be impeached for ideology or "judicial temperment" that every change in administration would be followed by a "purging" of prior judicial appointees.
Think if Clinton had spent 8 years "purging" the courts of conservative judges. It was bad enough he did that to the US attorneys...
Let's just keep winning elections and let the Grim Reaper take care of the rest...
Blind pig > acorn.
Makes two things in the recent past. Maybe he's going back to doing what he's good at?
"Arm yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our nation and our altar. As the Will of God is in Heaven, even so let it be."
This call and spur to the faithful servants of Truth and Justice was quoted by Churchill in his first broadcast as Prime Minister to the British people on the BBC - May 19, 1940, London. The original quote is found in First Maccabees of the Apocrypha.
The McGag Group - I like it!
Anything featuring Eleanor Clift should be described so!
old John McGags predictions are worse than Dick Morris and Sabato/Zogby combined.
He predicted a DEM Senate in 2004 and a F Busby and Hackett win in those Special elections.
It might have taken Clinton 8 yeas to "purge" LIBERAL/ACTIVIST Judges, but only about 8 "weeks" to purge "Conservative" Judges, so few are they!!
Awww, Pat's tune isn't merry enough for you.
If Pat wants non activist liberal judges the GOP needs to hold congress.
Arlen Specter is GOP, but he warned Bush not to nominate a pro-life candidate. Holding your nose and voting Republican will NOT affect change. I daresay that voting for the wrong Republicans will do more harm than good.
The nation appears to be in high dudgeon as to what do about the issue of gay marriage. Other generations have had to deal with Civil War and World War, economic depression, Manifest Destiny, and Cold War. The interesting times of our generation appear to be a rapidly escalating culture war. The courts are an important adjunct for the cultural left in their prosecution of this battle. A judiciary that is compliant with their notion of a living constitution that subordinates a strict constructionist interpretation of it to a malleable legalistic realignment of law that is amenable to radical cultural and societal change without the benefit of an electoral mandate. That court could be described as one that is imperial and unaccountable.
How should this newly emerging institution be countered? Impeachment, nullification, interposition, and the use of Article III, Sec. 2 of the Constitution all need to be considered.
The marriage amendment should not be necessary. These actions by the Massachusetts judiciary are lawless and unconstitutional. We simply cannot amend the constitution every time the left decides to disregard it. We need to hold these officials accountable through impeachment, recall, nullification, interposition and arrest where necessary. It would seem that the publicly elected officials with the responsibility to employ the correctives presently available either lack the will to do so or are paralyzed by an improper interpretation of Marbury vs. Madison.
When oh when will some elected executive officer in some state or federal capacity, in fulfilling his constitutional duty to honestly interpret the constitution (federal or state) just disregard the unconstitutional rulings of any court and dare the legislature to impeach him for it? When will some legislature impeach just ONE judge for an unconstitutional ruling? I am nonplussed by the actions of the Supreme Court of Alabama and their warp speed removal of Chief Justice Ray Moore for fulfilling the requirement of the Alabama constitution for an acknowledgement of God until I juxtaposed it against the down the rabbit hole world of judicial reasoning today. Should you adhere to the original intent of the Founder’s vision for the judiciary, than you become a candidate for unethical maneuverings by a Senate judiciary committee to block your nomination. Should you exceed the bounds of your authority by levying a tax on a school district in Missouri to build a white elephant of a public school, or assume the role of supernumerary legislature and order the passage of a law in defiance of your state constitution allowing that which the electorate has rejected, or discover heretofore unknown rights to privacy lurking in penumbraed emanations, or negate the police powers of the states vis a vis consensual sodomy, or (insert your choice of recent judicial outrage) than you can be hailed by liberal news OP-Ed writers as a “far sighted jurist who is unafraid to re-interpret the constitution for a new reality of the 21st century.”
To say that the courts have the final word on the constitutionality of a law NO MATTER WHAT THEY RULE is to say that the system of checks and balances expounded upon by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist paper # 81 does not exist any more.
Alan Keyes gave the best summation of this issue that I've heard yet. He said that every branch of government has a duty to honestly interpret the constitution. If the president honestly feels the courts make an unconstitutional and lawless ruling, then the president should disregard that ruling and refuse to enforce the provisions that he felt were blatantly unconstitutional. If the Congress felt the president or the judiciary was egregiously wrong in their decision, then it was their duty to impeach him for it. If the electorate felt that the Congress was wrong for impeaching the president or the failure to impeach him or members of the judiciary, they can remove them at the next election, as well as the president for any presidential actions that they considered wrongful.
Lest anyone consider this formula has a recipe for chaos, then I submit to you there is no chaos worse than an unchecked oligarchic Judiciary. We are not living under the rule of law when judges make law up to suit their whims has they engage in objective based adjudication.
In addition, Artilce 3 of the New Jersey Constitution is pretty clear on separation of powers. IMHO, the court clearly overstepped it's bounds on this issue.
How in the world did Specter stop Roberts and Alito from being confirmed?
Just today in Montana the MT supreme court voided 3 ballot initiatives. No matter how you voted on them, their HOLINESSES said they are null and void : no votes counted on them. Now if that isn't judicial tyranny....
He didn't (though how conservative Roberts is remains to be seen). That's not the point. There are Republicans who oppose the appointment of conservative nominees (and he did, regardless of the turnout) and so simply holding your nose and voting Republican will not guarantee, or even necessarily aid, the cause of getting conservative judges.
So do you believe that a Democratically controlled Senate is the way to confirming constitutionalist judicial nominees?
It isn't a matter of conservative vs. liberal, Senor. It is about constitutionalist vs. activist. Let me assure you that John Roberts is a constitutionalist, a strict constructionist and will always apply the law rather than using a secret decoder ring. That means that you might not always like the outcome, but frankly, conservatism is most likely to be found in the strictest interpretation of the Constitution. Drives libs up a tree, but it is true.
Can't think of a conservative in Congress who has opposed the appointment of a conservative nominee based upon an ideological litmus test, actually. Conservatives opposed Harriet Miers because her questionnaire and murder boards demonstrated she might not have all of the qualifications needed to sit on the highest Court in the land. The process worked.
And Senator Sam Brownback has put a hold on Judge Neff because she has demonstrated activist tendencies.
Other than that, it is the extreme leftists who deployed the filibuster for the first time against a number of fair, qualified judicial nominees.
At any rate, Senor, there is NO doubt that I am not 100% pleased with the way nominations have come to a grinding halt, or the fact that some activists have snuck into the process. But handing the keys to the kingdom over to the Dems isn't exactly the answer either.
If there is another SCOTUS nomination next year, you might be wishing for a Roberts and a Alito if the Democrats' hopes for a GOP decimation come true.
Winning elections is a guarantee of nothing. There is no way of knowing how a judge will 'evolve' once secure in a lifetime appointment.
But impeaching bad judges is only part of the solution put for by Buchanan here. Even if we reject the call to impeach judges for their unconstitutional decisions, what do you say about his other remedy of simply defying their outrageous decisions?
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