Moving the State legislature to enact new legislation because the Judges are mimicking the "Hear no Evil, See no Evil, Speak no Evil" monkeys is the wrong course of action.
Better yet to inform the Judges that their decision is nonsensical, and the best way to accomplish this is impeachment hearings.
No new laws, just better Judges.
I do agree with Moore that since Alabama’s law stipulates that candidates be qualified there is an undeniably implied expectation that the Sec State would naturally carry out some level of evaluation to determine whether submitted candidates are, in fact, qualified.
I’m obviously not much of a pragmatist given the fact that I still care about this issue at all, but I do think sometimes it’s worth exploring the possibility that there may be a path of lesser resistance readily available. Given the written response of the state supreme justices, to me it’s somewhat plausible to think that the legislature could be pushed to draft a bill that explicitly outlines procedures and allocates powers for investigation of candidate qualifications.
If that could be accomplished, it makes me wonder whether the initiative couldn’t be pushed further to include a rider or addendum or follow-up that would ensure the same investigative powers be leveraged to determine whether Alabama was already the victim of an unqualified candidacy in 2012.
I admit that, for reasons that I still don’t understand, even most so-called conservatives are unwilling to touch Obama’s eligibility with a 10 foot pole. So, I realize that my proposed “go back and investigate Obama 2012” rider part stretches plausibility much more than the first part of this. However, I am persuaded that it’s more likely to be considered than a wholesale impeachment of 7 judges. As far as that goes, I’m not sure a bad decision rendered by justices is sufficient to justify impeachment particularly in a case where a person could argue there are some reasonable doubts about timeliness and where the full voice of the existing laws on vetting candidates amounts to a couple of brief arguably subtle phrases.
It may be that I’m still just too naive, but I’m not yet convinced this is a conspiracy whose fingers reach as far as corrupting 7 of the Alabama supremes. But even if they are corrupt — or if they are just typically timid and less than brilliant — I’m not sure impeaching them offers any hope that they would be replaced by a new set that isn’t prone to turn out the same as those they replace.