Posted on 06/27/2002 5:56:26 AM PDT by GeneD
Okay, so the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has declared the use of the words "under God" by public schoolchildren when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance to be an affront to the Constitution. Big deal. The Ninth Circuit says a lot of things, few of which, thank God (!), are taken seriously outside their own chambers. This court has demonstrated time and again that its view of the Constitution is at odds with that of most of America and indeed with that of the Supreme Court. Wednesday's decision, in Newdow v. U.S. Congress, et al, was of course greeted by howls of torment from across the political spectrum, prompting even Tom Daschle to label the ruling as "plain nuts." Even the hard-lefties know not to back this horse when there are votes at stake. We will soon be bombarded by images of politicians of every stripe, many of whom would have been hard-pressed to recall the words to the Pledge of Allegiance until today, tenderly reciting it at the merest opportunity. C-SPAN will probably broadcast a pledge-a-thon from the steps of the Capitol, with those congressmen and senators up for reelection trying to elbow their way to the front.
I will leave it to others more steeped in the law to expose the folly of the court's decision. I'm sure that as I write this someone is pounding away at his keyboard and will soon produce a jeremiad of such passion and unassailable legal thinking that it will humble the responsible justices should they ever deign to read it. Wait, I take it back. These judges cannot be humbled, such is the level of their arrogance. When the case is eventually overturned by the Supreme Court, as Ninth Circuit cases frequently are, the architects of this decision will no doubt sulk in their chambers in San Francisco (where else?) and console each other by reminding themselves how much brighter and more enlightened they are than their putative superiors in Washington. "That Scalia thinks he's so damn smart . . ."
In my own perverse way I welcome this decision. But before you send the angry e-mail accusing me of embracing paganism, read on. In ruling as it did this three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit has brought national focus to the burden borne by those of us who work in law enforcement in the nine western states over which the court has jurisdiction. This is only the latest in a series of decisions that illustrate the peculiar brand of jurisprudence issuing from this most peculiar of circuit courts.
I offer as an example United States v. Knights, a Ninth Circuit case that denied police officers a valuable tool in their efforts against crime and villainy. In 1996, the Napa County Sheriff's Department suspected Mark Knights and Steven Simoneau of committing numerous acts of vandalism against facilities owned by the Pacific Gas and Electric Company. The damage caused by this vandalism ran into the millions of dollars. After identifying Knights as a suspect, sheriff's deputies learned that he was on probation for a drug offense, and that one condition of his probation was that he "[s]ubmit his . . . person, property, place of residence, vehicle, personal effects, to search at anytime, with or without a search warrant, warrant of arrest or reasonable cause by any probation officer or law enforcement officer." This is a routine condition placed on probationers in California, and one that I have relied on frequently in making the streets safe for a flourishing democracy.
Deputies conducted a warrantless search of Knights's home and discovered evidence linking him and Simoneau to the vandalism. The defendants were indicted in federal court but the district-court judge excluded the evidence, ruling that the search had been for "investigatory" rather than "probationary" purposes and was therefore violative of the Fourth Amendment. A three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit concurred. (Two of those judges, Stephen Reinhardt and Ferdinand Fernandez, also heard the Newdow case. Reinhardt is married to Ramona Ripston, president of the Los Angeles chapter of the ACLU.) The opinion is notable for the self-congratulatory floridness of its prose. A telling passage: "In making this decision we need not rely on some resident numen or wait for Fulgora to light our way. We can, instead, rely upon the wisdom of the ages and upon the sagacity of the numerous Ninth Circuit judges who have written before us. If we do not heed all of that history and learning, who will?"
Who, indeed? Questioning the Ninth Circuit's sagacity, past and present, Chief Justice Rehnquist wrote for a unanimous Supreme Court in reversing the decision. Not even Ruth Bader Ginsberg could bring herself to endorse the lower court's foolishness. Rehnquist's opinion is peppered with little barbs such as this: "In Knights's view, apparently shared by the Court of Appeals . . ." In the genteel, oak-paneled world of the higher courts this is tantamount to asking, "How did these pinheads ever pass the bar in the first place?"
Anyone with several hours on his hands can search the Internet for other examples of how the Ninth Circuit has thrown wrench after wrench into the cogs of law enforcement only to have them removed months or years later by the Supreme Court. Newdow is only the latest and most stark example of a much larger problem: There is a small but powerful coterie of judges serving in our nation's courts who are disdainful of the values most Americans hold dear, and who will shamelessly subvert legislative intent and clear legal precedent to serve their ends.
In the coming days defenders of the Newdow decision will of course be all over the op-ed pages and cable talk shows referring to "the tyranny of the majority." All well and good, but is the tyranny of the minority any better?
— Jack Dunphy is an officer in the Los Angeles Police Department. "Jack Dunphy" is the author's nom de cyber. The opinions expressed are his own and almost certainly do not reflect those of the LAPD management.
IMPEACH THE RASCALS! ROUTE THE VIPERS OUT!
(With the old screw-in type, you could put a penny under the blown fuse and screw it back in...and it would work in letting the electricity flow, but your whole house could burn down before it would "blow" and cut off the current.)
Yep, and they often end up changing careers, don't they? ;-)
Say, just cut it down to:
"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798 Address
IMPEACH THE RASCALS! ROUTE THE VIPERS OUT!
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