Impeach THE Six Supreme Court Justices

National Lawyers Guild ^ | Sometime in 2001 | Nathan Newman, NLG National Vice President

[bvw]

I thought I clarified that in my comment on the article posted.

Yes. The radical-left National Lawyers Guild's Newman wrote this piece. He did so to make the case for impeaching the five USSC Justices who ruled for Bush's election in Florida. I wanted to post something that raised the suggestion that impeachment be considered. When I saw that Rush Limbaugh on his Friday Show had suggested that the only remedy would be to add a Constitutional Amendment, I thought about it and said -- hey, no mere amendment can withstand review by this court.

So I googled up this essay, and the parts I posted seem right to the points I would like to have made had I spent a few months researching the mattter.

In 1997 and 1998 almost nobody thought impeaching Clinton was possible. However persistance and thousands of stout-hearted people won the day. Clinton WAS impeached.

That the vainglorious narcissitic pimps in the Senate held a travesty of a sham trial instead -- that is outside current remedy.

There are years, years, in which the process of Judicial Impeachment can go forward. I suspect, and fear, that the awful ramifications of this Texas sex case ruling will come fast and furious. And, as best I read it, the theory upon which this opinion is based is far-broader than just sex, even than just of privacy. The ruling is a Freddy Kruger of a ruling brought into daylight horrors.

[tdadams]

Who is the National Lawyers Guild, a division of the John Birch Society?

[bvw]

Some history from a book Trapped in the Temple of Karnak: An Unexpurgated History of the Supreme Court by D. J. Connolly:

OUR SUPREME JUDICIARY DEPARTMENT During our Constitutional Convention some of the delegates feared that the United States Congress they proposed to establish could potentially outgrow the authority constitutionally alloted to it, usurping powers rightfully belonging to the other two branches. So extended debates were had on the subject of using the veto power to provide a check on Congressional excesses. The debates ended with agreement to empower the President to veto any law passed by Congress, subject to subsequent override by two-thirds majority vote in both Houses.

Several delegates weren't satisfied with this, and urged the Convention to empower the judiciary, as well as the president, to veto acts of Congress; and two different motions to this effect were introduced and debated. James Wilson, of Pennsylvania, moved that the veto power be held by the president together with "a convenient number of the national Judiciary." He thought it important that judicial power, as well as executive power, act to check the excesses of legislators. "Laws may be unjust, may be unwise, may be dangerous, may be destructive; and yet not be so unconstitutional as to justify the Judges in refusing to give them effect," Mr Wilson said. After extended debate, the motion was rejected by a vote of 8-3

A bit later in the proceedings, James Madison, of Virginia, moved to insert, "all acts before they become laws should be submitted both to the Executive and Supreme Judiciary Departments, that if either of these should object 2/3 of each House, if both should object, 3/4 of each House, should be necessary to overrule the objections and give to the acts the force of law." This motion also went down by a vote of 8-3.

The record is clear and unambiguous; our founders decisively rejected the proposal that our "Supreme Judiciary Department" be allowed to veto laws it thought "unjust", "unwise," "dangerous," or "destructive." Our "Supreme Judiciary Department" has assumed that power anyway.

THE WEAKEST DEPARTMENT

Speakers at the Convention recognized that federal judges would refuse to enforce laws that were clearly unconstitutional. It was noted that some state judges had taken this position with respect to their own constitutions and their own state legislation, but only in cases where the constitutional violation was flagrant and clear. Under these conditions, the delegates seemed to approve of the practice, although their approval is not expressed in the Constitution.

The rationale for this practice was elegantly stated by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Number 78; he was writing to allay concern that an independent judiciary following this practice would enjoy "a superiority of the judiciary to the legislative power." Hamilton, who had played a prominent role at the Convention, assured his fellow citizens that this was not the case. He explained that the U. S. Constitution would flow directly from the supreme authority of the people. Legislative acts under it would flow from limited powers the people had delegated to their servants, the legislators. Judges, who are also their servants, would be duty bound to explicate and enforce the law as they find it. When they find "an irreconcilable variance between (the Constitution and the statute) . . . the Constitution ought to be preferred to the statute, the intention of the people to the intention of their agents." Hamilton went on to say;

Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power. It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both, and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to the will of the people, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former.

It goes without saying that, under our Constitution, judges have no legitimate power to substitute their personal assessment of the current "will of the people" for its earlier expression in the ratification of the various constitutional articles and amendments. That's what we have elections for. It also goes without saying that judges have no legitimate power to substitute their own policy preferences for "the will of the people." They are only our "agents," after all.

Earlier in Federalist 78, Hamilton had explained that the judiciary was the "least dangerous" branch of government, having neither "force nor will, but merely judgement," and was "beyond comparison the weakest of the three departments of power." That was the intention of the framers of the Constitution, and that was the intention of "We the People" when we allowed the Constitution to be ratified.

For a few years, that intention was actually complied with. In the early days of the Republic, the Supreme Court had to meet in a small room in the basement of the Capital. The first time it tried to flex its muscles and impose a doubtful precedent on "We the People," we slapped it down, overruling its decision in Chisholm v. Georgia by adopting the Eleventh Amendment.

It was hard to find prominent people willing to serve on the Court because the job lacked power and prestige. John Jay, President Washington's first choice for the position of Chief Justice, stalled for a while before accepting the appointment, because he hoped for something better. After accepting the job he resigned within a few years to become governor of New York. A New York newspaper characterized the move as a "promotion." It took Washington three tries to recruit a replacement.

However, our judicial branch did not long remain "the weakest of the three departments of power;" and its members soon began exercising "will" as well as "judgement." George Washington left office in 1797 to be replaced by our second president, John Adams. Both Washington and Adams were Federalists, as were early majorities in both houses of Congress. The Federalists turned out to be a little too dismissive of the democratic ideals Americans had fought for in the Revolution. Washington had kept their worst instincts in check and had retained the trust and deep affection of the people.

Under John Adams, however, the worst Federalist tendencies took center stage. They tried to run America more or less the same way the King and Parliament ran Great Britian. In the election of 1800, "We the People" denied John Adams a second term, electing Republican Thomas Jefferson to replace him; and we threw most of the Federalists out of Congress as well.

Adams and his friends in Congress used their last few months in office to pack the federal courts with Federalist politicians they hoped would expand judicial power to override "the will of the people." They appointed a new Chief Justice named John Marshall to take charge of the whole program. Marshall performed brilliantly; within two decades Thomas Jefferson was complaining that the "federal judiciary" was "an irresponsible body, . . . working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all (power) shall be usurped from the states".

A decade after that, Alexis de Tocqueville observed in Democracy in America that, " in no country are the judges so powerful as there" and "Federal judges decide upon their own authority almost all the questions most important to the country." It's never been clear where that "authority" came from; it certainly did not come from the Constitution.

[lilylangtree]

I'm ready. Impeach them, they deserve nothing less! They have a lifetime appointment with a huge salary to produce this type of garbage. Get rid of them!

[INSENSITIVE GUY]

They should be impeached after this flagrant disregard of what the majority want and the very principles of the TRUE CONSTITUTION.This ruling should not surprise anyone,just look at this joke of a legal system!

[bvw]

As I read it, the Lawrence decision has pretty much VOIDED moral turpitude. Certainly for "adult sonsenual sex", and over time as the damage expands to include just about every item that makes up moral turpitide.

1. NY Judge Removed For Moral Turpitude
   New York Lawyer
   February 14, 2003

   The Commission on Judicial Conduct has determined that Calvin M. Westcott, a town court judge in Hancock, Delaware County, should be removed for having sex with a mentally retarded woman entrusted to his care, the New York Law Journal reports.

   In November, Westcott was convicted of endangering the welfare of a mentally retarded person, a crime of moral turpitude, according to the commission.

   The state Constitution provides that upon conviction of a crime of moral turpitude, a judge shall be removed from office.

2. "Beware the 'no's of the campus sex triangle - harassment, conflict of interest, abuse of trust"
   Dr Martin is senior lecturer in the Department of Science and Technology Studies, University of Wollongong, Australia
   Campus Review, 11-17 March 1993, p. 8

   What about sex between staff and students where both sides agree to participate? As a result of a serious case involving a tutor, the sexual harassment committee at the University of Wollongong began looking into this issue in late 1991.

   We were concerned about two types of problems associated with "consensual" staff-student sex. The first is a conflict of interest, such as where a teacher has sex with one (or more) of his or her students. In this situation, the teacher cannot be, or be seen to be, an objective assessor of the student's academic work. A conflict of interest should be grounds for complaint by anyone affected, including colleagues and other students.

   The other type of problem is abuse of trust. An academic is under an implicit obligation to foster the intellectual development of students. The trust that a student puts in the academic for this purpose can be abused when the relationship becomes sexual. But it is difficult for others to say whether trust has been abused -- only the student should be able to make a complaint.

3. The Orr Case -- Excerpts from "Gross Moral Turpitude"
   

   In court Suzanne gave details of regular assignations at several different beaches, usually sandbanks (the professor carried a rug in his car) and once on a piece of Burnie-board at his partially completed house. In most cases they were unobserved, although 'two men and a dog' passed close by on one beach and at Bellerive beach Orr's car got stuck in a ditch and they had togo to a nearby house to get a tow. Once the university accountant saw her at the house site, even though she tried to hide. Some time after her nineteenth birthday they moved Indoors to the bedroom at his home. It was, after all, the middle of winter.

   When questioned about why she did not resist Orr, Suzanne said 'he did have some sort of power over me ... all through our association I held back and was talked into things by Professor Orr.' She had not intended the sexual relationship 'but I suppose I got into such a state that I thought it would be rather peculiar if I didn't or that it would be wrong or something like that.' She felt that Orr did have a powerful hold on her. She was very suggestible. Over two years of lectures she had come to identify totally with his ideas. '

4. SELECTION OF RESERVE OFFICERS
   IOWA STATE RESERVE LAW OFFICER'S ASSOCIATION

   As a matter of policy, the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy Council has used the definition set forth in IAC, Chapter 2.1(5) (hiring standards for regular enforcement officers) as the definition of moral turpitude. This rule states in part or crime involving moral turpitude. Moral turpitude is defined as an act of baseness, vileness, or depravity in the private and social duties which a person owes to another person, or to society in general, contrary to the accepted and customary rule of right and duty between person and person. It is conduct that is contrary in justice, honesty or good morals. The following nonexclusive list of acts has been held by the courts to involve moral turpitude: Income Tax Evasion, perjury, or its subornation, theft, indecent exposure, sex crimes, conspiracy to commit a crime, defrauding the government and illegal drug sales. Various factors, however, may cause an offense which is generally not regarded as constituting moral turpitude to be regarded as such. For example, a record of a number of convictions for simple assault would involve moral turpitude, whereas a single act would not.

[husky ed]

If only the Republicans controlled the House

And if only the Republicans controlled the Senate

And if only the Republicans controlled the White House

That's what everyone's been telling us since Clinton got elected. And now that the Republicans do control all three, nothing has changed.
Oh except that government has gotten bigger just like if the Dems were still in power.

[OldEagle]

Thank you for that information.

I'm also perplexed with their affirmative action on affirmative action.

[bvw]

Given that the HOUSE actually DID impeach the rat and cad Clinton, I will praise them in these matters. The SENATE -- however, are an amoral vainglorious bunch of selfish Curs, nearly to a man, compromised by foreign interests and/or other interests, but certainly NEVER the interest of the future, of America, of us, the citizens and owners of this Republic.

On George W. Bush, I am very fond of from observation, and thankful that he is the President at this terriible, terrible pass. I have seen that he is a moral and honest man. Not without differences, and mighty ones with his policies and presentations, but I do give him the benefit of the doubt because -- his integrity of action has earned it.

[bvw]

That is in essense what Madison advised to the Committee in Philadelphia that produced the Constitution.

[Princeliberty]

I was agreeing with the idea but just pointing out
to everyone that Bork's idea was not radical.

The Supreme Court's "Gang of Six" are tyrants.
If they are not stopped they will bring ruin
to our nation.
No foreign enemy threatens us as much as those
6 ego maniacs do.

[aristeides]

In the crisis of the 1930's, when the Supreme Court was blocking New Deal programs, the sort of legislative overrule of Supreme Court decisions that you are suggesting was considered. One could say, for example, that, where there is a 5-4 Supreme Court decision, a vote of 2/3 of both houses of Congress makes the minority opinion in the Supreme Court the law of the land, that, where there is a 6-3 decision, 3/4 of both houses is needed, that, where there is a 7-2 decision, 90% is needed. Something along those lines. It would require a constitutional amendment.

[I got the rope]

I agree...BTTT!

[I got the rope]

Government in effect will no longer recognize the family and marriage as the principle institution of man.

Great Post!!! I totally agree. Man's first government is the family. If the family is destroyed, then this Republic will follow. History has proven this to be true. SCOTUS has taken a pure Marxian stand. Impeachment is our only option now.

[DannyTN]

"It would be unconstitutional to impeach a justice for a wrong decision. It's the seperation of powers thingy. "

Well just why did you think the Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach Supreme Court Judges? If they grossly misinterpret the law wrong or usurp powers not given to them, they can and should be impreached.

[bvw]

First things first. First the confused or evil six have to be removed. Then and only then would an Amendment help.

Of course, nothing helps unless people start relearning the Founder's intent and the *moral* basis for government. The idea that government has any charge or charter that is not morally founded is incorrect.

[bvw]

Your posting on John Winthrop was wonderfully apropos, I was wondering if you could post it on this thread?

[A. Pole]

Your posting on John Winthrop was wonderfully apropos, I was wondering if you could post it on this thread?

John Winthrop, "On Liberty," 1645 AD:

I suppose something may be expected from me upon this charge that is befallen me, which moves me to speak now to you; yet I intend not to intermeddle in the proceedings of the court, or with any of the persons concerned therein. Only I bless God that I see an issue of this troublesome business. I also acknowledge the justice of the court, and, for mine own part, I am well satisfied, I was publicly charged, and I am publicly and legally acquitted, which is all I did expect or desire.

And though this be sufficient for my justification before men, yet not so before the God who hath seen so much amiss in my dispensations (and even in this affair) as calls me to be humble. For to be publicly and criminally charged in this court is matter of humiliation (and I desire to make a right use of it), notwithstanding I be thus acquitted. If her father had spit in her face (saith the Lord concerning Miriam), should she not have been ashamed seven days? Shame had lien upon her, whatever the occasion had been.

I am unwilling to stay you from your urgent affairs, yet give me leave (upon this special occasion) to speak a little more to this assembly. It may be of some good use to inform and rectify the judgments of some of the people, and may prevent such distempers as have arisen amongst us. The great questions that have troubled the country are about the authority of the magistrates and the liberty of the people. It is yourselves who have called us to this office, and, being called by you, we have our authority from God, in way of an ordinance, such as hath the image of God eminently stamped upon it, the contempt and violation whereof hath been vindicated with examples of divine vengeance.

I entreat you to consider that, when you choose magistrates, you take them from among yourselves, men subject to like passions as you are. Therefore, when you see infirmities in us, you should reflect upon your own, and that would make you bear the more with us, and not be severe censurers of the failings of your magistrates, when you have continual experience of the like infirmities in yourselves and others.

We account him a good servant who breaks not his covenant. The covenant between you and us is the oath you have taken of us, which is to this purpose, that we shall govern you and judge your causes by the rules of God's laws and our own, according to our best skill. When you agree with a workman to build you a ship or house, etc., he undertakes as well for his skill as for his faithfulness; for it is his profession, and you pay him for both.

But, when you call one to be a magistrate, he doth not profess nor undertake to have sufficient skill for that office, nor can you furnish him with gifts, etc., therefore you must run the hazard of his skill and ability. But if he fail in faithfulness, which by his oath he is bound unto, that he must answer for. If it fall out that the case be clear to common apprehension, and the rule clear also, if he transgress here, the error is not in the skill, but in the evil of the will: it must be required of him. But if the case be doubtful, or the rule doubtful, to men of such understanding and parts as your magistrates are, if your magistrates should err here, yourselves must bear it.

"If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties . . . you will not endure the least weight of authority"

For the other point concerning liberty, I observe a great mistake in the country about that. There is a twofold liberty, natural (I mean as our nature is now corrupt) and civil or federal. The first is common to man with beasts and other creatures. By this, man as he stands in relation to man simply, hath liberty to do what he lists: it is a liberty to evil as well as to good. This liberty is incompatible and inconsistent with authority, and cannot endure the least restraint of the most just authority. The exercise and maintaining of this liberty makes men grow more evil, and in time to be worse than brute beasts: omnes sumus licentia deteriores. This is that great enemy of truth and peace, that wild beast, which all the ordinances of God are bent against, to restrain and subdue it.

The other kind of liberty I call civil or federal; it may also be termed moral, in reference to the covenant between God and man, in the moral law, and the politic covenants and constitutions, amongst men themselves. This liberty is the proper end and object of authority, and cannot subsist without it; and it is a liberty to that only which is good, just, and honest. This liberty you are to stand for, with the hazard (not only of your goods, but) of your lives, if need be. Whatsoever crosseth this is not authority, but a distemper thereof.

This liberty is maintained and exercised in a way of subjection to authority; it is of the same kind of liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free. The woman's own choice makes such a man her husband; yet, being so chosen, he is her lord, and she is to be subject to him, yet in a way of liberty, not of bondage; and a true wife accounts her subjection her honor and freedom, and would not think her condition safe and free but in her subjection to her husband's authority. Such is the liberty of the church under the authority of Christ, her king and husband; his yoke is so easy and sweet to her as a bride's ornaments; and if through frowardness or wantonness, etc., she shake it off, at any time, she is at no rest in her spirit until she take it up again; and whether her lord smiles upon her, and embraceth her in his arms, or whether he frowns, or rebukes, or smites her, she apprehends the sweetness of his love in all, and is refreshed, supported, and instructed by every such dispensation of his authority over her.

On the other side, ye know who they are that complain of this yoke and say, let us break their bands, etc., we will not have this man to rule over us. Even so, brethren, it will be between you and your magistrates. If you stand for your natural corrupt liberties, and will do what is good in your own eyes, you will not endure the least weight of authority, but will murmur, and oppose, and be always striving to shake off that yoke; but if you will be satisfied to enjoy such civil and lawful liberties, such as Christ allows you, then will you quietly and cheerfully submit unto that authority which is set over you, in all the administrations of it, for your good.

Wherein, if we fail at any time, we hope we shall be willing (by God's assistance) to hearken to good advice from any of you, or in any other way of God; so shall your liberties be preserved, in upholding the honor and power of authority amongst you.