Posted on 06/26/2015 4:00:53 PM PDT by Isara
This week, we have twice seen Supreme Court justices violating their judicial oaths. Yesterday, the justices rewrote Obamacare, yet again, in order to force this failed law on the American people. Today, the Court doubled down with a 5–4 opinion that undermines not just the definition of marriage, but the very foundations of our representative form of government.
Both decisions were judicial activism, plain and simple. Both were lawless.
As Justice Scalia put it regarding Obamacare, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is ‘established by the State.’ . . . We should start calling this law SCOTUSCare.” And as he observed regarding marriage, “Today’s decree says that . . . the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court.”
Sadly, the political reaction from the leaders of my party is all too predictable. They will pretend to be incensed, and then plan to do absolutely nothing.
That is unacceptable. On the substantive front, I have already introduced a constitutional amendment to preserve the authority of elected state legislatures to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and also legislation stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction over legal assaults on marriage. And the 2016 election has now been transformed into a referendum on Obamacare; in 2017, I believe, a Republican president will sign legislation finally repealing that disastrous law.
But there is a broader problem: The Court’s brazen action undermines its very legitimacy. As Justice Scalia powerfully explained,
Hubris is sometimes defined as o’erweening pride; and pride, we know, goeth before the fall. . . . With each decision of ours that takes from the People a question properly left to them—with each decision that is unabashedly based not on law, but on the “reasoned judgment” of a bare majority of this Court—we move one step closer to being reminded of our impotence.
This must stop. Liberty is in the balance.
Not only are the Court’s opinions untethered to reason and logic, they are also alien to our constitutional system of limited and divided government. By redefining the meaning of common words, and redesigning the most basic human institutions, this Court has crossed from the realm of activism into the arena of oligarchy.
This week’s opinions are but the latest in a long line of judicial assaults on our Constitution and the common-sense values that have made America great. During the past 50 years, the Court has condemned millions of innocent unborn children to death, banished God from our schools and public squares, extended constitutional protections to prisoners of war on foreign soil, authorized the confiscation of property from one private owner to transfer it to another, and has now required all Americans to purchase a specific product, and to accept the redefinition of an institution ordained by God and long predating the formation of the Court.
Enough is enough.
Over the last several decades, many attempts have been made to compel the Court to abide by the Constitution. But, as Justice Alito put it, “Today’s decision shows that decades of attempts to restrain this Court’s abuse of its authority have failed.”
In the case of marriage, a majority of states passed laws or state constitutional amendments to affirm the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. At the federal level, the Congress and President Clinton enacted the Defense of Marriage Act. When it comes to marriage, the Court has clearly demonstrated an unwillingness to remain constrained by the Constitution.
Similarly, the Court has now twice engaged in constitutional contortionism in order to preserve Obamacare. If the Court is unwilling to abide by the specific language of our laws as written, and if it is unhindered by the clear intent of the people’s elected representatives, our constitutional options for reasserting our authority over our government are limited.
The Framers of our Constitution, despite their foresight and wisdom, did not anticipate judicial tyranny on this scale. The Constitution explicitly provides that justices “shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour,” and this is a standard they are not remotely meeting. The Framers thought Congress’s “power of instituting impeachments,” as Alexander Hamilton argued in the Federalist Papers, would be an “important constitutional check” on the judicial branch and would provide “a complete security” against the justices’ “deliberate usurpations of the authority of the legislature.”
The Framers underestimated the justices’ craving for legislative power, and they overestimated the Congress’s backbone to curb it.
But the Framers underestimated the justices’ craving for legislative power, and they overestimated the Congress’s backbone to curb it. It was clear even before the end of the founding era that the threat of impeachment was, in Thomas Jefferson’s words, “not even a scarecrow” to the justices. Today, the remedy of impeachment — the only one provided under our Constitution to cure judicial tyranny — is still no remedy at all. A Senate that cannot muster 51 votes to block an attorney-general nominee openly committed to continue an unprecedented course of executive-branch lawlessness can hardly be expected to muster the 67 votes needed to impeach an Anthony Kennedy.
The time has come, therefore, to recognize that the problem lies not with the lawless rulings of individual lawless justices, but with the lawlessness of the Court itself. The decisions that have deformed our constitutional order and have debased our culture are but symptoms of the disease of liberal judicial activism that has infected our judiciary. A remedy is needed that will restore health to the sick man in our constitutional system.
Rendering the justices directly accountable to the people would provide such a remedy. Twenty states have now adopted some form of judicial retention elections, and the experience of these states demonstrates that giving the people the regular, periodic power to pass judgment on the judgments of their judges strikes a proper balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability. It also restores respect for the rule of law to courts that have systematically imposed their personal moral values in the guise of constitutional rulings. The courts in these states have not been politicized by this check on their power, nor have judges been removed indiscriminately or wholesale. Americans are a patient, forgiving people. We do not pass judgment rashly.
Yet we are a people who believe, in the words of our Declaration of Independence that “when a long train of abuses and usurpations . . . evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government and to provide new guards for their future security.” In California, the people said enough is enough in 1986, and removed from office three activist justices who had repeatedly contorted the state constitution to effectively outlaw capital punishment, no matter how savage the crime. The people of Nebraska likewise removed a justice who had twice disfigured that state’s constitution to overturn the people’s decision to subject state legislators to term limits. And in 2010, the voters of Iowa removed three justices who had, like the Supreme Court in Obergefell, invented a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
Judicial retention elections have worked in states across America; they will work for America. In order to provide the people themselves with a constitutional remedy to the problem of judicial activism and the means for throwing off judicial tyrants, I am proposing an amendment to the United States Constitution that would subject the justices of the Supreme Court to periodic judicial-retention elections. Every justice, beginning with the second national election after his or her appointment, will answer to the American people and the states in a retention election every eight years. Those justices deemed unfit for retention by both a majority of the American people as a whole and by majorities of the electorates in at least half of the 50 states will be removed from office and disqualified from future service on the Court.
As a constitutional conservative, I do not make this proposal lightly. I began my career as a law clerk to Chief Justice William Rehnquist — one of our nation’s greatest chief justices — and I have spent over a decade litigating before the Supreme Court. I revere that institution, and have no doubt that Rehnquist would be heartbroken at what has befallen our highest court.
The Court’s hubris and thirst for power have reached unprecedented levels. And that calls for meaningful action, lest Congress be guilty of acquiescing to this assault on the rule of law.
But, sadly, the Court’s hubris and thirst for power have reached unprecedented levels. And that calls for meaningful action, lest Congress be guilty of acquiescing to this assault on the rule of law.
And if Congress will not act, passing the constitutional amendments needed to correct this lawlessness, then the movement from the people for an Article V Convention of the States — to propose the amendments directly — will grow stronger and stronger.
As we prepare to celebrate next week the 239th anniversary of the birth of our country, our Constitution finds itself under sustained attack from an arrogant judicial elite. Yet the words of Daniel Webster ring as true today as they did over 150 years ago: “Hold on, my friends, to the Constitution and to the Republic for which it stands. Miracles do not cluster and what has happened once in 6,000 years, may not happen again. Hold on to the Constitution, for if the American Constitution should fail, there will be anarchy throughout the world.” We must hold fast to the miracle that is our Constitution and our republic; we must not submit our constitutional freedoms, and the promise of our nation, to judicial tyranny.
— Ted Cruz represents Texas in the United States Senate.
I agree. Offering up a populist amendment to the Constitution is a bad idea. If anything there should be a deliberate and strong push to repeal 17A. If there could be one solitary reason we are at this point with SCOTUS, 17A is it.
Cruz won’t be alone. He has all of us who are looking to him to lead us, but we are the boots on the ground. Together, with God’s Help and Wisdom, we can make a huge difference.
It is time to Clean both Houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. With President Cruz, we can do it!
Cruz knows who the King is. The reason I believe in Cruz is because of his Faith in God and dependence on His guidance.
All of us have a part in this fight and we must stand together as God’s Army. The victory is His.
When we are fighting the Enemy of our Souls, A leader is needed who depends on God for Wisdom and Guidance. That is not Donald Trump. His God is Money and that is not going to help us.
How is cancer to be restrained?
Depends what kind and what stage it's in. Later stage requires seriously invasive procedures.
For both, talking about it does nothing.
We do this in Tennessee for our state supreme court..
the judges are appointed by the governor, and then retained or not every four years..
the ballot just says retain/do not retain...
a list of unknown names...so I just choose do not for them all.. theyre usually liberals anyway...
He can be both..
weve already had a president who went on to be chief justice...
Encourage governors to ignore SrCOTUS. If they won’t, encourage the people to rise up and remove those governors.
No sir, you did not show respect. You slandered instead.
Look bub, I've lived in the slums of the third world- seen violence and bloodshed being done against brethren whom their ruling classes hate. You have absolutely NO IDEA what my views were in regards to conflict outside of my contention that they are inevitable and that those ruling us intend to initiate such conflict, regardless of whether or not we lick their palms and beg their favor.
You clearly do not comprehend or understand evil men in power. You continue to play politics in your mind assuming this government respects the rule of law and that somehow they will magically cede their power without a fight when you show them your new Amendments in 5 to 10 years if they even survive the sabotage that will undoubtedly be attempted.
That you accuse my motives as being bloodthirsty makes you no different than those who seek our subjugation via fundamental transformation.
You sir, have just made it clear that you agree with Obama and the Marxists that people like me are the REAL terrorists everyone should fear and act against, albeit for different reasons. Indeed, please report me to DHS to assuage your fear of me if that helps soothe your conscience which I have obviously seared with my position.
You preach salvation via politics in a wicked and perverse generation in complete, willful and absolute disregard of history and human nature, notwithstanding The judgment of The Almighty Himself as it pertains to our sins as a people before Him.
Our Forbears were wise enough to recognize that they suffered the tyranny of the Crown due to their collective sins as a people, and repentance and an Awakening girded a minority for what was coming. Today we have no wisdom because few to none will even discuss our collective sins and think the solution to our suffering is not repentance and resistance, but showing up at the altar of politics to draft new laws or elect political saviors.
You offer nothing but vanity and a false hope in the wrong gospel. Article V is not going to save us or stop the tyranny that is being entrenched and fortified above us.
Because I speak that truth - you accuse me of being a bloodthirsty terrorist with "The darkest motives", which to me reveals that your dogma and doctrine of faith in Article V is what governs your religion.
At most, Article V efforts would provide legitimacy and moral authority to do what will be necessary, but none of you advocates see it that way. Instead - you lecture us as to the foolproof salvation it offers, when it will offer no such thing.
But then these are just the rantings of a bloodthirsty terrorist with the 'darkest of motives' according to your slander.
Remember Mr. Bedford, your Masters have said that if you see something, say something. Do your duty and report me to your overlords at DHS and assuage your fear of me.
In 2006 80% of voters in Tennessee passed a Marriage Act as a state constitution amendment
Youre right that same sex marriage is not popular...they don’t dare give the voters a chance to decide for ourselves..
Its like Roe V Wade..when that was “passed” by SCOTUS in 1973 only 12% of people in North Dakota weren’t pro-life and other states were close to that.. the people weren’t asked..
I agree that in a world of proper constitutional interpretation rogue justices would be impeached. But our education system has indoctrinated nearly all of our congres critters to think that impeaching is unconstitutional — that’s how messed up the system is.
Constitutional amendments are the ONLY way to restore original intent.
One more time, with feeling.
Still no declarion that you would chose good government peacefully obtained if it could be had instead of civil war.
“This can never happen among Christians until they abandon Christianity, which is at war with every sin”.
99% of homosexuals/lesbians are atheists. Their goal to destroy Christianity, starting with the big boy, the Catholic Church.
This is part of the communist manifesto, make homosexuality accepted, normal behavior. They started in public schools years ago with leftist teachers telling 3rd graders on up there is nothing wrong with having two mommies or two daddies.
“The Constitution states if we believe we have a tyrannical Govt ten it needs to be replaced, so why the hell s this not happening”.
Because Republicans control everything and they are some of the most spineless politicians that ever lived.
bkmk
The differece between this patriot and the poisonous GOPe could not be clearer.
That RED Reset Button is found in the 2nd Amendment!
For now the Supreme Court has stolen our republic.
We can take it back. Impeachment and a constitutional amendment would fix this. Neither will happen. Thus, the republic is lost.
Because impeachment is a big deal, and Nixon properly stepped down simply to save us from the trauma of going through it. We should not be so eager to dive in, especially when a brief 16 month wait will have the same effect... and the process of impeachment of this particular President is likely to take at least that much time. (And, of course, delay will be his advisors primary effort.)
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