THE WASHINGTON BULL-SESSION ON THE JUDGE PROBLEM

This article by the egregious Dana Milbank, about a meeting of a small group of prominent conservatives in Washington, seems to have stirred up a hornet's nest in some circles -- which is, of course, what it was meant to do. Even Arthur Silber -- who is a pretty level-headed guy most of the time -- seems to have got his knickers in a knot over it. Milbank is very good at subtly slanting the news and hinting at things without actually saying them and this is a prime example. He reports a whole series of statements that are mostly not unreasonable by themselves and manages to weave them into a rather alarming tapestry. He also presents the report as if he were present and taking notes at the meeting but nowhere actually says that he was so the accuracy of what he does say is for a start a matter of some conjecture. But so far everybody seems (in my view unwisely) to be taking his report as gospel. One can only imagine what he has left out.

What transpired was apparently a general discussion about what should be done about America's current problem of lawless Supreme Court judges -- and different individuals suggested different solutions -- broadly falling into restrictions on what the judges can do or finding ways to remove the irresponsible judges from office. What seems to have induced near-ecstasy in some Leftist bloggers is that one of those present quoted Stalin to the effect that removing the man removes the problem -- implying that Stalin's METHOD of removing the man (execution) was being advocated. The fact that the person who quoted Stalin is a constitutional lawyer who wrote "How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary" LEGALLY was mentioned by Milbank but seems to have been glided over by everyone else.

The Left seem determined to take what was obviously a brainstorming session among a small group of people as proof of some heinous plot but that is to be expected, I guess.

The basic submission of those present at the meeting -- that recent constitutional decisions which turn to foreign opinions rather than to the text of the constitution are grossly unsatisfactory -- is a submission in which I myself would heartily concur. I might perhaps go along with the argument that the constitution should be treated as a "living document" but that is NOT what the Supreme Court is doing. They are in fact treating it as a blank slate -- finding in it all sorts of things (such as abortion rights) that are not remotely there. There is only one democratic way for the constitution to change with the times and that is via amendments voted for by the people.

(An earlier version of this post appeared on Blogger News)

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NEWT GINGRICH SAYS YOU CAN SACK ROGUE JUDGES

(From an interview with Pat Robertson)

GINGRICH: I think we are a covenant society, and I think part of the message has to be to our elected officials that we expect Congress and the President to stand up to judges who don't understand America. And in the case of the two appeals court judges, of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, who said they were going to outlaw saying `one nation under God' in the Pledge -- my position would be Thomas Jefferson's, which would be to abolish their two jobs. Let them go back into the private sector, because clearly those two judges do not understand America and should not be sitting on the federal bench.

ROBERTSON: Is it possible for Congress to selectively take out a couple of judges? You'd have to abolish the whole Ninth Circuit.

GINGRICH: No, in 1802, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who knew a fair amount about the Constitution, passed a law abolishing 18 out of the 35 federal circuit court judges. That is over half the federal circuit court judges. They were given unemployment slips, and told to go find work. So clearly there is a precedent. The Congress can say this particular office is now closed. You are not going to have hearings. You might have to pay their pension under a constitutional provision that's a lifetime appointment. But you don't have to let them have clerks, you don't have to let them have an office, you don't have to let them serve in court any more.

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ELSEWHERE

There is a Leftist law professor here who has had a bright idea about how to solve the judicial bias problem. He just redefines Left and Right to suit himself. Without one shred of supporting argument he redefines Left-leaning judges like Sandra Day O'Connor as "conservatives" and calls conservative judges "neo-cons". And neocons are people who "throw caution to the winds"! Do you want to know which parallel universe he is living in? It is called Yale.

There is an instructive story on PC Watch today about the re-banning of prostitution in Sweden. It shows what a sham is the Leftist defence of liberty in the moral sphere.


Hurray for Frankenstein! : "The 'Frankenstein Report,' is what outraged critics are calling a new report, Human Reproductive Technologies and the Law, that signals welcome sanity on the cloning front in Western world politics. The report was issued on March 24 by the cross-party Science and Technology Committee of the British House of Commons. What's got the critics' knickers in a twist? First, the U.K. Members of Parliament (MPs) dare to suggest that a wide range of current and potential interventions in human reproduction can, in fact, be done ethically."

NYC misses Giuliani "A woman with a three-month-old baby was mugged at gunpoint on a sunny morning in Central Park last week, heightening fears that New York is sliding back into disorder. Catherine Collins, 34, a freelance television producer, was walking with her son Jackson in a pushchair when a robber pulled out a gun and demanded her rings. "I was terrified," Collins said. "I was trained never to resist. I saw the gun and I saw my baby. There was nothing worth contemplating." Central Park, once a muggers' paradise which came to symbolise the breakdown of the city in the 1980s, has been cleaned up and reclaimed by families. It has rarely been safer. Yet there are signs that the city's public spaces are deteriorating. A 28-year-old actor was murdered in Manhattan in January when she challenged four muggers. "What are you going to do, shoot us?" she asked. One of the assailants fired a bullet into her chest and she died in her fianc,'s arms. Dealers are peddling drugs in city squares at night, the homeless are sleeping rough on subway benches, beggars are roaming the carriages and graffiti are returning to city walls."

One of my readers has sent in an essay about the moral corruption of academe and its consequences. See Here.

My latest quotes on MARXWORDS show that both Marx and Engels thought the Chinese to be hereditarily dumb!

For more postings, see EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE and LEFTISTS AS ELITISTS. Mirror sites here, here, here, here and here

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That power only, not principles, is what matters to Leftist movers and shakers is perfectly shown by the 2004 Kerry campaign. They put up a man whose policies seemed to be 99% the same as George Bush's even though the Left have previously disagreed violently with those policies. "Whatever it takes" is their rule.

Leftist ideologues are phonies. For most of them all that they want is to sound good. They don't care about doing good. That's why they do so much harm. They don't really care what the results of their policies are as long as they are seen as having good intentions and can con "the masses" into giving them power.

The Big Lie of the late 20th century was that Nazism was Rightist. It was in fact typical of the Leftism of its day. It was only to the Right of Stalin's Communism. The very word "Nazi" is a German abbreviation for "National Socialist"

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