of judges.
The Washington Post has a column today by Ruth Marcus which highlights the extremism of the Republican party - some suggestions by Tom Coburn's chief of staff are mass impeachments, and simply firing judges with whom they disagree, for bad behavior. Just have Bush call them up and send in the capital police to help them leave their offices.
At the same time, there is reason to fear that something has changed in the national climate when the chief of staff to a U.S. senator -- even if that senator is Tom Coburn of Oklahoma -- tells a public gathering, "I'm in favor of mass impeachment if that's what it takes." An "easier way," the aide, Michael Schwartz, said at last week's conference, would be to oust activist judges for bad behavior. "Then the judge's term has simply come to an end. The president gives them a call and says, 'Clean out your desk, the Capitol Police will be in to help you find your way home.' "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42691-2005Apr10.html
Schwartz went on to provide a helpful, if not exhaustive list, of which judges he had in mind, including the majority of the Supreme Court: "It is tenure for life as long as you behave well . . . as I know that Justice Kennedy and Justice Souter and Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg and the rest of that crowd have not done."
Schwartz may be a particularly extreme example, but he's not the only one. "There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary," the spokesman for the House Judiciary Committee chairman, F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wis.), told the New York Times. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has threatened to cut off court funding. "When their budget starts to dry up, we'll get their attention," he said. "If we're going to preserve our Constitution, we must get them in line."
In his videotaped message, DeLay told the group, "Our next step, whatever it is, must be more than rhetoric." Odds are, this too is rhetoric. But it's an ominously open question whether those odds are quite as good as they used to be.
What is going on in this nation? I would like to know what gives these extremists the idea that they can get away with this type of overthrow of the judiciary? And I would like to know how far they are going to go to get their way. More than 1/2 of the country is appalled at this behavior. Is there any way we can start the drumbeat for Tom Coburn, the wacky senator whose chief of staff was at the conference at which these things were said, to resign? We need to speak up for these judges.
I wonder what Sandra Day O'Connor is thinking now.