If you didn't already think Rick Perry was a loon, here's yet more proof. Chris Moody of Yahoo! News' political blog, The Ticket, detailed seven constitutional amendments that a President Perry would propose according to his book, Fed Up!. One of them would allow Congress to override Supreme Court rulings.
Ending lifetime tenure for federal justices isn't the only way Perry has proposed suppressing the power of the courts. His book excoriates at length what he sees as overreach from the judicial branch. (The title of Chapter Six is "Nine Unelected Judges Tell Us How to Live.")
Giving Congress the ability to veto their decisions would be another way to take the Court down a notch, Perry says.
"[A]llow Congress to override the Supreme Court with a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate, which risks increased politicization of judicial decisions, but also has the benefit of letting the people stop the Court from unilaterally deciding policy," he writes.
Perry himself just gave us the second biggest reason that this is a rotten idea--it would put more politics in government at a time when we need it the least. The first and biggest reason is obvious--it would make a mockery of the tradition of separation of powers. To my knowledge, no country that gives the courts the power of judicial review gives the legislature power to veto court decisions. Perry's idea makes the wave of court-stripping measures we had to deal with from 2003 to 2007 look moderate by comparison.
Then again, this proposal isn't entirely surprising coming from Perry. Like other wingnuts, he doesn't like the idea that the courts have two major functions in the safeguarding of democracy. Not only does judicial review prevent the majority from running roughshod over the minority, but it prevents the majority from stripping away rights and freedoms that, by definition, should never be up for vote.
At least now we know there's one key difference between Perry and Bush 43. While the Shrub managed to hide his extremism behind the phony veil of "compassionate conservatism," Perry isn't even trying. And this guy used to be a Dem?