This is an Action Suggestion (as opposed to an Action Alert, I suppose)...this story needs to be covered in the United States!
I posted a diary (my first!) at the weekend, asking for links to any news coverage of Sandra Day O'Connor's recent comments. In a speech last week she spoke about the fact that Republicans have excused, and implicitly invited, violence against the courts and also of the the need to confront dictatorship in the US sooner rather than later -- clearly in reference to Bush's decision to circumvent the FISA Court.
This struck me as pretty strong stuff from a conservative, Republican (though, based on her comments, clearly not a Conservative Republican) ex-Supreme Court Justice.
Coverage in US papers as of last night? None. You know what to do. See below for excerpts from the UK-based Guardian's story.
"...assuming they are accurate - the notes are political dynamite.
O'Connor's voice was "dripping with sarcasm", according to Totenberg, as she "took aim at former House GOP [Republican] leader Tom DeLay. She didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year when DeLay took out after the courts for rulings on abortions, prayer and the Terri Schiavo case.
"It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are increasing. It doesn't help, she said, when a high-profile senator suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and decisions that the senator disagrees with."
Then she spoke the D-word. "I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and former communist countries where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."
Delivered by someone who was, until recently, one of the nine guardians of the US constitution, these are spine-chilling opinions, and you might have thought they'd have been all over the papers the next day. Not so. I happened to catch Totenberg's NPR report last Friday, and have been following up references to it. A cable TV talkshow and a handful of blogs have mentioned Totenberg's piece: otherwise there's been a disquieting silence, as if the former justice had laid an unsavoury egg and had best be politely ignored."
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Let's make sure this story isn't ignored!