Thus far, we have focused on preventing the Nuclear Option. However, with the vote on it seemingly imminent, it is not too early to consider how we must and should respond to the implementation of the Nuclear Option. So, here are my "10 Ways of Responding to the Nuclear Option":
1. Argue that activist judges might be one thing, but illegal judges are quite another. The Republicans must break the rules to implement the Nuclear Option. That means that any judges approved under the new rules are illegitimate. That is, they are placed on the judiciary illegally.
Making this case is very important, because it lays the ground for later: If they are illegitimate, then all of those judges so placed may be legitimately and justifiably challenged and removed by a future Democratic majority in Congress, or they must be reapproved by the legitimate process.
The rest below the fold...
- Democrats must stand for the rules. They must swear to re-implement and enforce the real rules upon their return to the majority. Then, if changes to the rules for approving judges must be made, we should do so by the legitimate rule-changing process: by achieving a 2/3 majority to change the rules. We should welcome such a debate, since such a debate is now being silenced by the Republicans.
- Democratic Senators should force the Republicans to invoke the Nuclear Option on every questionable judge. They should refuse to recognize that the rules were legitimately changed and should try to filibuster each and every one that they oppose, forcing the Republicans to replay the nuclear option on each and every questionable judicial vote. Americans should be informed each time so that they can witness the newest replay on C-span. Judges thereby approved get added to the list of illegitimately approved judges.
- Members of congress should file articles of impeachment against said judges, challenging their legitimacy, in each session of congress, whether the Democrats are in the majority or not, until they are impeached and removed from the judiciary.
- Any person who appears before these particular judges in court should request that they be recused because there is a cloud over their legitimacy as a jurist on the federal bench due to the means that they were seated on that court. Create a public, paper record of opposition to these judges legitimacy.
- Decisions written by such judges should be viewed as illegitimate. Majority decisions in which they join should be viewed with skepticism, particularly if they were a deciding vote.
- Judicial watchdog groups should protest outside these courts and those judges offices on regular occasion.
- Those who are affected by those judges' decisions should refuse to comply on the basis that that court no longer has any legitimate jurisdiction or authority over free men because they were seated by illegal means and not in accordance with the legitimate rules of the Republic. No free person need defer to judges and magistrates illegally instituted and not given due process. You will probably be declared in contempt and put in jail. But, then, so was Martin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhi.
- Letters to the editor should be written opposing radioactive, "illegal judges" who were seated "under nuclear terms", not according to the rules. Republicans should be faulted and chastised for breaking the rules to pack the courts with "radioactive judges" each time a new extremist judge is approved. Also, inform the public of such judge's illegitimacy, particularly in papers or news outlets that are in that Court's jurisdictional district or region.
- Begin the creation of a grassroots Coalition for Justice that seeks to reinstitute free, fair, and legitimate public tribunals. Frame our side as defending the judiciary from extremist onslaught, and "nuclear blackmail".
Please add your ideas for more ways to actively respond and make this blow up in the Republican's faces below.
