And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty
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From The Washington Post, Washington Sketch column, by Dana Milbank, headline is linked.
And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty
By Dana Milbank
Saturday, April 9, 2005; Page A03
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.
Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."
Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.
The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.
A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."
... more at linked article
Wow, according to this column, Conservatives are ready to break out a lynch mob to handle Justice Kennedy, if not go even further.
I'm no fan of Justice Kennedy myself. He has proven time and again (much like Justice Souter (a George H.W. Bush appointee) to be different animals than were expected when they were nominated to the court. Both have proven to fall more on the liberal activist side of most decisions than I would prefer, but I don't believe that the majority of conservatives would prefer these individuals to be handled in the manners that are described in the Post article/column.
Kennedy's deference to international opinion for the decision regarding trying minors as adults was infuriating, and possibly rises to the level that would support impeachment and removal as a Supreme Court justice, but that's not a given, and seems to be a tougher penalty than might be supportable (perhaps censure, or something similar could be done).
But, as usual I'll give credit to the Post for breaking out their own version of the tar and feathers and tossing it on anyone that might lean a bit conservatively. Great work by that standard bearer for journalists everywhere. (Almost as good as the N.Y. Times, just a bit less expensive.)
And the Verdict on Justice Kennedy Is: Guilty
By Dana Milbank
Saturday, April 9, 2005; Page A03
Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy is a fairly accomplished jurist, but he might want to get himself a good lawyer -- and perhaps a few more bodyguards.
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.
Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."
Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his "bottom line" for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem,' " Vieira said.
The full Stalin quote, for those who don't recognize it, is "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush's judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly.
A judge in Atlanta and the husband and mother of a judge in Chicago were murdered in recent weeks. After federal courts spurned a request from Congress to revisit the Terri Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.) mused about how a perception that judges are making political decisions could lead people to "engage in violence."
... more at linked article
Wow, according to this column, Conservatives are ready to break out a lynch mob to handle Justice Kennedy, if not go even further.
I'm no fan of Justice Kennedy myself. He has proven time and again (much like Justice Souter (a George H.W. Bush appointee) to be different animals than were expected when they were nominated to the court. Both have proven to fall more on the liberal activist side of most decisions than I would prefer, but I don't believe that the majority of conservatives would prefer these individuals to be handled in the manners that are described in the Post article/column.
Kennedy's deference to international opinion for the decision regarding trying minors as adults was infuriating, and possibly rises to the level that would support impeachment and removal as a Supreme Court justice, but that's not a given, and seems to be a tougher penalty than might be supportable (perhaps censure, or something similar could be done).
But, as usual I'll give credit to the Post for breaking out their own version of the tar and feathers and tossing it on anyone that might lean a bit conservatively. Great work by that standard bearer for journalists everywhere. (Almost as good as the N.Y. Times, just a bit less expensive.)