Apparently one of the worst mistakes of Reagans presidency, Sandra Day O’Conner, has decided not to go quietly in the night and instead comes out swinging against Republicans. No wonder the Democrats loved her:
In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O?Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O?Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it ?really, really angry.? But, she continued, if we don?t make them mad some of the time we probably aren?t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won?t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation?s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O?Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don?t protect judicial independence, people do.
And then she took aim at former House GOP 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. This, said O?Connor, was after the federal courts had applied Congress? onetime only statute about Schiavo as it was written. Not, said O?Connor, as the congressman might have wished it were written. This response to this flagrant display of judicial restraint, said O?Connor, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that the congressman blasted the courts.
[…]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 strongarm 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.
Okay, one thing I have to put out there is that the reporter is Nina Totenberg, one person who should not be trusted to tell anything truthful in her reporting. One of the most biased reporters in Washington in my opinion. Be that it may, if the quotes she is reporting on are true then boy, am I glad this lady retired.
I mean How DARE we criticize the judicial activism coming from the bench. The Justices should be bowed to and revered, not criticized.
Did the right allow Kelo? No, it was the left who sandbagged the country with that awful decision. She dissented at least but where is the anger for this bit of activism?
Where is the criticizism for the left’s constant filibustering of federal judges? Would that be considered activism?
How about the use of foreign law to decide cases? Should we have the right to criticize that?
The founders hoped the judiciary would protect individual rights, but they never intended for them to create new rights out of thin air on completely baseless constitutional grounds.
We have the right to criticize the government and even, gasp, the judicial branch of the government. This is what sets us apart from countries like Iran and China. But to say that judges are beyond criticism, that IS the problem.
And then there is this line
A dictatorship is better stopped at its beginning than at its end.
Which can only mean she is with the DummiesU crowd, and you had to know King Dummy, Keith Olbermann, would be all over it: (via Newsbuster)
As Olbermann teased his Friday show, he was so impressed with O’Connor’s use of the word “dictatorship” that the Countdown host repeated the word several times just during the teaser: “The beginnings of a dictatorship? Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor actually talked about the beginnings of a dictatorship here in America? A dictatorship? D-I-C-T-A-T-O-R-ship? A dictatorship, did you say? Justice O’Connor’s remarkable speech and remarkable poll numbers. Nearly seven out of ten of us think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Dictatorship, huh?”
No wonder only a handful of people watch his show.
But to say that judges are beyond criticism, that IS the problem. They think they rule this country.
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Keith Olbermann = King Dummy The man was unbearable as a sports anchor/reporter/distorter; he’s even worse as teleprompter-reading talking head. All you have to do is bring up the fact that Phil Donahue, who had the same timeslot on the same lame cable news outlet had better ratings than King Dummy. He’ll take every opportunity to distort the opinions of anyone that may have a take against President Bush and the administration as long as it follows the BDS Credo. What an asshat!