What happened to the old "law and order" right-wing conservatives?
Like spoiled children, they throw a temper tantrum and threatened to
burn down the whole house to get their way. Constitution... we don't
need no steekin' Constitution since we gots Gawd on our side! For
Bush, DeLay, Frist, et al, the end justifies the means to gain
political power. Hmmm, sound familiar? Maybe Nuremberg back in the
1930's...an all-powerful state with no balance of powers to reign it
in is a very bad thing.

What happened to the old "law and order" right-wing conservatives?
Like spoiled children, they throw a temper tantrum and threatened to
burn down the whole house to get their way. Constitution... we don't
need no steekin' Constitution since we gots Gawd on our side! For
Bush, DeLay, Frist, et al, the end justifies the means to gain
political power. Hmmm, sound familiar? Maybe Nuremberg back in the
1930's...an all-powerful state with no balance of powers to reign it
in is a very bad thing.

JUDGES REAL LOSERS IN SCHIAVO CASE

By BERT BRANDENBURG
http://www.philly.com/mld/dailynews/news/opinion/11283212.htm

WAS TERRI Schiavo's piteous ordeal a victory for the rule of law?

After all, interest groups and the politicians they pressured were
trumped by the courts. The macabre circus that arose around Schiavo's
case counted for nothing: Pinellas County Judge George W. Greer issued
a steady series of rulings despite being targeted for electoral defeat
and impeachment, compared to Joseph Mengele and other Nazis, and even
threatened with death. The public didn't buy legislation that sought
to rig the case for Schiavo's parents.

"If nothing else," wrote a New York Times analysis, "this series of
decisions vindicated the one conception of American judicial power."

But that isn't quite right. In fact, the Schiavo episode spells
trouble ahead for the courts that protect our rights. The judiciary is
fast becoming enemy No. 1 in the culture wars - and the side wearing
the black robes is losing. The anguish over Schiavo's nightmare is
boosting a rising common culture of attacks on the independence and
legitimacy of our courts. In Washington and far beyond the Beltway,
this new war on the courts is being waged through legislation and
political intimidation, fueled by special interest campaigns of rage.
"Federal courts have no army or navy," warned Rep. John Hostettler,
R-Ind., late last year. "At the end of the day, we're saying the court
can't enforce its opinions."

Consider the bill that sailed through Congress on Palm Sunday,
hustling Schiavo's case into federal courts. Legal purists cringed at
the politics of crafting jurisdiction to reach a desired result. But
the For the Relief of the Parents of Theresa Marie Schiavo Act was
just another day at the office for legislators working to manipulate
the jurisdiction of our courts to achieve political ends. Hostile
members of Congress increasingly seek to reverse or forestall
decisions they don't like by eliminating jurisdiction over important
constitutional cases, shuffling selected lawsuits between state and
federal courts, and choking off the discretion of judges to weigh
evidence and law.

These efforts often come straight off the talk-radio dial. Last year,
for example, even as the federal courts mulled litigation involving
the Pledge of Allegiance, the House of Representatives was passing a
measure to forbid courts to ever hear such a case in the first place.
As the debate raged over a courthouse display of the Ten Commandments,
a measure was written to deny federal courts the power to hear any
suit involving a governmental official's "acknowledgment of God as the
sovereign source of law, liberty, or government."

These efforts at court-stripping don't just represent good wedge-issue
politics; increasingly, they have become the law of the land. The USA
Patriot Act reduced judicial discretion to review law-enforcement
efforts to detain suspects, monitor private Internet communications,
obtain certain personal records and share wiretaps with intelligence
agencies. The 2003 "Feeney Amendment" - protested strongly by Chief
Justice William Rehnquist - sharply limited the ability of federal
judges to issue sentences below federal guidelines to set punishments
that fit the crime.

As they grow more confident, enemies of the courts are growing more
extreme. Buried within the Real ID Act recently passed by the House is
a provision that would swap martial law for the rule of law. If
enacted, the bill would give the secretary of Homeland Security
unilateral power to waive any law on the books that might interfere
with the building of border fences - including civil-rights and
minimum-wage protections, and even criminal laws. Courts would be
barred from ever reviewing the secretary's stroke of the pen.

Measures like these flow from a view of our courts as little more than
enemy combatants. After the Supreme Court ruled that certain
antiterrorism tactics violated the Bill of Rights, Attorney General
John Ashcroft accused it of endangering national security. During the
Schiavo case, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay R-Texas, warned that "no
little judge sitting in a state district court in Florida is going to
usurp the authority of Congress."

In the age of cable television and blogs, instant outrage is getting
easier to manufacture. Our courts now face nothing less than a
permanent campaign - the kind political organizers and fund-raisers
lick their lips at, since there will always be new cases to replenish
the trough. This appetite for fresh outrage helps explain proposals to
give parents more rights to litigate end-of-life disputes.

After all, why would those who accuse judges of murder want to dump
thousands more controversial cases into their laps? In the world of
hardball politics, it turns out that losing in court can be a very
good thing indeed.
Bert Brandenburg is the executive director of the Justice at Stake
Campaign. The piece first appeared in Slate, the online magazine.

"[The Bill of Rights is] designed to protect individuals and minorities against the tyranny of the majority, but it's also designed to protect the people against bureaucracy, against the government." -- Judge Lawrence Tribe