From The Washington Post, 4/9/05:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38308-2005Apr8.html

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."

From The Washington Post, 4/9/05:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38308-2005Apr8.html

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."

"The people who have been speaking out on this, like Tom DeLay and
Senator Cornyn, need to be backed up," Schlafly said to applause
yesterday.

One worker at the event wore a sticker declaring "Hooray for DeLay."

The conference was organized during the height of the Schiavo
controversy by a new group, the Judeo-Christian Council for
Constitutional Restoration.

This was no collection of fringe characters.

The two-day program listed two House members;

aides to two senators;

representatives from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women
for America;

conservative activists Alan Keyes and Morton C. Blackwell;

the lawyer for Terri Schiavo's parents;

Alabama's "Ten Commandments" judge, Roy Moore;

and DeLay, who canceled to attend the pope's funeral.

The Schlafly session's moderator, Richard Lessner of the American
Conservative Union, opened the discussion by decrying a "radical
secularist relativist judiciary."

It turned more harsh from there.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that
would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of
Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts.

Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts
from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by
federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges.

"The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly
asserted.

Former representative William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.) followed Schlafly,
saying the country's "principal problem" is not Iraq or the federal
budget but whether "we as a people acknowledge that God exists."

Farris then told the crowd he is "sick and tired of having to lobby
people I helped get elected."

A better-educated citizenry, he said, would know that "Medicare is a
bad idea" and that "Social Security is a horrible idea when run by the
government."

Farris said he would block judicial power by abolishing the concept of
binding judicial precedents, by allowing Congress to vacate court
decisions, and by impeaching judges such as Kennedy, who seems to have
replaced Justice David H. Souter as the target of conservative ire.

"If about 40 of them get impeached, suddenly a lot of these guys would
be retiring," he said.

Vieira, a constitutional lawyer who wrote "How to Dethrone the
Imperial Judiciary," escalated the charges, saying a Politburo of
"five people on the Supreme Court" has a "revolutionary agenda" rooted
in foreign law and situational ethics.

Vieira, his eyeglasses strapped to his head with black elastic,
decried the "primordial illogic" of the courts.

Invoking Stalin, Vieira delivered the "no man, no problem" line twice
for emphasis.

"This is not a structural problem we have; this is a problem of
personnel," he said.

"We are in this mess because we have the wrong people as judges."

A court spokeswoman declined to comment.

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