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Judges gone wild

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The gavel: a symbol of judgment and rule of law. It should not be consistent with Don’t tell your mother. But it is when it stands for judicial abuse. What happened to good judgment in America? Or are we left only with scandal?

Judges have gone wild in America. Two Supreme Court opinions at the end of this week (King v. Burwell on June 25, and Obergefell v. Hodges, etc. on June 26) show this more starkly than ever. The people of the United States must take a dramatic step to stop this movement now. If we do not, the written text of the Constitution will mean nothing. The Supreme Court will work like a nine-member committee to tell people, moment by moment, how to behave and what kinds of laws to write. Do the American people want this? They must now decide.

Two learned judges give warning

One need not take one editorial, on this site or elsewhere, for this. Two Justices of the Supreme Court, in the King case and in the Obergefell series of cases, broke the Code of Omertà that has always shrouded judicial affairs. Antonin Scalia waxed eloquent, and vituperative, in King, and again in Obergefell together with his colleague, Clarence Thomas. The dissenters, especially in Obergefell, dispose easily of the “libertarian” arguments in favor of Obergefell, Tanco, DeBoer, Bourke, their respective roommates, and all those they represent. As Thomas observed, any of those roommate pairs could travel freely to any jurisdiction that would give them a marriage license. No one had to make a one-size-fits-all rule to accommodate those four roommate pairs. Those four sets of plaintiffs and their advocates sought to destroy marriage for everyone, and turn it into no more than just another rooming-in arrangement.

Justice Antonin Scalia has for years warned against judges gone wild.

Justice Antonin Scalia, United States Supreme Court. Photo: Steve Petteway, chief photographer (cropped)

In the King case, as in Obergefell, they argued judges should not write law. Nor should they rewrite it, and assume Congress always wants to write a law that works. (Dare these judges claim mental telepathy along with authority to sit as a continuous ad hoc Constitutional committee?)

Justice Scalia wrote bluntly and forcefully. Perhaps he always wanted to say this, but respected the unwritten Code of Omertà and kept things to his own chambers or the Court’s conference room. Until the last two days, that is. The Court, says Scalia, threatens democracy itself. The majorities have turned American government into a government of men, not of laws. Written laws subject to quick change by a committee have no lasting force. They last only so long as the current membership of that committee wants them to last.

Chief Justice Roberts added the high drama of reading his dissent from the bench! But he lays himself open to a charge of hypocrisy, though: what he accused Mr. Justice Kennedy of doing in Obergefell, he did himself in King. Everyone knows that.

Why not accept what the judges have said?

In any event, apologists for the King case will ask why anyone would oppose “helping people out” to get health insurance. They forget: they do so at someone else’s expense. The Court, twice now, sanctioned outright theft from some for the unearned, unpaid benefit of others.

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Concerning Obergefell, most apologists carefully hold the Court merely said no government can interfere with how intimate a pair of roommates wants to be. But what happens when a cluster of roommates suddenly apply for a marriage license? Megyn Kelly asks that here. What other marriages must the government recognize next? Did V. C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, Petals on the Wind, If There Be Thorns, Seeds of Yesterday) foretell a vision of the future even Alvin Toffler missed? What moral or legal arguments did the Court leave that could possibly stop such things?

Nor does the matter stop with “consenting adults.” Caterers, florists, bakers, photographers, and other businesses who help out with weddings must now “consent” to taking active part in a ceremony that should not take place. And the activists have already targeted ministers. Two wealthy male roommates filed a challenge in the U.K. to a new law saying elements of the Church of England may opt out of “solemnising” such relationships. Of course, the advocates will say this case differs from any similar case in the United States. The Church of England is the Established Church. We do not have established churches in America. But the Internal Revenue Service treats all churches as tax-exempt public charities, taking tax-deductible contributions, as per Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. A “Progressive” activist does not distinguish a tax deduction from a government check. He calls both “subsidies.” Of course, he also says anyone who believes in God, deludes himself and belongs on a psychiatric ward. And that all money belongs to the government, except what the government “gives back,” whether by check or by graciously letting people subtract money from “taxable income.”

Any American can readily see what these judges have set up. A Committee of Judges will decide what rights you have. This Committee, this Star Chamber, will force you to associate, or do business with, those the Committee says you will do business with. The Committee will accept the obvious diagnosis of Richard Dawkins (that all who believe, self-delude), and forbid anyone to act on any conscience but the collective conscience of the government schools. And the Committee will expropriate all property. (“Due process of law”? The judges will deliberate, and will “proceed” “duly” in so acting.)

We are not spoilsports!

Those who welcome the rulings in King and Obergefell will quickly throw this epithet at any who oppose them: spoilsport. They have a problem. The cannot call any loser “spoilsport” or “sore loser,” if they changed the rules in mid-game to win. Let a candid world understand, as Thomas Jefferson said: they did not win fair-and-square. Not even close. The Framers set up a government of laws. The judges overthrew this. These rogue judges now work like a continuous Constitutional committee. When they do that, they turn the American system into a government of men. And when they do that, these judges do not behave well. No less than three of their number have called them out on this. Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito might as well have told the American public: you need not accede to, you need not acquiesce in, you need not abide by, these infamous acts. (CNAV apologizes to the late United States Senator and Ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, for borrowing this apt turn of phrase.)

How to fight the wild judges

Governor Scott Walker (R-Wisc.) thinks he has a way to fight the wild judges: amend the Constitution to erase their decisions. But neither he nor any of the rest of us can assure ourselves the Supreme Court–excuse me, the Constitutional Committee–will respect that. That assumes such an amendment will pass. Fewer than twelve States even cared to define marriage traditionally in their own Constitutions. Why should the rest give an unripe fig about claiming a right they won’t even exercise themselves?

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Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) wants to strike the judges where they live. He would force them to stand for re-election. He would not let anyone “run against them.” Instead, each judge would have to stand, every eight years, for an up-or-down vote of confidence. If a majority of the people in the jurisdiction vote to retain a judge, the judge stays. Otherwise, he goes, and the President “nominate[s], and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate,…appoint[s]” someone to replace that judge. Twenty States, Senator Cruz reminds us, already do this, or something like this.

That actually would help–long-term. We have a problem now. To solve it, we should remove two members of the Supreme Court on impeachment for, and conviction of, a high misdemeanor in office.

Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Elena Kagan both committed impeachable offenses in the lead-up to the release of the opinions in Obergefell. Ruth Bader Ginsburg brazenly officiated at same-sex “weddings” as if the Court had already ruled. Never mind the Supreme Court does not rule until they release their opinion. She and Kagan both advocated publicly for this outcome. The Court rules forbid such behavior. (Not to mention, the respondents in one of the four same-sex “marriage” cases tried to force them both to disqualify themselves, and the Court not only refused to consider the motion but even managed to lose it in their paperwork stack.)

Of course, Justice Scalia would seem more than glad to testify against Mr. Justice Kennedy for his rewrite of the law, if someone wanted to bring Articles of Impeachment for that. But that might prove shakier than calling out Ginsburg and Kagan on blatant breaches of Court rules. (The Chief Justice, though, bears investigation! Rumors that he adopted two Irish children and passed them off as Costa Ricans, have dogged him for almost ten years. If he so acted, he broke Irish law and certain treaties. Maybe Obama, knowing this, blackmailed him at least twice.)

Articles of Impeachment need 51 percent of the House of Representatives to bring, and two-thirds of the Senators present to convict on. A popular movement could start now to call on the House to impeach these two judges. Any number of popular petition sites could give enough raw data for any House or Senate candidate to use. The Senate might even be one more election away from getting two-thirds of its members all on the side of the Constitution against the wild judges. And if enough “blue” Senators in “red” States saw their seats under threat, they might sooner vote to remove two obviously in-your-face rogue Justices who made jenny-asses of themselves and demonstrably brought the Court, and indeed all judges, into scandal and disrepute.

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But: the Senate must take care not merely to remove such a judge, but to forbid said judge ever again to hold office of honor, trust or profit under the United States. The Senate failed to do this in the case of Judge Alcee Hastings, who took bribes from litigants while trying their cases. For that reason, Judge Alcee Hastings became Representative Alcee Hastings, Democrat of the Fourteenth District of Florida. (Now there’s an idea: as soon as we have two thirds of the House on our side, let them expel the former Judge Hastings and correct that mistake.)

Either rein in these wild judges, or accept that “judicial tyranny” Mark Levin of the Landmark Legal Foundation has long suspected we already live under.

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Terry A. Hurlbut has been a student of politics, philosophy, and science for more than 35 years. He is a graduate of Yale College and has served as a physician-level laboratory administrator in a 250-bed community hospital. He also is a serious student of the Bible, is conversant in its two primary original languages, and has followed the creation-science movement closely since 1993.

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[…] Greg Abbott of Texas did not wait. He sounded a call to fight back. First he said what CNAV has said about the Supreme Court’s marriage decision, and about the Court now acting like some kind of […]

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