Danger In Black Robes - Legal Lynchings and Other Judicial Outrages -- Lafcadio T. Lion and Strawberry Sage and Friends Fun Forum

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Date Posted: 19:19:36 08/31/03 Sun
Author: Thomas Paine Lion - calling for Common Sense Once Again and wearing an Indian disguise
Author Host/IP: qam1c-sif-70.monroeaccess.net / 12.27.215.71
Subject: Danger In Black Robes - Legal Lynchings and Other Judicial Outrages

Is our nation at risk and, from whom?

Do we need to fear the dark forces of evil in the guise of Al Qaeda terrorists, or is there another enemy of freedom more insidious, even more dangerous to our way of life lurking in plain sight? I think there is such a force and it is one of our own making.

Recently, United States Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy broke the normal discretionary reticence of Supreme Court Justices to speak out publicly on matters of legal precedence and policy. He told a group of attorneys that he opposes Congressionally mandated minimum sentences for those convicted of committing federal crimes, citing a need for more �judicial discretion� in sentencing. He obviously forgets that those mandatory sentences were passed into law by lawmakers fed up with widely divergent and far too lenient sentences by the wise heads of our federal judiciary. What earned one person a fine and probation in one jurisdiction could send another man in another jurisdiction away for years without parole or probation. Personal bias had overwhelmed our judicial system and lawmakers properly put a stop to it. Even with these mandatory sentences, many judges routinely sentence offenders to less than the legally mandated minimum sentences under those guidelines as established by the legislative branch of our government - the way our national Constitution says it should be done. Attorney General John Ashcroft's Department of Justice has begun keeping records of those judges and their decisions at the request of President George W. Bush. The record so far is shameful.

That pronouncement by Kennedy is not the first time a Supreme Court Justice has spoken publicly on matters of public policy, but it is the latest signal of the rocky road we have allowed to be built on the backs of our personal freedoms. You see, federal judges have a lifetime sinecure. They cannot be removed from office except by impeachment for very specific types of misbehavior.

The framers of our government had an admirable goal when they designed a three-part system of government that included a federal judiciary immune from faddish accountability and supposedly free from political pressure. Reality has shown that the framers were short sighted, however. They obviously could not see those who would enjoy the benefits of the hard-earned freedoms they had just purchased with their own blood and fortunes forsaking their intent. They had no idea a group of judicial hooligans in government purchased black robes such as the likes of the entire Ninth U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals could ever gain power. They had no idea that a federal judge such as Myron Thompson would ever disgrace the ranks of jurists.

Justice John Marshall, one of the original members of the Supreme Court of this land summed up quite well a portent of the judicial arrogance to come in the 1790s when he said, �the law is what we say it is.� The �we� to whom he referred were his fellow Supreme Court justices. That same panel declared in 1798 that while citizens of this nation do have the right to examine any law and determine for themselves that the law is not applicable in a specific case against a specific citizen or not appropriate at all, any officer of the court that dared tell American citizens serving as jurors in any criminal case that reality was subject to immediate judicial sanction and punishment. The process is called �jury nullification.� Marshall�s Supreme Court feared the people and did nothing to hide their fear. After all, this nation had just been forged from the crucible of a war waged by common citizens who wished to throw off the mantle of an arrogant and non-responsive government in England. We should have read teh warning signals way back then.

Is the Supreme Court truly free of political manipulation? You decide. When FDR wanted to do some things in 1932 that he knew would not get past the Supreme Court, as it was then constituted, he enlarged the Court from seven to nine members, with FDR naming the two new additions, to provide him with a group in which a majority supported his wishes. Over the years prior to and subsequent to that hijacking of Constitutional law we have seen many similar events. Supreme Court justices now routinely create rights, make laws and impose taxes from the bench. They did likewise prior to FDR and it continues.

During the 2000 electoral debacle in Florida, we saw blatantly politically motivated justices on the Florida Supreme Court ignore written law, passed by the Florida legislature as Constitutionally mandated by the Florida Constitution and long standing United States election laws, in a shameless attempt to override those legally enacted laws to provide a benefit to a member of their own political party. It got so bad that the Chief Justice of that court refused to take part in their final acts of defiance against Florida�s Constitutional law. What many Gore-Lieberman supporters called a �theft of the election� by the United States Supreme Court was anything but such an act. The actual case law decided was that the members of the Florida Supreme Court had violated the Florida Constitution with their partisan and biased rulings and that those rulings were also in direct violation of United States law regarding elections. The end result was that, when the law was applied properly, George Bush won that state�s electoral votes, a fact subsequently confirmed repeatedly by numerous unbiased recounts of recounts of recounts.

The Florida debate moved properly through channels to be heard by the United States Supreme Court. Depending on your political penchant, the U. S. Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the Florida Supreme Court had violated federal election laws in their decisions. Some foolishly argue that this decision was politically motivated and was the result of appointments to the court by past Republican Presidents. It is a specious and almost criminally foolish argument and misstatement of the true facts. George H. W. Bush, our 41st President, appointed one member of the four dissenting justices to his position and parisan politicians almost lynched him during the confirmation process. So much for political tail wagging. While the argument perhaps serves to assuage the feelings of those who failed to benefit by the nearly successful attempted coup d� etat of the Florida Supreme Court, it is flawed on its face.

I agree with our Founding Fathers. We must have a court that is free of political pressure. Perhaps we erred in our structuring of that judiciary, however. We have created a super class of citizens and government that does not have to respond to the will of the people in any way. They forgot their own stated belief that any government, any legal system, any law enforcement system derives its powers only from the consent of the governed as was so eloquently stated in our Declaration of Independence. That consent has fallen by the wayside and it can�t seem to get up any more.

It is near on to impossible for the average citizen to do anything about the overstepping of bounds by appointed-for-life judges and the imposition of their will on the governed � with or without their consent.

One needs look no further than the U. S. Judicial Ninth Circuit to find a group of federal judges so out of control and who exhibit an arrogant disregard for the consent of the governed. This west-coast-based band of judicial bandits is the most overturned group of judges in our nation�s brief, by international standards, history. They routinely attempt to legislate from the bench, a Constitutionally prohibited practice. They have openly expressed their individual disdain for public sentiment and legally legislated laws they don�t like. Not the least of these actions is to declare the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance by school children to be somehow something that is now unconstitutional. They have also ruled that the Second Amendment to our Constitution does not mean what its simple words say because they don�t like what it says. One judge on that court has gone so far as to actually make that statement in public for news cameras and reporters. He stated that "the right of teh people" spelled out plainly in the Second Amendment does not refer to the people (citizens). In one case, the Chief Judge for the Circuit broke the rules about his participation in a decision to assure that he controlled the final decision of the panel that was not supposed to include him. He ran roughshod over the rules to make certain he and only those who agreed with him comprised the panel that would rule in a matter after he discovered that the judges who were supposed to be on that panel were inclined to an opposing ruling.

Perhaps our current judges, both on the federal and state levels need to be reminded that our nation came into being after a group of average citizens held a tea party in Boston Harbor to serve notice on their British predecessors that we won�t accept such arrogance from any ruler or potentate. Under Georgia law, the Governor appoints judges and getting rid of one is nearly impossible under the farcical system designed to protect those political appointees from answering to the people of the state who must pay their salaries and live under their judicial pronouncements �from on high.� Naturally, the protected class of judges are opposed to changing how things are done in Georgia.

Our legal system is broken and it must be fixed before it gets worse. We need to find a way to make all judges, not just federal judges, accountable to the citizens somehow. That doesn�t necessarily mean that we ought to make judges run for election every few years, but it does mean that we can no longer afford a system that ignores the will and consent of the governed.

Once we start down that rocky road, as we obviously have, the destination can only be a threat to all our freedoms. Our nation is almost evenly divided on many crucial issues facing us. It is impossible to say that we have consented when half of us feel infringement of our rights with many of the more controversial decisions handed down by justices who bring the baggage of their personal political beliefs with them and hide them under their black robes.

The recent flap over a display of the Ten Commandments in the rotunda of the Alabama Supreme Court Building is an excellent argument that it is well past the time that we repair the problem. One man, Federal Judge Myron Thompson has arrogantly ruled that Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore must remove a 2� ton stone presentation of the Ten Commandments from public view because three archetypical liberal attorneys say they are offended by seeing the monument. It matters not one iota to Thompson or the Plaintiffs that the monument includes quotes from prior political and judicial leaders of this nation or that opinion polls commissioned by self described liberal media outlets show that more than 77% of Americans don�t see the display of the monument as any threat to religious freedom or as an attempt to establish a state sponsored religion. He ignores teh beam in the eye of the Court when he overlooks the prominent display of the Ten Commandments in the United States Supreme Court chambers.

Less than 40% of the citizens of the colonies brought about the events that resulted in the decision of our forefathers to issue our political foundation document, the Declaration of Independence. More than 70% of Americans are opposed to gay marriages, a darling position of the far left that may soon be visited by the U. S. Supreme Court. What happened to �consent of the governed� as a bedrock principle of our government? Judges in California, Washington State, Oregon, Colorado and other states have thrown out laws passed by popular elections � sometimes by overwhelming margins � that were often legally submitted ballot referenda propositions originating with the citizens themselves using teh laws as they existed to submit the questions to voters.

We need another Jim Garrison, the now deceased former District Attorney for Orleans Parish (City of New Orleans). When the combined judges there began making his life miserable and prevented his office from doing its work, he used the power of his elective office that allowed him to assign office space and courtrooms to judges. One Monday morning, all the judges showed up to discover that their offices had all been moved into the public restrooms. The judges didn�t last out the first day before caving in.

After all, what is the difference between a white-robed member of the Ku Klux Klan at a cross burning and a black-robed judge who stacks the deck against the citizens who must obey his rulings under penalty of law? Remember, anyone daring to disobey the ruling of that black-robed bigot is subject to loss of personal freedom, loss of personal finances or even his life if he dares run counter to a law enforcement officer with a gun intent on enforcing that ruling. Just as the white-robed Klansmen would dispense roughshod �justice� to �uppity n****rs,� our black robed modern day judicial Klansmen will lynch any who dare dispute their pronouncements. It is a part of the shameful history of a large portion of our nation (both in the northern and southern states), those white-robed dictators used the established legal system to carry out their orders. But then, isn�t that what this band of self-declared demagogues is doing now?

Didn�t we just go through this just 227 years ago? Are we going to have to do it again?

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Re: Danger In Black Robes - I am not alone in this -- One if by land, two if by Judges' Orders Lion, 13:18:01 09/01/03 Mon