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By Larry Pratt
April 24, 2004
NewsWithViews.com
The travails of Manny Miranda show clearly
the proposition that the courts are in the business of legislating.
Any claims that judicial orders and decisions are part of the rule
of law are mostly pretense. Judges are simply politicians wrapped in
black robes and given the luxury of legislating without
accountability.
Until recently, Miranda, an attorney, was
serving as chief counsel to Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), Majority Leader
of the U.S. Senate. Before that, Miranda had served as counsel to
Sen. Orrin Hatch on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
While working at the Committee, a staffer
brought to Miranda's attention that memos of the then-majority
Democrats were available on a common server without any password
protection. The same was true for Republican memos. Miranda
eventually took an interest, mostly to find out when hearings would
be held, because the Democrats gave the Republicans almost no lead
time to prepare.
At one point Miranda's attention was drawn
to the talking points against Bush's judicial nominees prepared for
the Democrat Senators - often by outside interest groups such as
trial lawyers, abortion groups and civil rights groups. He found
that a former employee of the NAACP had gone to work for Sen. Edward
Kennedy (D-MA). Working for Kennedy, Olati Johnson wrote a memo
suggesting that the confirmation hearing for Ohio Supreme Court
Justice Julia Smith Gibbons be delayed. Gibbons had been nominated
for a position on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.
Kennedy and the Democrats held off the
hearing until after an affirmative action case (viewed as the most
important such case in 25 years) was decided by the Sixth Circuit.
Why? Gibbons was viewed as likely to vote against the liberals and
that would have tipped the decision the other way.
Isn't Kennedy's footdragging far more
contemptible than what Miranda did? After receiving a good deal of
indignant news coverage in the partisan press, Miranda was forced to
resign by Frist before the Senate Sergeant at Arms had even
conducted an investigation of hacking the Democrats' computer files.
(How one can hack a document that is posted in the open has yet to
be explained by Sen. Frist or anyone else.) That same partisan press
has not had a thing to say about the memo from the NAACP/Kennedy
aide Johnson.
Frist and Hatch had both promised Miranda
that if he "resigned," they would refocus the press
coverage toward the content of the Democrat memos. That promise has
not been kept - nor have those Senators even attempted to keep it.
In another "talking points" memo
for Kennedy, Jay Bybee, a nominee for the Ninth Circuit, was
described as "awful." Among his "shortcomings"
was his opposition to gun control.
Miranda makes a very important observation.
Until the successful fight against confirming Texas Supreme Court
Justice Priscilla Owens to the Fifth Circuit, judicial battles had
been masked in procedural fights. Filibusters would be conducted
because a candidate was alleged to lack a judicial temperament which
was usually a code phrase for a nominee who thinks the Constitution
means what it says. The Owens nomination was blocked on openly
ideological grounds.
In other words, the memos, and now the
public record itself, make it impossible to believe that a judicial
order is necessarily a lawful order. Judicial orders and decisions
will usually be found upon inspection to be nothing more than
legislating by "legislators" who do not have to stand for
reelection. Calling these legislators judges confuses the issue.
Another question. Why does Congress allow
this to happen? The answer is, because a socialist agenda can be
imposed from the top down on an unwilling population with no
consequences for the elected office holders. Congress can blame the
courts and the courts can sit and smirk.
Voters had better start asking candidates
for the House of Representatives if they are willing to file
resolutions of impeachment against judges making unconstitutional
rulings. All federal candidates also need to be made to commit to
using Congress' constitutional powers to strip jurisdiction from
federal courts. If the courts cannot get involved in various issues,
they cannot legislate there at all.
Manny Miranda should be regarded as a
national hero. What the nation does with his gift will determine
whether we rein in the judiciary or continue to allow it to
tyrannize us.
My interview with Miranda can be heard on
the web at www.gunowners.org/radio.htm.
© 2004 Larry Pratt - All
Rights Reserved
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