Sandra Day O'Connor rips into GOP, DeLay, Cornyn, and warns of the beginnings

[Guest guest]

" Zepp " <zepp

Fri, 10 Mar 2006 08:35:31 -0800

[Zepps_News] Sandra Day O'Connor rips into GOP, DeLay,

Cornyn, and warns of the " beginnings " of dictatorship

 

 

 

 

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/attytood/archives/002903.html

 

 

Breaking: Sandra Day O'Connor rips into GOP, DeLay, Cornyn, and

warns of the " beginnings " of dictatorship

 

 

[Zeppnote: of course, her pivotal role in the Bush vs. Gore decision

will go down as one of the factors that enabled this dictatorship]

 

 

NPR's Nina Totenberg aired an amazing story this morning about a talk

that just-resigned Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor gave at

Georgetown University. The first woman to serve on the High Court

wouldn't allow her actual words to be broadcast, and that's a shame,

because -- based on Totenberg's report -- every American needs to hear

what she said. The Reagan appointee who became a moderate and an

American icon -- Bush v. Gore notwithstanding -- all but named names

in thinly veiled attacks on former House majority leader Tom DeLay and

Texas Sen. John Cornyn, and ended with a stunning warning.

 

We transcribed some of the report, which you can listen to here

<http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5255712>.

 

O'Connor told her Georgetown audience that judges can make presidents,

Congress and governors " really really mad, " and that if judges don't

make people angry, they aren't doing their job. But she said judicial

effectiveness is " premised on the notion that we won't be subject to

retaliation for our judicial acts. " While hailing the American system

of rights and privileges, she noted that these don't protect the

judiciary, that " people do " :

 

/Then, she took aim at former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. She

didn't name him, but she quoted his attacks on the courts at a meeting

of the conservative Christian group Justice Sunday last year, when

DeLay took out after the courts for its rulings on abortion, prayer,

and the Terry Schiavo case. This, said O'Connor, was after the federal

courts had applied Congress' one-time-only statute about Schiavo as it

was written, not, said O'Connor, as the Congressman might have wished

it were written. The response to this flagrant display of judicial

restraint, said O'Conner, her voice dripping with sarcasm, was that

the congressman blasted the courts. /

 

/It gets worse, she said, noting that death threats against judges are

increasing. It doesn't help, she said, when a high-profile senator

suggests there may be a connection between violence against judges and

decisions that the senator disagrees with. She didn't name him, but it

was Texas Sen. John Cornyn who made that statement after a Georgia

judge was murdered in court and the family of a federal judge in

Illinois murdered in the judge's home./

 

Now, the kicker:

 

/O'Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately

for so-called judicial reforms -- recommendations for the massive

impeachment of judges stripping the courts of jurisdictions and

cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these

might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for

decision that political leaders disagree with/

 

/I, said O' Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly

partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing

countries and formerly Communist countries, where interference with an

independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'Connor

said we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the

judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of

degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship she said, but we

should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings./

 

If Georgetown or anyone else has an audiotape or videotape of the

retired justice's words, we would strongly urge them to release it

(with her permission). If the NPR report accurately reflects what she

said, this rises to the level of President Dwight Eisenhower's 1961

warning about the " military-industrial complex " -- and should be heard

by all.

 

 

 

--

" Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government

talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court

order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about

chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order

before we do so "

-George W. Bush, April 20, 2004