Former House speaker Newt Gingrich appears to be running against the Constitution as much as against President Obama these days. Gingrich has been promising to round up judges who do not agree with him — statements that have even conservative figures like Michael Mukasey, former attorney general during the George W. Bush administration, denouncing him. Mukasey was the attorney general who blocked prosecutions into torture, but finds Gingrich truly scary. I am currently scheduled to be on Hardball tonight to discuss this latest attack on the judiciary.
On CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Gingrich indicated that he would call judges who hand down controversial opinions to appear before Congress to answer for their transgressions and would send federal law enforcement to arrest judges failed to appear.
It is the latest attack on the judicial branch — attacks that led Mukasey to denounce his proposals as “dangerous, ridiculous, totally irresponsible, outrageous, off-the-wall and would reduce the entire judicial system to a spectacle.”
Here is one of the exchanges:
SCHIEFFER: Let me just ask you this and we’ll talk about enforcing it, because one of the things you say is that if you don’t like what a court has done, the congress should subpoena the judge and bring him before congress and hold a congressional hearing. Some people say that’s unconstitutional. But I’ll let that go for a minute.
I just want to ask you from a practical standpoint, how would you enforce that? Would you send the capital police down to arrest him?GINGRICH: If you had to.
SCHIEFFER: You would?
GINGRICH: Or you instruct the Justice Department to send the U.S. Marshal. Let’s take the case of Judge Biery. I think he should be asked to explain a position that radical. How could he say he’s going to jail the superintendent over the word “benediction” and “invocation”? Because before you could — because I would then encourage impeachment, but before you move to impeach him you’d like to know why he said it.
Now clearly since the congress has….SCHIEFFER: What if he didn’t come? What if he said no thank you I’m not coming?
GINGRICH: Well, that is what happens in impeachment cases. In an impeachment case, the House studies whether or not — the House brings them in, the House subpoenas them. As a general rule they show up.
It is the very definition of demagogy to dangle out the image of judges being clapped in irons to satisfy citizens angry over decisions by judges. Article III is designed to guarantee independence from people like Gingrich so that judges can rule in favor of the Constitution and, yes, at times take positions disliked by the majority.
Source: Washington Post
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Rights don’t come from pieces of old parchment signed by a few dead aristocrats. Rights come from the nature of reality and man. It is man’s nature to desire freedom though brainwashing has indeed gone a long way and now the state is increasing to new methods like medication, more surveillance, and more brutish intimidation. For example, the cops around here violate the law constantly. I never see them use a turn signal, see them speed constantly, they park illegally though thats been legalized officially, and they are brutish dickheads. But they don’t work for you. You aren’t the people to these jackoff pigs. They tell you so to your face, and it is true. You can’t fire them. You pay them to oppress you. Some mean well, but the vast majority are just bullies. They are screened to get nice compliant nazis.
I admit I jumped in precipitously and without having read the entire thread. I still stand by the opinion but i see it doesn’t really answer this situation.
Anyway. I think now you are into a whole new discussion. That is the corruption which allows the Government to circumvent or ignore the rights of citizens legally by creating the correctly worded justification; valid or not.
I agree with you that they can do anything they want to and about the correctly worded statement.
I do believe though that there are still some restraints on their actions not because of the law or the Constitution; because of the public image created.
if you refer to the Nazi regime in germany you will note that they did not institue the full measure of oppression immediately upon taking power. it was not until they had secured the complete devotion and co-operation of the people that they began to crack down and exhibit the most extreme of their behaviors.
our situation today is much the same. The Nazis; and I do believe these are the same people ex. GWBush. His grandfather was a Nazi and his father is in bed with the same Arabians who are decendents of those who worked with the Nazis. His whole family is riddled with Nazis and yet he was elected president. What do we learn from this?
(I use the word Nazi because it is appropriate. Many people scoff at the word but it is a word that needs to be dragged out and used. it is no good calling a snake a rabbitt. No one will see the danger)
We learn that these Nazis are already in position to act. To jump up and scream “Sieg Heil!” But until they bring the American people to their knees they must still excersise care.
So………..there is a limit to how far they will take advantage of the ability to do anything they want.
In all fairness it seems that you want to argue Political Philosophy.
Most of these guys ; like Gene are lawyers. It really isn’t fair to start a discussion of law and then claim victory or superiority on the basis of a political Philosophy position.
These guys are going to discuss the legal possiblities and various viewpoints based on the law as written; not the right or wrong of the law.
It’s what they do. Don’t get me wrong though. if you want to discuss the philosophical questions and problems inherant in the law ; they will be more than happy to oblige.
But we really do need to keep these two areas seperate or we are doing ourselves and any attourney who is asked for an opinion a dis-service
Bill,
“Again, I ask you, what is the probable cause for arresting anyone, even the boss, for crime committed by another?”
RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR
They are employees in the scope and control of the superintendent.
“Again, I ask you, what is the probable cause for arresting anyone, even the boss, for crime committed by another?”
The probable cause is the violation of the order by someone in the scope and control of the superintendent. The violation is in and of itself probable cause to issue an arrest warrant.
The ignorance is here is entirely yours.
Gene you just do not understand the Constitutionally required standard of Probable Cause. Probable Cause is person specific. It can’t be transferred to another for any reason at all. Probable Cause must be specific to the person arrested for a specific crime clearly articulated in the affidavit in support of an arrest.
So once again, although an employer can be held LIABLE (in civil court) for the actions of an employee, he cannot be CHARGED WITH a CRIME for a crime committed by his employee.
God Almighty! Do you know what you are advocating here!? You flip out by my assertion that Congress should be able to ask a judge questions when he has clearly ruled against the Constitution, but you are willing to throw out the 4th Amendment by nullifying the Probable Cause standard so we can maintain the status quo when it comes to our judicial system.
Are you telling us a judge can order you arrested for a rape committed by your employee?
RESPONDEAT SUPERIOR applies to civil liability, not crimes!
Bron,
Overturning so-called bad decisions without going through the proper appeals process is restricting the courts. What is being discussed here by Newt and his friends is not trying to amend the Constitution or legislating around decisions, but by intimidating and “jailing” judges!
I can’t even see why you bother with these silly arguments. The constitution says the federal government can do anything it thinks is necessary and proper, good for the general welfare, and impacting commerce. Clearly taking taxpayers and putting them in prison impacts commerce. Some people clearly make money building and running prisons, but the mass of the population is poorer. The constitution allows anything and everything. All it takes is a couple, maybe a few well constructed sentences.
Gene, you know not of what you speak. You don’t know the difference between civil law standards and criminal law standards. I’m embarrassed for you not because you are ignorant, (didn’t say stupid!) but you think you know so much “that isn’t so.”
Again, I ask you, what is the probable cause for arresting anyone, even the boss, for crime committed by another? CRIME Gene,,,CRIME! Not a civil judgement of somekind…an actual crime! Like violating a court order for example.
Let’s say a teacher yells God Bless America and God Bless all of our graduating students! (To think, such lawlessness in our schools! Can you imagine how offended all the atheists would be!?!)
But what is the probable cause for arresting the Superintendent in that case?
“Try it…tell us what the superintendent did, SPECIFICALLY to violate the judges order.”
He didn’t do anything nor did the people he had control over in the agency relationship. Probably because he was told he would go to jail if they did. Yet another specious straw man from you.
“Please tell me what the probable cause declaration would read like (in a nutshell) describing the evidence that would convince reasonable person that the superintendent committed a misdemeanor or a felony.”
The probable cause for issuing an arrest warrant for contempt of court is a finding of fact by the judge that their lawful order has been disobeyed either in camera or out of camera. The violation of the order is sufficient probable cause.
“So let’s say a parent holds up the dangerous and offensive John 3:16 sign while her daughter walks up to get her diploma. The judge gets a report from his investigator and orders the superintendent arrested.”
Irrelevant. The parent is not an “the Medina Valley Independent School District and its officials, agents, servants, and employees, as well as all persons acting in concert with them”. If the parent acted on their own volition without prompting from a district employee, there is no violation of the order.
“Getting back to what it is reported this judge did. REPORTEDLY, this judge told the superintendent of a school district that if any ONE of HUNDREDS of parents, students and employees who attended the high school graduation did anything that this judge, such as he is, believes to be a violation of his order, he would jail the Superintendent.”
A lie. The TRO, which I provided links to, applies to “the Medina Valley Independent School District and its officials, agents, servants, and employees, as well as all persons acting in concert with them”. Parents are not mentioned at all as long as they are not “the Medina Valley Independent School District and its officials, agents, servants, and employees, as well as all persons acting in concert with them”.
You are simply wrong, Bill, no matter what gyration you apply to your twisted thought on the matter.
“Mike I have written hundreds of these; you can do it on the inside of matchbook if you had too. But in this case, I PROMISE YOU, our local superior court judges would laugh me out of their office if I came in with these facts and asked for a warrant to arrest anyone!”
You haven’t written jack shit, slick. A cop knows better than the drivel you are spewing. Violating a court order is prime facie probable cause for issuing an arrest warrant. The court may do so sua sponte upon a finding of fact that the order has been violated. As to you getting laughed at for trying “as a cop” to get an arrest warrant on these facts? You’re damn straight you’d get laughed at. Why? Because this is a civil matter, not a criminal matter. The police can’t arrest someone in a civil matter without a warrant from a judge nor can they apply for a warrant for anything other than a criminal matter.
Government is incapable of protecting rights. To even attempt to do so, it must first violate them by robbing everyone. Evil is not necessary. Numerous private arbitration and security systems have functioned smoothly and peacefully including the fairs of champagne and in numerous areas inside America during salutary neglect and in the not-so-wild west. An ancap system has not been implemented yet. The theory did not really develop until the 70s. But ALL services and commodities have been and are now being produced privately. Its a simple matter to unchain mankind from this totalitarian freaks, all it takes is privatizing everything. It could even be done in stages though it would be better to “push the red button.” Government planning is incapable of matching the adjustment power of individual planning. One way or another, government collapse is coming and pretty soon.
Mike Spindell,
My apologies might be in order. Can anyone confirm that the judge ordered the superintendent jailed if someone in the crowd, or a student or an employee did something to violate the judges order?
That is the premise I have been arguing on but is it true? I assume it is, because no one has denied it.
Ancap:
You need some government to protect your rights. Anarchy is who has the biggest gun. How are you going to deal with that? Alexander conquered a good portion of the known world in his day because he had a really big army.
There needs to be some universal system to govern a state or it breaks up into small polities with local influence. That is a recipe ripe for the pickings by a person like Alexander or Darius or Xerxes. Although the Persians did not succeed the Greeks ended up fighting amongst themselves.
So much for a 1000 points of light.
Mike Spindell believes I am “bullying” by simply asking him to answer a question that he repeatedly dodges.
Mike, anyone can make a legal arrest . “Citizens arrest?”
The Constitution however, much to Obama’s distaste, is a list of what gov’t cannot do to infringe on your rights.
One of the clearly stated rights that we have as Americans is to be free in our homes and in our persons. No branch of gov’t may deprive a citizen of his freedom without probable cause.
Fourth Amendment – Protection from unreasonable search and seizure.
———–“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” ———–
Getting back to what it is reported this judge did. REPORTEDLY, this judge told the superintendent of a school district that if any ONE of HUNDREDS of parents, students and employees who attended the high school graduation did anything that this judge, such as he is, believes to be a violation of his order, he would jail the Superintendent.
So let’s say a parent holds up the dangerous and offensive John 3:16 sign while her daughter walks up to get her diploma. The judge gets a report from his investigator and orders the superintendent arrested.
Please tell me what the probable cause declaration would read like (in a nutshell) describing the evidence that would convince reasonable person that the superintendent committed a misdemeanor or a felony.
Mike I have written hundreds of these; you can do it on the inside of matchbook if you had too. But in this case, I PROMISE YOU, our local superior court judges would laugh me out of their office if I came in with these facts and asked for a warrant to arrest anyone! They would think I was joking or they were on Punk’d.
Try it…tell us what the superintendent did, SPECIFICALLY to violate the judges order.
Bron,
“I dont think you can “restrict” the courts but you should be able to overturn bad law.”
And they can. By either reworking legislation that conforms to the Constitution or by Amendment. Anything SCOTUS does can be undone as long as it is done properly.
**************
Mike,
I’d just like to say that moron and thug are not mutually exclusive states. 😀
rafflaw:
“How does restricting the courts help protect your rights?”
I dont think you can “restrict” the courts but you should be able to overturn bad law. The Supreme Court has made some major blunders and they [the blunders] are still influencing us to this day. It seems to me the courts are restricting our rights with no substantive limitation. When 1, 3, 6 or 9 individuals can pull shitty decisions, figuratively, out of their asses dont you think they restrict our rights?
lol. It was government that waged war. The Irish were vastly outnumbered. A central government was what the english fought to put over them, how they defeated them in the long run. The point of the irish system isn’t that its what ancaps advocate. Its very far from it. But, it was a system of private competing arbitration systems. Something you authoritarian clowns say is impossible. But, yet, there are many,many other examples in different cultures and then with different cultural aspects. Of course, the entire world was feudalistic at that time, moron! And, it still fucking is!
You are delusional on this mythical battle between the branches of the government. They all feed from the same trough. They all have the same interest in increasing the power, wealth, and perks of office and all collaborate on extending that power, albeit slightly in the direction most preferably for their preferred type of authoritarian fascism.
“But if Ireland was essentially an anarchistic (or libertarian)
society, how was law and order maintained? How was justice secured? Was there not incessant warfare and rampant criminality? To answer the last of these questions f i r s t -of course there were wars and crime. Has there ever been a society statist o r otherwise – without war and crime? But Irish 2 a r s were almost never on the scale known among other civilized* European peoples.”
From a Von Mises publication in 1971. What a twit you are A-C. Ireland was a bloody battlefield throughout that time. Yes there was no central government, just a bunch of local thugs with gangs, some pretending nobility. It was a feudal society you ninny, where for most, except those in with the local gang, life was short, miserable and brutish. You’ve made mine and others points about the basic un-workability of an Anarchic State, in the end it comes down to who’s got the most firepower. Perhaps that’s the kind of place you’d like to live in, but for most of us it would be called savagery. Peaceful, my ass, and the man who wrote that article you linked is a total moron, or in the alternative a thug.
“The resolution of the General Assembly [the Virginia Resolutions of 1798] relates to those great and extraordinary cases, in which all the forms of the Constitution may prove ineffectual against infractions dangerous to the essential rights of the parties to it. The resolution supposes that dangerous powers, not delegated, may not only be usurped and executed by the other departments, but that the judicial department also may exercise or sanction dangerous powers beyond the grant of the Constitution; and, consequently, that the ultimate right of the parties to the Constitution, to judge whether the compact has been dangerously violated, must extend to violations by one delegated authority, as well as by another; by the judiciary, as well as by the executive, or the legislature.
“However true, therefore, it may be, that the judicial department, is, in all questions submitted to it by the forms of the Constitution, to decide in the last resort, this resort must necessarily be deemed the last in relation to the authorities of the other departments of the government; not in relation to the rights of the parties to the constitutional compact, from which the judicial as well as the other departments hold their delegated trusts. On any other hypothesis, the delegation of judicial power would annul the authority delegating it; and the concurrence of this department with the others in usurped powers, might subvert for ever, and beyond the possible reach of any rightful remedy, the very Constitution which all were instituted to preserve.”
James Madison
I think he was having vision of the screwing he got just 5 years later by the court(s).
Bron,
How does restricting the courts help protect your rights? Congress certainly won’t protect them.
OS,
I won’t smoke it, but put it in pill form! 🙂
rafflaw:
“They are just upset that the Constitution keeps getting in their way. The courts have not exceeded their power.”
isnt the Slaughter house case kind of a disputation to that statement? The court trashed individual rights by upholding a patently bad law by the state of La.
I am sort of curious how a court has not exceeded their power when they basically say that the states can infringe your individual rights at will. The Evangelical Christians are going to use that case among others when they outlaw abortion state by state.
The courts have been trampling individual rights for years with impunity.
In my mind the way you read the Constitution is by keeping individual rights in the forefront of your mind. Does this limit individual liberty or does it enhance individual liberty. If the law puts a limit on individual liberty then it is an incorrect law. The original intent of the founders was individual liberty.
I shouldnt have to say this but of course you cannot kill someone or injure them or limit their rights.
raff, do you suppose we can get some of whatever it is he is smoking? It might be fun to live in a fantasy world except for the paranoid ideation.
lol at independence of the courts. obama can now arrest, torture, and murder any American, including judges, all on his say-so without evidence.
Bill,
The only ones making that “claim” are on Fox News. They are just upset that the Constitution keeps getting in their way. The courts have not exceeded their power. It is Newt’s narrow and incorrect view of the Constitution that is wrong. Taking away the independence of the courts will make it easier to take away our rights.