Judges Deliver The Constitutional Smack-Down
Wednesday brought good news to anyone concerned about maintaining the three-branch (tribrachial?) state of government in the U.S.A. A Federal court “struck down two provisions of the Patriot Act dealing with searches and intelligence gathering, saying they violate the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures with regard to criminal prosecutions,” says CNN. Hurrah and huzzah! As Jim Macdonald quips over at Making Light, “Two down, and the whole rest of ‘em to go.”
Perhaps I overstate the unanimousness (unanimosity? unison?) of good feeling amongst good patriots. There are those who do see this as a scary bad thing. I know, I know–weird, huh? Well, let’s see if I can shed a little light on the way they talk about this sort of thing, the better for y’all to understand their point of view…
“Another power-grabbing move by activist judges!” That means, “Another judge ruled in a way I don’t like!” Really. That’s all it means. How do you know? Well, think about who’s saying it. Those folks accusing Wednesday’s ruling, or Roe v. Wade, or Lawrence v. Texas, of being the product of “activist judges”–did they also complain about those “activist judges” on the Supreme Court bench calling a halt to the 2000 Gore/Bush recount?
“Unilateral dictatorship of unelected tyrants!” This one’s got two sentiments rolled up into one. The unilateral dictatorship bit means “9 judges oughtn’t to be able to overrule 538 legislators, no matter how unconstitutional the legislators’ actions are. Majority should rule!” And then there’s the unelected bit, which means, “I hate that I can’t influence judges by lobbying or threatening not to vote for them!”
“This is just courts ruling in favor of courts again.” That kinda means exactly what it says. Why, you might ask, is it a bad thing that courts should rule in favor of the judiciary branch retaining its power as a check on the other two? I’m not exactly sure. I suppose the complainers completely trust the President–that being Bush now or whoever it’s gonna be next, Democrat or Republican–to decide whether the FBI needs to listen in on random citizens’ phone calls or perform a search of random citizens’ homes. I suppose, since they trust whoever’s in the Oval Office so completely, they think it’s OK for Congress to remove all judiciary oversight on such Big Brotherly conduct.
I sorta envy them. That sort of faith must make it easy to sleep at night. Of course, it’s hard to practice eternal vigilance when you’re sleeping. And if you don’t practice eternal vigilance, liberty goes unpaid-for! And if liberty goes unpaid-for, it gets repo’d! OH NOES!
That’s probably enough of a lesson for one blog post. Too much more and we’d probably overload our buffers. It’s rather a steep learning curve, trying to understand the minds of those yearning for a monarchy in the United States of America.