The latest Newsweek poll shows almost 60% of Americans favor keeping the filibuster.

Neutering the filibuster would be unpopular with Americans, nearly six in ten (57 percent) of whom would disapprove. Even one-third (33 percent) of Republicans say they would object to such a move.

[link via Buzzflash.]

by TChris

Acts of violence against judges are an affront to the judiciary, but this federal judge makes the case that turning courthouses into prison camps isn't the solution.

[O]ne nation under guard is not the answer. Tying judicial security to the war on terrorism risks destroying the very institution we seek to defend.

The answer, instead, is to "create a sensible state of elevated awareness throughout the judiciary - not only about the need for better security but about the specific nature of the risk." As Judge Kane learned from experience, the answer is not to arm judges.

Carrying a gun made me look at everyone with an attitude that made fairness and impartiality impossible. This, in the end, is too high a price to pay for judicial security: it cannot come at the cost of justice.

Abe Fortas in 1968.

That four-day talkathon in September 1968 has largely been forgotten. But some Senate Democrats want to bring it back to mind to counter a key Republican attack against their stalling tactics that have blocked confirmation votes for several of President Bush's most conservative judicial nominees. The GOP claim, asserted in speeches, articles and interviews, is that filibusters against judicial nominees are unprecedented.

Not so.

Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia gave a speech Monday. I can envision massive protests in the streets if Bush has the audacity to name him Chief Justice when Justice Rehnquist retires.

Justice Antonin Scalia criticized the Supreme Court's recent decision to strike down the juvenile death penalty, calling it the latest example of politics on the court that has made judicial nominations an increasingly bitter process.

In a 35-minute speech Monday, Scalia said unelected judges have no place deciding issues such as abortion and the death penalty. The court's 5-4 ruling March 1 to outlaw the juvenile death penalty based on "evolving notions of decency" was simply a mask for the personal policy preferences of the five-member majority, he said.

"If you think aficionados of a living Constitution want to bring you flexibility, think again," Scalia told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center, a Washington think tank. "You think the death penalty is a good idea? Persuade your fellow citizens to adopt it. You want a right to abortion? Persuade your fellow citizens and enact it. That's flexibility." "Why in the world would you have it interpreted by nine lawyers?" he said.

He might as well say the Constitution is a piece of flotsam, to be flushed away whenever a majority of a state's voters decide to enact a law that refuses to recognize the rights embedded within it. If he doesn't think he should be protecting the Constitution, he should retire, not lobby for a promotion to Chief Justice.

Judd Legum and Christy Harvey of the Center for American Progress explain why filibusters are necessary and why Bush's most lasting and worst legacy may be his judicial appointments.

A Utah judge with three wives, one legal, two spiritual, is suing to keep his seat on the bench.

Judge Walter Steed, who serves in the polygamous border town of Hildale, is legally married to one woman but considers himself spiritually married to two others, and he has 32 children. Steed is a member of the reclusive Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which dominates Hildale and Colorado City, Ariz.

The Utah Judicial Conduct Commission wants him off the bench. The Utah Supreme Court will now decide.

One issue is Steed's contention that the law allowing prosecutors to pursue people who consider themselves plurally married but aren't legally married is unconstitutional.....Utah's attorney general and the Washington County attorney previously declined to file criminal charges against Steed.

Utah. The state that until 2004 allowed executions by firing squad. On a related note, when Utah debated the bill to abolish firing squads last year, it was clear that the move was not prompted by humanist concerns.

by TChris

President Bush complains about "obstructionist" Democrats whenever he doesn't get his way (although he may soon be complaining about obstructionist Republicans who don't want to support a plan to dismantle social security that will get them voted out of office). As the New York Times editorial page suggests today, the President invites obstruction with his "in your face" style of governance.

President Bush likes to complain about the divisive atmosphere in Washington. But he has contributed to it mightily by choosing federal judges from the far right of the ideological spectrum. He started his second term with a particularly aggressive move: resubmitting seven nominees whom the Democrats blocked last year by filibuster.

The editorial recognizes that the success of the President's "ideological crusade" depends upon the willingness of Senate Republicans to change the rules that protected them when they were the minority party.

Republican leaders now claim that judicial nominees are entitled to an up-or-down vote. This is rank hypocrisy. When the tables were turned, Republicans filibustered President Bill Clinton's choice for surgeon general, forcing him to choose another. And Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, who now finds judicial filibusters so offensive, himself joined one against Richard Paez, a Clinton appeals court nominee.

The editorial warns that the nuclear option may endanger "one of the great institutions in American democracy, the United States Senate," by encouraging Democrats to ignore the tradition of unanimous consent, making it nearly impossible for the Senate to conduct its business. If, that is, Senate Democrats have the courage to act as the opposition party.

Via People for American Way:

West Virginia Senator Robert Byrd took to the Senate floor this afternoon to deliver a compelling speech (pdf) outlining the role of the filibuster in maintaining the checks and balances of a robust democracy, and protecting the rights of the minority.

....If the filibuster is eliminated, Bush, Cheney and 50 senators could steamroll up to four new justices onto the Court – enough to create a right-wing majority. Frist needs the votes of half the Senate plus Vice President Cheney’s tie-breaker to succeed in this bare-knuckles move to eliminate the filibuster. That means we must win the votes of all 44 Democratic senators, the one Independent, and at least six courageous Republicans to stop him.

Don't let Frist get away with this. Sign the petition here.

by TChris

Arlen Specter, walking a tightrope between voters who didn't think they were electing an extremist and the extremists in his party who expect blind obedience to their commands, isn't ruling out the "nuclear option": a vote to do away with the filibuster. Jason Miller writes that Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas doesn't want to hear what voters think of this arrogant plan to thwart a venerable Senate tradition.

As we presented a petition signed by 314 Kansans and stated our position that Sen. Roberts needed to fight to save the filibuster, it became readily apparent that our effort would bear little fruit. The aide we met quickly informed us that Sen. Roberts was supporting Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader who is the driving force behind the threat to employ the “nuclear option.” Sen. Roberts had already made up his mind, and our 600,000 member organization, our message and our petition were not likely to change it.

The Attorney General of Kansas is demanding files of late-term abortion patients in anticipation of criminal prosecutions.

Attorney General Phill Kline, a Republican who has made fighting abortion a staple of his two years in the post, is demanding the complete medical files of scores of women and girls who had late-term abortions, saying on Thursday that he needs the information to prosecute criminal cases.

He says his targets are abortion doctors and health professionals:

"There are two things that child predators want, access to children and secrecy. As attorney general, I'm bound and determined not to give them either."

Dave at See the Forest writes:

...we are entering a new phase of American history. These are not normal times, the pendulum is not swinging back, and historical trends of American politics no longer apply. American democracy was built on a system of checks and balances, and mechanisms of oversight and accountability. But the checks and balances and oversight and accountability are being removed. There is no Congressional oversight of this administration, the Justice Department does not investigate its crimes, the Federalist Society judges block all attempts to enforce the laws and the new media is no longer functional. The military acts as an arm of The Party and The Party is firmly in control of the State.

by TChris

Finding that a Boston tabloid acted with "actual malice" or "a reckless disregard for the truth" in its reporting of off-the-record comments allegedly made by Superior Court Judge Ernest Murphy, a jury returned a libel verdict in the judge's favor, awarding him more than $2 million in damages.

The first article was a front-page piece that said Judge Murphy, then assigned to a court in New Bedford, was a "wrist-slapping" judge who had "heartlessly demeaned victims" and had said of one young rape victim: "She's 14. She got raped. Tell her to get over it."

There's nothing a judge hates more than being branded as "soft on crime," but the real dispute in the case centered on whether (or in what context) the judge said "get over it."