October 3, 2006
Forget about Mark Foley.
Something much more serious is going on.
And that’s the demise of our democracy.
The legislation passed last week allows the President to round up even American citizens, label them enemy combatants, and deny them any day in court.
This is not only an assault on our individual rights.
It’s an attempt to saw off the judicial branch of government.
And they keep sawing away.
Holding either end of the saw last week a couple of lumberjacks named Newt Gingrich and Alberto Gonzales.
“The Constitution . . . provides the courts with relatively few tools to superintend military and foreign policy decisions, especially during wartime,” the Attorney General told a crowd at Georgetown Law School on September 29. He added that judges should display “a proper sense of judicial humility” and if they don’t, they “should not be shielded from criticism.”
At the same event, Newt Gingrich energetically followed up. Supreme Court decisions that are “so clearly at variance with the national will” should be overridden by Congress or the President, he said.
Never mind that this goes against the foundational principle of our judiciary, as expounded in Marbury versus Madison way back in 1803, that the Supreme Court is the ultimate arbiter of the law.
Precedent means nothing to this crowd. Power means everything.
And that snap you hear is the judicial branch falling off.