Threating judges: a bad idea.

[elfs]

Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) has sent a strongly worded letter to Sen. Tom Delay (R-TX), who's already in deep with ethics committees and prosecutors for various schemes, telling him that not only was saying that "The time will come for [Judge Greer and Michael Schiavo] to answer for their behavior" was not only in bad taste but might constitute a violation of federal law. It's a really bad idea to threaten a judge for doing his job.

I'm quite sure that Tom Delay will argue that he meant, "on Judgement day" or some such nonsense. But given that one judge was recently murdered, and another saw her family slaughtered, because of their work, must give us pause, and must make us believe that Sen. Delay really does lack some vital forethought and decency.

Comments

[acelightning.livejournal.com]

[http://users.livejournal.com/_candide_/]

It is very clear to me that DeLay believes in neither democracy nor the rule of law.

But, unfortunately, that describes far too many in Washington these days. And without the people putting this attitude down by at least voting such persons out of office, this cancer on democracy will soon spread to both sides of the aisle.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

DeLay's corruption is well documented.

http://www.democrats.org/specialreports/delaycasefile/index.html

The time will come for him to answer for his behavior.

checks and balances?

[(Anonymous)]

Just a question - the American system is designed to have checks and balances, right (at least on paper)? The legislature checks the executive (by preventing him from being dictatorial), the legislature is checked by the people (in elections) and the judiciary (court decisions on laws); what checks the judiciary? Ideally it is the legislature through the process of judicial impeachment and the organization of "inferior courts" (see Article 3 - this refers to all courts other than the Supreme court). So Sen. Delay could mean that he encourages the Congress (or the Florida Senate) to examine the court records of Judge Greer and possibly impeach him.

As for Michael Schiavo, Delay has _no_ authority over anything to do with him.

It is more likely that Delay was just being an ass, but that's IMO.

Joshua C. Sasmor
http://sasmor.setonhill.info

Re: checks and balances?

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Actually, there's one other "check" that the legislature has: change the law. Really. One of the key issues that was never discussed was that the legislature had the right to change the order of priority for who had the right to make decisions regarding Mrs. Schiavo's life: they could easily have transferred that right from Michael Schiavo to her parents, but to do so, following the principle that the law is to be applied to everyone, they would have to change the law for everyone. The legislature was unwilling to do that.

I think the Schiavo case proves that the laws and the courts are working, rather than they are not. This was a hard case, not an exemplary one.