Let the Impeachments Begin

April 16, 1997
The Libertarian, By Vin Suprynowicz

Leaders of 76 national, state and local bar associations issued a joint letter to House Speaker New Gingrich April 6, urging the Speaker to resist any efforts to impeach federal judges over disagreements with their rulings.

The lawyers' groups wrote: "The genius of the American system of government is the careful balance created by the founders between the three branches of government. Moving to impeach judges for individual decisions -- a kind of legislative referendum on judicial decision-making -- threatens to destroy this delicately crafted balance."

The bar associations' letter apparently comes in response to a call last month from House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, R-Texas, that Congress should indeed impeach federal judges whose rulings are "particularly egregious."

It's a striking image: a star chamber assembly-line for the removal of judges, systematically defrocking the ministers of the bench for making up the law as they go along.

Let's get concerned when they've dismissed the first 50 ... with no pensions.

More interesting is this oft-repeated assertion that the "delicate balance of powers" is now operating as intended by the Founders.

How absurd.

Mightier than any federal authority, in the scheme of the founders, were the sovereign state legislatures, empowered to appoint U.S. senators to veto any federal attempt to assume coercive powers over the states beyond those specified in the 431 words of Article I, Section 8 of the
Constitution.

That "check and balance" went a-glimmering in 1913, of course. Shall we now count the number of things our state legislatures need "federal permission" to undertake?

But even above the states were the people, authorized by the Second Amendment to keep their arms, not for "sporting use," but as a specific guarantee that any potential federal tyrant would always face the prospect of a populace too well-armed -- with "assault weapons" -- to tolerate any usurpation of our liberties.

Beyond that, the people were granted the final veto over any attempt by government to deprive a fellow citizen of his life, liberty, or property, when the Sixth Amendment guaranteed that "in all criminal prosecutions," the defendant could be convicted only by unanimous vote of an "impartial jury," randomly selected from the local populace.

Does anyone still believe our federal officials have no intention of disarming citizens who might resist federal tyranny? How many of the 20,000 gun control laws enacted in the past 65 years have been tossed out by these proud courts? How many armed militiamen summarily set free (and their guns returned) on a plain reading of the Second Amendment?

Are we still better armed than the federals -- or do we now cower in fear of the knock on the door by the ATF, the DEA ... the IRS?

How many federal agents who swarmed out to murder armed but peaceful citizens at Ruby Ridge and Waco have been indicted and tried for those crimes, by these attorneys and judges who now blubber so earnestly about the "delicately crafted" balance of powers?

Under current Supreme Court rulings, do defendants still get their guaranteed jury trial "in all criminal prosecutions"?

When we now accept, as routine, weeks of careful pre-screening of prospective jurors (witness the Oklahoma City bombing case) to make sure all will agree in advance to employ the death penalty, does this encourage jurors to enter the jury box under a "presumption of innocence"?

Can a jury still be said to be a "random and impartial" cross-section of the community, when any honest enough to admit they despise federal gun controls, or the federal tax system, or the government murders at Waco, are summarily dismissed; when the panel is carefully stacked to contain only those who will swear in advance an oath of obedience to the federal judge,
to "accept and enforce the law as I give it to you" -- when they're sifted so fine that they must even explain the meaning of the bumperstickers on their cars?

Ah, this proud federal judiciary. How long has it been since they ruled that any expansion of the federal welfare/police state exceeded constitutional authority -- that any gang of federal bureaucrats must be immediately disbanded and turned out to fend for themselves? Sixty years? How wonderful, that the federal government could grow to 20 times its previous size, without ever assuming a single power not specified in those 431 little words.

As impeachment is the only means by which a judge can be held accountable, would it really be such a bad thing if a few ambitious lawyers were thus called down from their high seats, put under a hot light, and asked to explain how their rulings to date reflect the sacred oath they all
took to protect and defend our inconvenient Constitution ... the abandonment of which oath, surely, is as much a "high crime and misdemeanor" -- every bit as dangerous to the future of the Republic -- as handing over the plans of West Point to the Redcoats?

Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Readers may contact him via e-mail at vin@intermind.net. The web site for the Suprynowicz column is at http://www.nguworld.com/vindex/. The column is syndicated in the United States and Canada via Mountain Media Syndications, P.O. Box 4422, Las Vegas Nev. 89127.

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