EDITORIAL – Legislators blame judges for violence

Here we were, all calm and comfortable, operating under the delusion that the people elected… Here we were, all calm and comfortable, operating under the delusion that the people elected to Congress had read the Constitution or at least the CliffsNotes version of it. But then a few legislators decided to dissuade us from that notion.

Following Congress’ last-minute attempt violate the sanctity of marriage — mandating that the Terri Schiavo case be brought to federal court so that judges would order the reinsertion of her feeding tube — many of our esteemed legislators were a might miffed when judges didn’t do exactly what Congress thought they should.

Rather than doing the mature thing and getting over it, a few of our nation’s elected officials decided to do a little reinsertion of their own — putting their feet in their mouths.

Pennsylvania’s own Sen. Rick Santorum, Republican, called what the courts did, “violating the law.” Rep. Tom Delay, R-Texas, expected retribution against these judges, saying that, “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior.”

But the real kicker came from Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who speculated as to whether the recent spate of violence against judges came from pent-up frustrations resulting from those judges’ political decisions, though it was, he noted, “certainly without justification.”

Memo to Congress: We have three branches of government, and each is supposed to keep the other two from running amok. Considering the bang-up job that our legislative and executive branches are doing right now — Can we say, “overextended military, cuts for higher education funding and a push to renew the PATRIOT Act?” Yes, yes we can — it’s nice to have an active judiciary.

That’s what the judiciary has been doing — being appropriately active, but not “activist” as our pals in the Capitol and White House are so fond of calling them. (And what’s with a branch dominated by old, generally wealthy, white men being characterized as a bunch of activist-hippie-beatnik-pinko-punk-slacker freaks?)

Judges are there to interpret and pass judgment over the law, even if what they say is inconvenient for the government. Sorry, Congress, that you didn’t get your way, but that’s the way the cards fall sometimes — just like they fell with school desegregation, Miranda rights and all those other bothersome decisions.

Cornyn recanted somewhat yesterday. This came just in time for a judge to sentence white supremacist Matthew Hale to prison for 40 years for plotting to murder Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow — the same judge who had a man, apparently angry over her ruling about his medical malpractice suit, murder her husband and mother five weeks ago.

Contrary to Cornyn’s insinuation, Hale’s plotting and those murders were acts not of the politically frustrated, but the mentally unbalanced. Judges need guaranteed protection against these sorts of acts — not a Congress eager to blame the victim. Other legislators, appropriately, have expressed confusion and dismay over these comments.

Still, the trend of decrying judges as being unnecessarily active for merely doing their jobs needs to end. And that should start with Congress picking up its Constitution, checking out Article III for some hot judiciary-job-description action and then shutting the hell up.