No Independent Judiciary???

The right wing nuts are raising the stakes in the war on America's Judiciary. Today's New York Times reports on their conference "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith."

Their martyr, the ethically challenged Majority Leader Tom DeLay, said the courts have "run amok." Then he reiterated his threats to go after judges:

"The failure is to a great degree Congress's," Mr. DeLay said. "The response of the legislative branch has mostly been to complain. There is another way, ladies and gentlemen, and that is to reassert our constitutional authority over the courts."

It got worse. The agenda for the meeting was described like this:

The organizers of the conference and Congressional staff members who spoke there called for several specific steps: impeaching judges deemed to have ignored the will of Congress or to have followed foreign laws; passing bills to remove court jurisdiction from certain social issues or the place of God in public life; changing Senate rules that allow the Democratic minority to filibuster Mr. Bush's appeals court nominees; and using Congress's authority over court budgets to punish judges whom it considers to have overstepped their authority.

Yes, impeachment, and according to Tom Coburn's office, mass impeachment might be needed:

"I am in favor of impeachment," Michael Schwartz, chief of staff to Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, said in a panel discussion on abortion, suggesting "mass impeachment" might be needed.

This is all crazy talk, but these people are in power and they mean it. We are not going to win by having a rational debate about the historical importance of the filibuster. These people are willing to destroy and re-write history. If you don't believe it, read this:

In an interview, Jeff Lungren, a spokesman for Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Republican of Wisconsin and chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the panel was likely in some way to take up the issue of how the federal judges handled Ms. Schiavo's case.

But Mr. Lungren said Mr. DeLay had not requested a hearing and the committee had not decided on a course of action. "There does seem to be this misunderstanding out there that our system was created with a completely independent judiciary," he said.

No independent judiciary? Maybe that's true in China or Afghanistan, but in America?

These people are out of control with power. Destroying the Judiciary is their next target. And, as we've seen from the comments by DeLay and Cornyn, they will go to any lengths to change the judiciary. Even violence against judges doesn't faze them.