Former Justice O'Conner: "Right wingers threaten Constitutional freedoms"

[LiberalPartisan]

Nina Totenberg: In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms. O’Connor began by conceding that courts do have the power to make presidents or the Congress or governors, as she put it “really, really angry.” But, she continued, if we don’t make them mad some of the time we probably aren’t doing our jobs as judges, and our effectiveness, she said, is premised on the notion that we won’t be subject to retaliation for our judicial acts. The nation’s founders wrote repeatedly, she said, that without an independent judiciary to protect individual rights from the other branches of government those rights and privileges would amount to nothing. But, said O’Connor, as the founding fathers knew statutes and constitutions don’t protect judicial independence, people do.

O’Connor said we must be ever-vigilant against those who would strongarm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

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[jrthin]

1. Yeah, so why did

she give up her seat at this crucial time?

[BOSSHOG]

2. To be with her dying husband

[AmandaRuth]

3. ok fine

then why did she cast the vote that put boosh in the White house.

Personally, i think she is overrated.

[rurallib]

4. Is this like warning that the barn door is open after the horse

has long since left? Not sure if she could have said such things while she sat on the court, but it doesn't seem to stop Scalia and Thomas from making controversial ppronouncements.

[radio4progressives]

5. very well said..

I'd love to hear these kinds of questions put to her without the protections of an mc to filter out this type of questioning.

[flordehinojos]

6. sounds sort of like COLIN POWELL who tried to wash his hands of the WMDs

debacle after he left the WH -- but then changes coat to defend bush again whenever he thinks he can get something out of it-- SANDRAY DAY O'CONNOR SOUNDS LIKE SHE IS DOING THE SAME THING.

a little too late for outing the TRUTH about the take over of our constitutional freedoms by the bush goons.

[Blutodog]

7. Fuck her!!

She voted for Bu$hCo in 2000 like the rest of the rethug justices now she regrets her vote I bet. She had to know after she announced her retirement that Bu$h would pick a hardcore fascist like Alito to replace her. She will now get to witness how her vote is paid back. The Roberts court in short order will undo almost everything she stood for and it's her own fault. She knew in Dec. 2000 when she put aside any semblance of ethical standards or judicial philosophy to cast a purely political vote to select Bu$h that she had reduced herself to nothing more then a partisan hack. I hope she spends the rest of her days thinking about all the women she murdered with that vote. BORN women not fetuses.