Gingrich Urges Overriding Supreme Court

[kurth]

September 29, 2006
Gingrich Urges Overriding Supreme Court

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Supreme Court decisions that are ''so clearly at variance with the national will'' should be overridden by the other branches of government, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says. ''What I reject, out of hand, is the idea that by five to four, judges can rewrite the Constitution, but it takes two-thirds of the House, two-thirds of the Senate and three-fourths of the states to equal five judges,'' Gingrich said during a Georgetown University Law Center conference on the judiciary...

Gingrich, a Republican who represented a district in Georgia, noted that overwhelming majorities in Congress had reaffirmed the Pledge of Allegiance, and most of the public believes in its right to recite it. As such, he said, ''It would be a violation of the social compact of this country for the Supreme Court to decide otherwise and would lead, I hope, the two other branches to correct the court.''

In 2002, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in California ruled that the pledge was unconstitutional when recited in public schools because of the reference to God. The Supreme Court in 2004 reversed that decision on a technicality, but the case has been revived. Gingrich said ''the other two branches have an absolute obligation to render independent judgment'' in cases that are ''at variance with the national will.'' He spoke at Thursday's panel discussion on relations between the executive, judicial and legislative branches of government.

Former Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, who spoke on the same panel, noted the high court's 5-4 decision settling the contested 2000 presidential election in favor of Republican George W. Bush. ''What if Al Gore had said I don't agree?'' Daschle asked. ''In a sense, what we did was put the court in the position of the American people. We were giving the court the power to make the decision for the American people based on their best judgment and I'm not challenging the judgment. I accept it, too, even though I disagree.''

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Gingrich-Scotus.html

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. Ocelot Urges Overriding Gingrich.

And further urges him to get his fat ass to a library and read the freaking Constitution.

[havocmom]

3. havocmom seconds

Newt... crawl back into your cave. You are repulsive, slimy, and evolution has passed you by.

[muesa]

13. Muesa declares Dr Gingrich

a "Domestic Enemy of the Republic" and an "Enemy Terrorist."

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. What ocelot said!

:highfive:

[smtpgirl]

22. That Fuck has a PHd in law

he started this cluster fuck in 1993, FAT ASS, anyone that will vote for him in 2008 needs psychiatric treatment.

FAT ASS RUBE, PHd and all!!

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

24. Actually, he does not have a legal education.

He does have a PhD in history, though, so he still should know better. According to Wikipedia: "Gingrich attended school at various military installations and graduated from Baker High School, Columbus, Georgia, in 1961. He received a B.A. degree from Emory University in Atlanta in 1965. He received an M.A. in 1968 and Ph.D. in 1971 in Modern European History from Tulane University in New Orleans. He taught history at West Georgia College in Carrollton, Georgia, from 1970 to 1978, although he was denied tenure."

[katinmn]

2. Gingrich wants to elimninate the Supreme Court now.

There's another challenge.

Will we rise for it?

[havocmom]

4. WWGD?

What would Goebbels do?

[jimshoes]

5. Indeed, there was one decision in

December 2000 that was particularly heinous. But you go into the future with the Supreme Court you have, not the one you wish you had.

[Straight Shooter]

6. Hubris.

It's staggering. Truly.

Wasn't eye of newt always a necessary ingredient when casting wicked spells? I'm just sayin' ...

[Blackhatjack]

7. Now This Is Setting Up A Constitutional Crisis --Very Scary....

When the Legislative and Executive Branches decide to ignore the Judicial Branch's interpretation of the law and constitution, we are in dictator territory.

The rule of law will cease to exist. The Constitution will cease to have primary authority, and the unfettered power of this country will reside in a President and limited term representatives.
All hopes of a government based on checks and balances between the three branches will disappear.

This is how revolutions and coups start. People with political power change the rules, ignore the rule of law, and install individuals with power to rule --but without legitimacy of the people.

The SCOTUS has been packed by Repubs, and they have given Repubs almost everything they asked for, and this is what they get in return. If the SCOTUS does not confront and reel in the out of control Repubs, the SCOTUS will be marginalized and the President will become the dictator he always wanted to be.

[C_U_L8R]

8. Lets see.. who should we trust.. Newt???

or the founding fathers??

I'd love to see treasonous pigs
like Newt and other republican scum
pilloried in a public square.

[shadowknows69]

9. Sorry Newt those are the rules

These fuckers who want to rewrite everything America stands for are traitors pure and simple.

[mcscajun]

10. mcscajun urges riding over Gingrich

with farm equipment...failing that, several thousand baby carriages.

Whatever it takes. These damned ultra-maroons won't be happy until they've trashed every facet of our traditional government structure, removed every Constitutional protection, and turned OUR Country UPside DOWN!

Dictatorship is what they're about, that much is plain.

[ourbluenation]

11. Excellent notion - then Gore would be President!

Gore/Clark 08

[baldguy]

12. "...so clearly at variance with the national will..."

What newt & the other fascists refuse to acknowledge is that it doesn't matter what Congress & the President construe the "national will" to be - IT MATTERS WHAT THE LAW SAYS.

Also, if the powers that be really cared about the true national will, we wouldn't be in Iraq, Osama would be in jail and Gore would be president.

[tocqueville]

14. gingricht is a nut, but he is right

Jefferson said the same :

Although trained as a lawyer, Jefferson was never comfortable in court. He believed that judges should be technical specialists but should not set policy. He denounced the 1801 Supreme Court ruling in Marbury v. Madison as a violation of democracy, but he did not have enough support in Congress to propose a Constitutional amendment to overturn it. He continued to oppose the doctrine of judicial review:

"To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men and not more so. They have with others the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is boni judicis est ampliare jurisdictionem , and their power the more dangerous as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all the departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves. <18>"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson

Roosevelt was against the Supreme Court too

no appointed judges should have the ultimate power. It's undemocratic in essence. Their role should be limited to civil and criminal affairs. A separate entity should check the constitutionality of laws BEFORE they are voted.

[Lochloosa]

17. The flaw in this argument is that in the end someone has to

have the final word.

[tocqueville]

26. yep congress or parliament must have the final word.

the role of the US Supreme Court is unique compared to all western democracies, what I know of. Nobody has chosen the idea of given the ultimate power to a ... judge. It's not democracy, it's judiciocracy. Many western countries have a separate constitutional council, constituted of both lawyers and laymen, not appointed for life. They judge if the PROPOSED law is constitutional or not. If it isn't, the parliament has to amend or rewrite the law. Simple as that.

the Supreme Court in France and many other European countries is only the last resort for judicial cases, criminal or civil. But they don't judge if a law is right or not.

the liberal support for the Supreme Court is based on the Roosevelt pressure on the same. Scared judges started to act liberal in the sixties, thus some popular "reforms" like abortion and the end of apartheid. But that was not the same always. Eisenhower was pissed at the court (he said that one of his biggest mistakes was to appoint a certain judge) because it ended McCarthyism.

What many democrats forget is that todays positive rulings can be tomorrows horrendous ones and can last for decades even centuries. Remember that the Supreme court found slavery OK and later apartheid. It took from the end of the Secession war to Martin Luther King to end a blatant violation of human rights. For an European progressive it's completely preposterous that a court through a single case should rule such an important issue as the legality of abortion. It's not the job of a court, it's the job of Congress...

but how CONVENIENT....

The Supreme Court system with its prerogatives is a basically reactionary and undemocratic invention.

The fact that Gingricht has another agenda in this question doesn't change that fact.

[mcscajun]

29. Um...apartheid never existed in the US.

Abortion rights are something most women in America hold pretty dear, ending McCarthyism was a fantastic positive step, ending segregation would not have happened for decades to come had Brown vs. the Board of Education been decided by the Supreme Court, there'd be no Miranda rights, indeed, the right to counsel would be practically non-existent were it not for Supreme Court rulings...and now I see in your argument
:wtf:

"Scared judges started to act liberal..."

Scared? Scared????
"ACT" liberal?
:wtf:

Take off the mask, guy.

[tocqueville]

31. Apartheid never existed ?

what did Rosa Parks fought against ? What do you call a system where legally it is allowed to segregate people in schools, busses, bathrooms, hotels etc... ?

I call it apartheid

Abortion rights are founded on a "right to privacy" that doesn't exist in the US constitution. It's just called a penumbral right, that is to say an extended interpretation of another issue. Abortion rights in other democracies are based on voted LAW passed in parliament. That what's it's practically impossible to touch them. But in the US it's possible because if you have 5 judges appointed by a bigot, they can change their ruling for several decades or more. And it's exactly what's going on right now. Exactly the same way all of a sudden torture is legal, because Gonzales says so. Appoined for life by the executive. That is not my idea of democracy.

Juges are subject to pressure as all humans. They know where the tide is going. So when the society turn "liberal" they revisit their judiciary interpretations. That's what I meant by "act".

Although President Roosevelt lost the battle in Congress, he won the war to change the judicial philosophy of the Supreme Court. Viewing the bill as an active threat by Roosevelt to remove opposing judges from the bench, conservative Justice Owen Josephus Roberts changed his vote in a case before the Court, breaking the deadlock and switching the majority to support of the New Deal ("The switch in time that saved nine") paving way for the passage of the minimum wage in 1937. There is, however, reason to believe that Justice Roberts may not have reacted to the court-packing plan when he cast the crucial vote. The vote on that case was taken before Roosevelt went public with the plan, and Roberts had already cast his vote. However, Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes was holding off for the liberal Justice Harlan Stone, who was ill with dysentery, to return to vote. Justice Stone returned two days after Roosevelt's fire-side chat, to vote the way everyone knew he would—for the minimum wage law. In any event, President Roosevelt affected a dramatic and far-reaching shift in the federal Judiciary with implications resonating and relevant to current political debate. Whether achieved as the framers envisioned such wars being won—by the gradual process of changing the federal Judiciary through the appointment process, Roosevelt in his second term nominated and the Senate confirmed five—or through the exericise of raw executive power, President Roosevelt produced a Court sympathetic to the New Deal. During his entire tenure as President, he appointed eight Associate Justices and one Chief Justice, and by 1941 all but one of the Justices was a Roosevelt appointee.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court-packing

and those guys survived him.

I don't need no mask, gal. Or do you mean that Jefferson was wearing one when he called them an "oligarchy" or Roosevelt when he called the court "nine old men" ?

:wtf:

finally: how do you explain the US has ended in the mess it is now if the system was so fucking perfect ? I can tell you that translating a 230 years old document isn't obviously the solution. Many DUers consider that the US of today is in a proto-fascist state. Without firing a shot, all "legal". With the blessings of the Supreme Court.

If Jefferson came back it would be his first measure to abolish it, at least in its present role.

end of rant

[mcscajun]

20. Google this phrase: ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions

and you'll find link after link after link citing this same letter. Nearly every one almost without exception is some Right-Wing nutjob.

Seems it's a favorite RW Talking Point...designed out of context to assist in dismantling the role of the Supreme Court.

I'll take a pass on this.

[tocqueville]

27. I am sorry, doesn't matter what the RW says

Jefferson was right and no other democracy has chosen the US system.

To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy.

^ Letter to William C. Jarvis, 1820

read here what Roosevelt thought of the matter :

Franklin Roosevelt sought a novel way to ensure the constitutionality of his legislative agenda after the Supreme Court of the United States repeatedly invalidated elements of his New Deal on the grounds that they were unconstitutional, including the Agricultural Adjustment Act in United States v. Butler et al (1936) and the National Recovery Administration in Schechter Poultry Corp. v. United States (1935). Although "inclined to wait until a vacancy naturally occurred on the Court," Roosevelt's first term passed without the opportunity to appoint a justice, a happening virtually unprecedented in the history of the American presidency. Increasingly frustrated, Roosevelt sought a constitutional means to change the balance of the Court. By statute, the Supreme Court justices number nine; however, the U.S. Constitution is silent as to how many may serve on the court. Roosevelt and an overwhelmingly Democratic Congress faced a Court that had for thirty years been reading into the Constitution a doctrine of "freedom of contract" hostile to social legislation. He came to view the Court's actions as an overextension of judicial authority frustrating the will of the people. Roosevelt decried the activism of conservative justices as "reading into the Constitution words and implications which are not there, and which were never intended to be there." <1> Emboldened by his landslide victory but faced with the prospect of a hostile court, Roosevelt determined to thwart its ability to block the legislative agenda of his second term. Although the Hughes Court had six justices over the age of 70 and six months, no vacancy loomed in the foreseeable future. Therefore in his first "fireside chat" to the Nation of the second term of his Presidency, he made his case to the American people to support his plan as "the need to meet the unanswered challenge of one-third of a Nation ill-nourished, ill-clad, ill-housed." <2>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court-packing



the cartoon shows the idea. The court decides upon government. This is horrible for any true democrat.

[StellaBlue]

15. Hey, NEWT!

FUCK YOU

[benfranklin1776]

16. What an ignorant fascist

It is bad enough we have a Rethuglican rump parliament, he wants a rubber stamp court also.His agenda is quite clear, eviscerate and reduce the number of branches of government till we have just one "unitary executive." A.K.A. Dictator. The bar for passing amendments was set deliberately high by the founding fathers to require supermajorities precisely to prevent demagogues like him from eviscerating our fundamental freedoms to further their own tyrannical agendas.

[proud patriot]

19. It's obvious he has never read the Constitution

x(

[baldguy]

21. Or understood it...

[smtpgirl]

23. Beware PEOPLE,

that is the kind of candidate for the future, a kind of Manchurian Candidate, but this one will be republican

[Jcrowley]

25. Think about this

Newt GingriNch

This fucker has influence. What does that say about how damaged are the American minds. How is it that this dipshit even attained a position beyond PTA board member? (All apologies to newts and PTAers)

Poetic license included.

[Warren DeMontague]

28. Thanks for weighing in, lardass.

Now go back to whatever hole you've been living in.

[Raksha]

30. I've got only one thing to say to you, Newtie baby: Bush v. Gore!

You think THAT wasn't "at variance with the national will"?

[Rex]

32. Such stupid little people, trying in vain to act intelligent.

They want to do away with the SCs judicial review and effectively de-fang the Court. I can't believe they got to this stage.

[Mr_Spock]

33. Gingrich is a raging moron

Of all the fucking wastes of time, he want's to blather on about the stupid Pledge. I personally could give a crap about the "God" reference, but if it offends other people, then I would not allow it to be recited at the school - because that is what differentiates of from those would would force their will onto others.