A twisted approach to undermining the judiciary

June 17, 2005

The far-right crusade against the federal judiciary took a bizarre turn this week when Rep. John Hostettler (R-Ind.) successfully added an amendment to a Justice Department appropriations bill. Even by the standards of today’s GOP, this one’s nutty.

Hostettler has been concerned about a court case in his community called Russelburg v. Gibson County, which deals with a controversy surrounding a state-sponsored Ten Commandments display in front of the Gibson County Courthouse in Princeton, Indiana. Local citizens challenged the constitutionality of the local government promoting one faith’s holy text at the courthouse, and, as is usually the case, a federal judge agreed that the display is unconstitutional.

Hostettler, perhaps a little concerned about his re-election prospects, has latched onto the case. In February, he wrote a letter to the president, urging Bush, as head of the executive branch of government, to refuse to enforce the court order. The White House ignored the request.

So Hostettler, this week, took matters into his own hands and introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would “prohibit funds in the Act from being used to enforce the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in the case of Russelburg v. Gibson County.” In other words, Hostettler would prevent the federal judiciary from enforcing its own court order. Gibson County could refuse to comply with the law and the judge couldn’t send marshals to resolve the problem.

And as if that weren’t insane enough, Hostettler’s amendment passed, 242-182.

It’s one thing to believe that government officials should be allowed to officially promote and endorse Christianity. But the point here is not so much about the merit of the lawsuit as it is about the respect for the separation of powers and the right-wing assault on an independent judiciary. Congress is simply not in a position to stop the enforcement of court rulings lawmakers don’t like. Our system does not, and cannot, function this way.

Chances are, this lunacy will come out in conference committee, and the rule of law will survive, Hostettler’s efforts notwithstanding. Yet, this is what conservative legal thought in America has come to. It’s breathtaking.

[A]s is usually the case, a federal judge agreed that the display is unconstitutional.

Actually, there’s a circuit split on decalogue monuments. And once the Supreme Court hands down the judgment resolving the split later this summer, don’t be surprised if the federal courts are even MORE tolerant of the damned things.

  • One more chink in the wall holding our democracy together; i.e., the wall between church and state. Scary indeed.

  • This is but one example of a long trend of the erosion of the seperation of powers doctrine. It exists in both parties, and has been going on progreesively for the last twenty years. Personnaly I view the seperation of federal powers and the recognition of the priciples of federalism to be the central issue of our time. I cannot think of any issue that has a greater potential to destroy the republic. This is a broad generalization, but it seems that liberals are the greatest threat to federalism, while Republicans are the greatest threat to federal seperation of powers. In my opinion:
    1. Presidents need to get out of the business of writing budgets and then submitting to Congress and then wrangling the political system to make it pass. Period. They should only voice their general opinions, and perhaps give advance warning of their intentions to use their veto.
    2. The Judiciary needs to quit the business of creating fundamental rights that are not even remotely mentioned or contemplated by the Constitution. That’s the job of the legislative and executive branch.
    3. Independent counsels (which thanks God are a thing of the past)
    spawn a hideous bastard produced by breeding the prosecutorial arm of the executive branch with the fact-finding functions of the judicial arm. It took a season of pain for the Clinton administration and then the Bush administration to figure this out.

  • Force Majure it is ironic that you say that Democrats are the biggest threat to federalism because I was reading another blog by a Republican who said that Democrats were for federalism (he is wrong, he think that Democrats were federalists, and that Jefferson was a Republican when clearly the Republican Party didn’t exist).

    I think the erosion separation of church and state causes great deal for alarm. Slowly we are going from a democracy to a theocratic nation controlled by an oligarchy. Hopefully this is ephemeral. I agree that Republicans are destroying checks and balances too. WIth the filibuster, one Senator says he would consult the White House, no need to consult the White House. With every day going by, the Republicans are consolidating power. Scary as that may seem, it is the truth. They mix everything together. It is a mess.

  • I’m actually shocked that my Republican representative in the House was one of the few that voted against this ridiculous assault on the separation of powers. His office was probably even more shocked when I called to compliment one of his votes instead of complaining, as I have to do more often than not.

  • The one thing that absoltely kills me is how the Supreme Court has ruled against displays of the Ten Commandments, etc, but then has the mother of all religious displays on its own court. Not only do they have a Ten Commandments, but they have Moses himself carved into the front of their Court. Not that I’m going to ever make a Custer’s Stand on this topic, but it seems to me that there ought to be some jackhammers going to work on the Supreme Court building if thats the route they want to take. And why hasn’t the ACLU ever filed suit against them? That’s also a bit telling.

  • Samantha- The guy on the Republican blog probably didn’t know what the meaning of federalism is. Not surprising. Few do anymore. He was probably meaning to say that Democrats like a large, very powerful centralized federal government (which is largely true)- but thats not what the doctrine of federalism means.

  • The one thing that absoltely kills me is how the Supreme Court has ruled against displays of the Ten Commandments, etc, but then has the mother of all religious displays on its own court. Not only do they have a Ten Commandments, but they have Moses himself carved into the front of their Court.

    Sorry, FM, but that’s a really misleading argument. I don’t know if you’ve been in the Supreme Court chamber or not, but what you described just isn’t so. I debunked this a few months ago.

  • Thank you, Mr. Carpetbagger, for straightening Force out (yet again), as it saves me the time (although since it does not fit his/her politically-slanted worldview, we’ll probably have to do it again soon, at least on a prophylactic basis! 🙂 )

  • Not so fast Carpetbagger. (Again, I’m not going to go kamakaze on this thing- I too think a six foot granite ten commandments exhibit is ridiculous) Moses and visual references to the ten commandments do make more appearances in the Court than just what you aver. Check out members.tripod.com/~candst/tnppage/arg8a.htm for more.

  • Going back to the original topic for a moment, maybe the members passed it just to get the nitwit to pipe down about it for a while, knowing it would be razored out of the final version when the time came. It’s been known to happen. At least that would be a more rational explanation than that the bulk of the U.S. Congress has gone totally insane.

    Oh, wait…..

  • Force Majure,

    He was probably meaning to say that Democrats like a large, very powerful centralized federal government (which is largely true)-

    although off-topic, I can’t in good conscience let this slide. How would you describe the current, and immediate predecessor, congress and the White House if not as backers of “a large, very powerful centralized federal government”? Huh?

  • It kills me to read shit like this. I try to defend people I believe are just trying to practice their religion — I think there’s a large movement to muzzle beliefs and keep people from sharing their faith at all – making atheism the state religion. But when shit like this happens I don’t know what to say. Is there a conservative party for moderate christians who just want to live and let live? Oh, and if these same idiots who actually do want to impose their religion on everyone could stop undermining the american political system, that would be great.

  • Edo- Oh, I totally agree with that. The Bush Administration, to my knowledge, has yet to veto a spending bill. It absolutely freaking kills me. Sometimes I wonder if the rationale is that Bush and Congressional Republicans, in order to keep the needed military funding from being interrupted or delayed on the floor, are simply not being too contentious about other spending- and hence just letting it in. I also suspect that Dick Cheney has alot to do with it. He has made alot of offhand comments about how he believes (fallaciously) that deficits don’t matter. (Horseshit.) Not all republicans are states rights, tenth amendment believers as I am. But many if not mst are. And not all of us believed in making the tax cuts permenant either. I didn’t.
    Quid Pro Quo- so why don’t Democrats give Bush and Republicans “just props” for delivering the drug benefit program to medicade- something Democrats have talked about for years but never delivered when they had the votes? (Don’t misconscrue that to mean I’m for the program- I believe in other methods of getting drugs to those who need it)

  • Ed- I want to give you the benefit of the doubt. What do you mean when you say: “Actually, I wouldn’t object to a little “heavenly wind” on your part, Force.” ??

  • “Kamikaze” literally means “divine wind” or “heavenly wind”. It referred to those Japanese pilots in WWII who, guided by their certainty about what was right, literally went down in flames.

    You say you’re “not going to go kamikaze over this”, and yet….

  • Good grief–38 Dems voted for this.

    And some of them aren’t the usual people you’d expect to be scared into voting for this kind of claptrap–among the unexpected ayes are Dennis Moore, Al Wynn, Gene Green, Jim Langevin, Brian Higgins, Ruben Hinjosa, Marcy Kaptur and David Scott. I can only hope they were in the dark about what this amendment was all about.

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