Law professor Glenn Reynolds, on his MSNBC site, takes a look at the firestorm among GOP social conservatives over the judiciary. Read it all but here’s a key quote:
Now the activist fringe of the Republican Party is out after the judiciary. Have they gone crazy, or is there method in their madness?
Maybe a little of both. Perhaps they think that this sort of noise will intimidate the federal judiciary — as Roosevelt’s court-packing plan did. Or perhaps they’re just trying to activate “the base” and — more significantly — bolster direct-mail contributors. I suspect that however it plays to the general public, this sort of talk will raise serious money from the GOP equivalent of the MoveOn crowd.
What they’re not serious about is reforming the judiciary. Because if they were, they’d be taking serious action toward reform, not quoting Stalin.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.