Mother Mary Rants

For the last few weeks, our Republican leaders have been in a swivet. Tom Delay, that master of honor and probity, calls our courts "unaccountable" and "out of control." And now on April 24, the Family Research Council plans "Justice Sunday," which it calls "a live simulcast to engage values voters" — code for "members of the 'Christian' far right" — "in the all-important issue of reining in our out-of-control courts." The group claims that President Bush's judicial nominees "are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction" and says, "We must stop this unprecedented filibuster of people of faith." What is most frightening is that Senate Majority leader Bill Frist plans to be the guest of honor at the FRC's "Justice" Sunday.

First, roughly 4 percent of Bush's judicial nominees have been and/or will be blocked (he has resubmitted the names of many of the most objectionable) because they are judicial activists — they are simply promoting the neocons' ideology and agenda. One has stated that she considers FDR a "socialist" and that Social Security is "unconstitutional." Another has been practicing law without a license for six years. Perfect Supreme Court material, right?

Second, it is slander to blame the Bush Republicans' attempted coup d'etat on demonic, evil Democrats. Many, perhaps most Democrats are people of faith and moral conviction, just like the dupes of the ultra-right. The difference is that they do not worship Mammon ("let's have more tax cuts for the wealthy!"), and their moral convictions include the odd notion that everyone deserves justice and compassion, not merely powerful and wealthy Republicans.

But neither of these facts is the point. The point is, our judiciary is SUPPOSED to be "unaccountable" and "out of control." This is called DEMOCRACY. Josef Stalin's judiciary was under state control; so was Saddam's; so is Putin's. Look at how well a judiciary that is firmly under politicians' control works out — for the politicians.

The Republican-controlled Congress itself acts as a rubber-stamp for the Republican-controlled White House, deliberately limiting anyone who dissents to the role of spectator. Now they seek to control our judiciary, too. If they are allowed to succeed, the United States will become indistinguishable from any other Stalinist regime. (We are already ruled through state-controlled media, rigid authoritarianism, and fear, just like the USSR.)

Tom Delay apologized for his remarks by calling them "inartful," as if he had merely called an earth-moving tool a spade. They were not. They were perilously close to being evidence of a treasonable conspiracy to overthrow democracy in the United States and replace it with a system in which our judges obey the orders of their Republican masters or get impeached for the crime of disobedience.

Wouldn't it be nice if the principles of liberty and democracy were valued in Washington, DC as much as they are valued in — oh, say, the Ukraine? If the Republicans adopt the "nuclear" option to end those pesky filibusters, and thereby get the court system firmly under neocon control, in 2009 schoolchildren will be chanting daily, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Republican States of America, and to the neocon ideology for which it stands: one nation, under Bush forever, with liberty and justice only for Republican true believers."