O'Connor Fires Back on Judicial Independence

[Thom Little]

Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor is not moving quietly toward retirement.

O'Connor's speech Nov. 7 to the American Academy of Appellate Lawyers in Washington, D.C., was a rip-snorting defense of judicial independence that criticized – without naming them -- former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and even the late president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whom she described as "the fellow on the dime."

.......

"We have the power to make the president or Congress really, really angry," O'Connor told the lawyers. "In fact, if we do not make them mad some of the time, we probably aren't doing our jobs. Our effectiveness, therefore, relies on the knowledge that we won't be subject to retaliation for our acts."

.......

Then, referring to a floor speech made by Cornyn on April 4, O'Connor said: "It doesn't help when a high-profile senator, after noting that decisions he sees as activist cause him 'great distress,' suggests there may be 'a cause-and-effect connection' between such activism and the 'recent episodes of courthouse violence in this country.'" Cornyn later softened his remarks.



http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1132740311603

[Cha]

1. "The fellow on the dime"?

How about the one who saved America with "The New Deal"?

[Thom Little]

2. She's talking about......

.......FDR's court-packing scheme of 1937. It really was an attack on the judiciary. If * tried to do the same thing today we'd be screaming from the rafters.

[Cha]

3. I know..I'm just a little more

than Pissed at sandy day o'connor for her part in packing bush on the rest of us.

[W stands for Wacko]

7. "If?"

[Demeter]

9. The Difference Between FDR and Dubya

is that Roosevelt was acting for the benefit of the poor and dispossessed: real people. Dubya is acting to protect the wealthiest and the infamous "corporate personhood".

[aquart]

4. Isn't Cornyn an Abramoff flunky?

And it's so nice of that treasonous bitch to pretend she still has any credibility.

[TaleWgnDg]

5. It's a very strange day in America when . . .

.
It's a very strange day in America when . . .

I awake to find that Associate Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female on the Court, is now considered a "moderate!" Did I awake from a Rip van Winkle sleep? How has my country strayed so far to the uber-right that an Arizona "states rights" conservative on the U.S. Supreme Court is considered a "moderate?"

We mourn the eventual passing of the Court's "swing vote" . . . when in the past that very same "swing vote" was deservedly in the minority.

America -- the more reasonable thinkers amongst us -- is wringing its hands hoping that Sandra will last the entire Court term until June 2006 despite her announced retirement.

How ironic. And, when will America awake to insist upon open-minded inclusive progressive legal minds once again?
.

[Silvermint]

6. My first thought?

This may be the first time I've seen the adjective "rip-snorting" in print? Now, if only the term was in the dictionary, I could figure out what it meant...

[Andromeda]

8. How disrespectful...

"The fellow on the dime?" Was she trying to be clever? If she was, she failed miserably.

What can you expect from a person who helped rig the 2000 election. The fact that O'Connor mentions FDR and Tom DeLay in the same sentence makes me see red.:grr:

[Name removed]

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