Saturday, July 02, 2016

Impeach Judge Richard Posner for Anti-Constitution Stance

By Douglas V. Gibbs
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7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner says he sees "absolutely no value" in studying the U.S. Constitution.  This is a man sworn to apply the law to his rulings, yet he says there is no value in studying the law he is supposed to be applying.  Granted, he probably adheres more to the unconstitutional concept of case law, than strict constructionism, but in the end, what should we say and do about a judge who essentially says the law he has sworn to protect is useless, shouldn't be studied, and no longer applies?

Federal judges hold their office during time of good behavior, according to Article III of the United States Constitution.  Bad behavior, we have come to believe in our present society, when it comes to judges, is pretty much any time a judge breaks the law.  What what about the law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, and the oath/affirmation they took to uphold that document?  Could betraying that oath also be considered bad behavior, and be grounds for impeachment and removal from office?

Four years ago Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested to Egypt that as they were trying to form a new government after the fall of Mubarek and Morsi that they should not use the U.S. Constitution as a model. In 2005, she told an audience at the American Society of International Law that "the U.S. Constitution is a document essentially frozen in time as of the date of its ratification."

Liberal left rejection of the U.S. Constitution by judges sworn to protect and defend the document are nothing new, but it seems that the hostility towards the founding of this country has been getting increasingly worse, and the rejection of the ideals and principles contained on the pages of the U.S. Constitution is flabbergasting.

The most recent defection from the Constitution by liberal left judges (remember, judges are supposed to be apolitical) comes from Seventh Circuit Judge Richard Posner.  Posner says that he sees “absolutely no value” in studying the U.S. Constitution because “eighteenth-century guys” couldn’t have possibly foreseen the culture and technology of today.

His egregious language presented in an op-ed for Slate where Judge Posner, a senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, argued that the original Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the post–Civil War amendments “do not speak to today.”

“I see absolutely no value to a judge of spending decades, years, months, weeks, day, hours, minutes, or seconds studying the Constitution, the history of its enactment, its amendments, and its implementation (across the centuries — well, just a little more than two centuries, and of course less for many of the amendments),” he wrote. “Eighteenth-century guys, however smart, could not foresee the culture, technology, etc., of the 21st century.”

He added, “let’s not let the dead bury the living.”

Judge Posner, an outspoken opponent of late Justice Antonin Scalia, also blasted “absurd” posthumous encomia for the late conservative.

“I worry that law professors are too respectful of the Supreme Court, in part perhaps because they don’t want to spoil the chances of their students to obtain Supreme Court clerkships,” he wrote. “I think the Supreme Court is at a nadir. The justices are far too uniform in background, and I don’t think there are any real stars among them; the last real star, Robert Jackson*, died more than 60 years ago. I regard the posthumous encomia for Scalia as absurd. Especially those of Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow and Justice Elena Kagan.”

Posner's opinion about the U.S. Constitution is an open attack on the original intent as written by the delegates of the 1787 convention in Philadelphia.  Understand, he is not suggesting any wrong doing by the court system as it uses case law to define the Constitution rather than the original language.

The alteration of culture and technology was foreseen by the authors of the U.S. Constitution, and the anti-federalists who feared the new system may be too intrusive.  What they saw coming was exactly the reason for them writing of the Constitution in the limiting manner it was written.  Culture decays, and technology always provides tyranny new ways to be tyrannical.  Liberty, however, never goes out of style.  The need to have a strong government for external issues, but to limit its powers internally so that the local governments (States) can handle their own issues, never changes.  Human nature is the central reason for limiting the federal government to authorities that protect, preserve and promote the union.  It was to guard against the increasing corruption of culture and society that the document instructs that all internal issues must remain in the hands of the States.  And the mismanagement of our society has been due to government disregarding the principles of the Constitution, not because any semblance of a strict adherence to those philosophies.

Posner's position is nothing new.  Statists and tyrants throughout history have always held his kind of opinion.  The powers of tyranny always suggest that the central government should do more and more, and that the principles of limiting power or distributing local power to local governments ought to be abandoned.  Many of those characters who hold a more collectivistic point of view have been judges, which is among the reasons the founders were hesitant to even create a judicial branch, much less give that part of government much power.  Early on, the authorities of the courts were very limited, and the legislative branch and the States exerted a certain amount of control over the court system to keep it at bay.  In fact, in 1795 the 11th Amendment was ratified in order to further limit the courts, of which were already trying to reach further into State matters than they should.

When a judge, or official, is sworn into their office they swear to protect and defend the Constitution, not ignore it, dismantle it, and try to convince a society that the law of the land is no longer needed.  In fact, anti-Constitutional points of view by people like Posner are a seditious attempt to usurp the law of the land that is the Constitution.  Therefore, rather than be celebrated as a great legal mind like the Democrats are surely doing since Posner's anti-Constitution statement, 7th District Judge Richard Posner should be targeted for impeachment, and then tried for treason.  He is a member of those persons who are levying an administrative and cultural war against the U.S. Constitution, the law of the land, and therefore against this country; and for that he should be removed from office, and tried for his treasonous defamatory statements against the document upon which our entire system has been constructed around.

Impeach Judge Posner, for he is refusing to abide by the oath he made, and he is refusing to defend the very Constitution he has sworn to protect.

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

* Robert Jackson, though a Democrat, was considered to be quite conservative, and quite brilliant. Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court from 1941–1954, he was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Justice Robert Jackson never attended college, nor did he have a law degree.  He also served as the Chief United States Prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials at the end of World War II.

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