# "Let's Put God In Charge Of The Judiciary!" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 9, 2005, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556 "2005-04-09T13:41:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EddyTeddyFreddy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eddyteddyfreddy/32/18796_2.png) [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/1 "2005-04-09T13:41:15Z")
The article in the Boston Globe is headlined ["Rift emerges in GOP after Schiavo case](http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/04/09/rift_emerges_in_gop_after_schiavo_case/)," but the truly terrifying part of the story is the intensity of the radical right’s demand to gut the independence of the judiciary: > [@](#): > > Conservative leaders criticized President Bush for failing to speak out strongly against removing the feeding tube from Schiavo, the 41-year-old incapacitated woman who died March 31. They blamed the president’s brother, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida, for failing to employ State Police powers to take control of Schiavo. They condemned comments by Senate majority leader Bill Frist of Tennessee and Vice President Dick Cheney expressing support for the nation’s judges. > > And yesterday they issued an ''action plan" to take their crusade for control of the nation’s courts well beyond Senate debates over judicial nominees, pressing Congress to impeach judges and defund courts they consider ''activist" and to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts over some sensitive social matters – a strategy opposed by many leading Senate Republicans. > > [snip] > > While conservatives have long accused liberal judges of making, rather than interpreting, laws, Massachusetts’ adoption of gay marriage last year and Schiavo’s death last week have magnified their fury. Whereas before they complained about ''judicial arrogance," speakers this week accused courts of ''gang violence" and waging ''unholy war" – and drew applause when they called for the removal of judges who believe that interpretations of the US Constitution should change with the times. Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and a member of the House Judiciary Committee, called the situation ''a crisis." And no, this isn’t just another case of Fundamentalist Christians run amok: > [@](#): > > “This is not a Democrat- Republican issue; it is a liberal-conservative issue,” Rick Scarborough, a Baptist minister and chair of the Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration, sponsor of the gathering, said in an interview. ''It’s about a temporal versus eternal value system. We are not going away." > > The strategy session of more than 200 conservative activist leaders, in the works since February, was organized by a multifaith roster that included Protestant evangelicals such as the Rev. Jerry Falwell and home school activist Michael Farris, Catholics such as former Vatican ambassador Raymond L. Flynn, and Jews such as Rabbi Daniel Lapin, who runs the group Toward Tradition. I’m putting this in the Pit rather than Great Debates because I can’t imagine any half-sane Doper who’d call this a good thing. Rather, this calls – or should call – for universal opprobrium and contempt. The world would be a better place if a large and angry meteorite should choose to smite any future such gathering. Bonus points if it’s waving a banner saying “That is NOT My will you’re doing, fuckwads!” ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/2 "2005-04-09T15:19:33Z")
Good idea. Anyone who gets zotted with a lightningbolt on the bench should be removed immediately. On the other hand, silence clearly implies divine consent. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Waverly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/57b2e6/32.png) [@Waverly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Waverly)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 3:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/3 "2005-04-09T15:31:01Z")
It occurs to me that few people in government, conservative or liberal, actually understand who makes, interprets, or enforces the law anymore. It’s all part of the great dumming down. Not, mind you, that I think all politician are quite _that_ dumb. They’ve just learned that the rest of huddled masses are too intellectually lazy to know or care when they defecate on our checks and balances. I’d fetch my sabre from the wall and lead the revolution, but who’d follow? ---
**Author:** ![vibrotronica](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/a9a28c/32.png) [@vibrotronica](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vibrotronica)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/4 "2005-04-09T16:39:08Z")
Yeah, putting God in charge of the judiciary has worked really well in places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Borgia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/larry_borgia/32/156_2.png) [@Larry\_Borgia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Borgia)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/5 "2005-04-09T16:41:34Z")
This is what happens when one side is in power for a while. The people on the fringes get irate that the radical changes they envisioned aren’t being enacted. Remember Pat Buchanan in '92? Then in 2000 the far left got mad and backed Nader. I wonder who’ll be biting at the Republicans in 2008. Not that these loons don’t make me vomit in terror. Ten years ago I used to laugh at people who claimed that our constitutional democracy was in danger of being replaced by a theocratic dictatorship. I still think it’s a pretty unlikely prospect, but I aint laughin’ no more. ---
**Author:** ![ParentalAdvisory](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/53a042/32.png) [@ParentalAdvisory](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ParentalAdvisory)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/6 "2005-04-09T16:49:14Z")
Some fuckin’ whacko’s in this country. ---
**Author:** ![Dan\_Norder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4af34b/32.png) [@Dan\_Norder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dan_Norder)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 4:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/7 "2005-04-09T16:49:53Z")
It’s just the same old same old from the ultra-conservatives. Pat Robertson a decades or two back was calling for putting God in charge of the police, so people could pray and have God tell them who needs to be arrested to prevent a crime they hadn’t committed yet, and his idiot viewers lapped it all up. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 5:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/8 "2005-04-09T17:00:12Z")
Of course, God won’t personally be sitting on the bench. As is always the case, it’ll be his self-appointed representatives who be speaking on God’s behalf. ---
**Author:** ![GrizzRich](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/7ba0ec/32.png) [@GrizzRich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GrizzRich)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/9 "2005-04-09T20:03:36Z")
Aren’t there more interpretations of God’s word in the US than interpretations of law? There’s municipal (city/county/township), state and federal governments in this country. Three by my count. And how many religions? Several dozen Christian variations alone! . . . . . Oh yeah… let’s interpret God’s Law in the US instead of the Constitution. :wally ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/10 "2005-04-09T20:24:24Z")
> [@vibrotronica](#): > > Yeah, putting God in charge of the judiciary has worked really well in places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. Part of the rage boiling off these guys is that they know, on some level, that the current war will associate their indelibly associated their theocratic politics with Evil in exactly the same way that WWII indelibly associated the genteel anti-Semitism of the time with Evil. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/11 "2005-04-09T21:14:49Z")
One one level I’m absolutely appalled at this. On another I’m giggling like a little schoolgirl imagining the faces of the politicians who courted these people as they realize they’ve tied themselves to a movement of lunatics… ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/12 "2005-04-09T22:21:47Z")
Tangentially related, the Globe and Mail published a [feature-length article](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20050409.wxcover09/BNStory/specialScienceandHealth/) on the impact that religious conservatism is having on American science policy today. To an outsider, it’s incomprehensible. We’ve grown used to considering that the United States is the naturally the vanguard of modernism, leading the rest of the world into a new Enlightenment. It’s mind-boggling that this anti-intellectual groundswell has appeared and seems to be successfully leading the U.S. back into the Dark Ages, with all this antipathy towards capital-R Reason being applied in the most crucial matters of public policy. How the _fuck_ did this happen? _Church and State-- Greed and Hate – Two Baboon-Persons in one Supreme Gorilla_ --Aldous Huxley ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 10:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/13 "2005-04-09T22:26:04Z")
Any of them whackos named Nerimiah Scudder? ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/14 "2005-04-09T22:52:03Z")
> [@E-Sabbath](#): > > Any of them whackos named Nerimiah Scudder? IT’s _Nehemiah_. (The original Nehemiah reinforced Jerusalem’s walls, insulated it against foreign influence, and instituted many moral and theological reforms, but by the end of his rule human nature led his people to relax their mores again. And the walls came tumbling down, eventually.) ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Love](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e8c25b/32.png) [@Dr.Love](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Love)\ **Post date:** [April 9, 2005, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/15 "2005-04-09T23:29:13Z")
I found this [link](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38308-2005Apr8.html) on another forum. > [@](#): > > Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, “upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law.” > > Ominously, Vieira continued by saying his “bottom line” for dealing with the Supreme Court comes from Joseph Stalin. "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: ‘no man, no problem,’ " Vieira said. > > The full Stalin quote, for those who don’t recognize it, is “Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.” Presumably, Vieira had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence. But then, these are scary times for the judiciary. An anti-judge furor may help confirm President Bush’s judicial nominees, but it also has the potential to turn ugly Now, maybe it’s just me, but when your political beliefs lead you to favorable quote Joseph Stalin, it might be about time to reexamine your beliefs. ---
**Author:** ![Frostillicus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Frostillicus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frostillicus)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 3:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/16 "2005-04-10T03:51:39Z")
> [@vibrotronica](#): > > Yeah, putting God in charge of the judiciary has worked really well in places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. But…but, their god is a false god. Our Christian God is the real deal. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, ad nauseum. ;j ---
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/17 "2005-04-10T04:09:49Z")
> [@](#): > > **jayjay** : On another I’m giggling like a little schoolgirl imagining the faces of the politicians who courted these people as they realize they’ve tied themselves to a movement of lunatics… I know the feeling exactly! Many politicians thought that they were manipulating the religious right for their own purposes, never dreaming that the religious right was doing some manipulating of their own. Frist and the Bush Brothers have been steam rolled on this one. One of the sad things is that there will continue to be some in the RR who will want to push this all the way. They will not be content until they can force their sick and twisted distortion of “religious” thought onto our government and all who live here. Who will invade us to establish democracy? ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/18 "2005-04-10T04:25:21Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > I know the feeling exactly! Many politicians thought that they were manipulating the religious right for their own purposes, never dreaming that the religious right was doing some manipulating of their own. Frist and the Bush Brothers have been steam rolled on this one. > > One of the sad things is that there will continue to be some in the RR who will want to push this all the way. They will not be content until they can force their sick and twisted distortion of “religious” thought onto our government and all who live here. > > Who will invade us to establish democracy? I’m still holding onto the hope that Nehemiah Scudder will continue to be fiction. Heinlein would have been the first to tell you that he was no psychic, and I don’t think the American people are stupid. Scared, yes, and willing to follow whoever can claim safety the loudest, but not stupid. Public reaction to the Congressional free-for-all over Terry Schiavo was encouraging. ---
**Author:** ![DoctorJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctorj/32/2904_2.png) [@DoctorJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DoctorJ)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/19 "2005-04-10T04:29:46Z")
I was coming in to post the same link posted by **Dr. Love**. If Viera “had in mind something less extreme than Stalin did and was not actually advocating violence”, he shouldn’t have used that particular quote. Words spoken by politicians and pundits in prepared speeches are gone over in incredible detail before they’re actually used; you can’t tell me for a second that the comments by Delay and John Cornyn and this joker didn’t know their comments could be seen as excusing or even promoting violence against judges. I expect that the nutjobs are going to play their hands as hard as possible in the next few weeks, until the GOP leadership finally wins back the moderates by throwing Tom Delay overboard. ---
**Author:** ![vivalostwages](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/d07c76/32.png) [@vivalostwages](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vivalostwages)\ **Post date:** [April 10, 2005, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556/20 "2005-04-10T04:31:48Z")
**The Handmaid’s Tale** , indeed. This is scary stuff. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/lets-put-god-in-charge-of-the-judiciary/298556.md?page=2)