Thrusting politics into our courts

By JOSEPH SPEAR

Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

Some of the keener Republican minds are working on schemes to improve the wayward and perverse federal bench.

They want judges to improve their interpretations of the law - that is, provide a more conservative spin. They plan to effect this advancement in jurisprudence by forcing judges to be more accountable to Congress - which is to say, the GOP eggheads would like to politicize the judiciary.

Leading the way on this issue is Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas, House majority whip. I never envisioned the man from Sugar Land as a cerebral giant, but in my research I found a reference to him as an "intellectual ideologue." The ideologue part I did know about.

DeLay is one of those in-your-face conservatives so snarly they embarrass Newt Gingrich. One of DeLay's pet peeves is environmentalists. He once owned Albo Pest Control. It was a fine business until the state decided it might improve the public health to regulate the scattering of poisonous substances about the landscape. This made DeLay angry, and he decided to run for the Legislature. He arrived in Washington in 1984 and is remembered fondly as the hothead who described the Environmental Protection Agency as the "Gestapo of government."

Now DeLay is leading a movement to impeach judges he and other fire-eaters find lacking. The Constitution would seem to limit such action to magistrates who commit "high crimes and misdemeanors," but that caveat is seen as a minor impediment. DeLay told the Washington Times that articles of impeachment are being drawn up against a federal judge in Texas who set aside some local election results because 800 suspect absentee ballots were cast. Two other judges are being considered for removal.

The House can impeach with a simple majority vote, but the Senate needs two-thirds. Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott does not appear too keen on DeLay's idea. The appropriate time to challenge judicial activists is during the confirmation process, Lott has said. No impeachment trials would be conducted in the Senate, he said, as a way of disagreeing with rulings.

Another Republican sage who wants to constrain the courts is rejected Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork, now a professional thinker who hangs out at a tank called the American Enterprise Institute. In his writings and lectures, Bork says the Court to which he once aspired is bent on destroying our culture, has "decided to rule us without any warrant in law," and is engaging in "the promotion of anarchy and license in the moral order and advancing tyranny in the social order."

How Bork could possibly harbor such opinions about a High Court of seven Republicans and two Democrats, lorded over by a political primitive named William Rehnquist, might escape the normal person, but remember, we are talking about fanatics here.

Bork wants a constitutional amendment to let Congress overrule the Supreme Court. I suppose it would work like campaigns: The special interests kick in some money, the lawmakers do some stumping and whip up popular passion. They amass a simple majority, and the law goes out the window.

As a believer in the constitutional system that has worked well for 220 years, I am skittish about removing so-called "activist" judges. But I could be convinced by a show of faith.

If charges are brought first against David Sentelle, the appellate judge who oversaw the firing of Independent Counsel Robert Fiske and the hiring of Kenneth Starr, I might go along. If charges are then brought against Lawrence Silberman, who joined with Sentelle to overturn Oliver North's conviction, then by Jove, they will have a convert on their hands.