[Overpaid Slacker]

On-Ramp -- If you want to be disgusted, check out Bork's new book: Coercing Virtue: The Worldwide Rule of Judges.
The title is misleading, it's not that judges coerce virtue so much as dictate an ideology of "lifestyle socialism" from the bench, wthout regard for the written laws.

An excerpt from Schafly's review:
The courts are dominated by what Bork calls faux intellectuals of the left who, unable to persuade the people or the legislatures, "avoid the verdict of the ballot box" by engaging in "politics masquerading as law." We are "increasingly governed not by law or elected representatives, but by unelected, unrepresentative, unaccountable committees of lawyers applying no law other than that of their own will."

Americans generally believe that bloodless revolutions come only dressed in military garb, but Bork details how the United States has suffered a "coup d'etat" from the men and women in black robes who have changed us "from the rule of law to the rule of judges." He agrees with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia that the high court "is busy designing a Constitution for a country I do not recognize."

Bork shows how "virulent judicial activism" has overturned constitutional law in many areas. For example, "the suffocating vulgarity of popular culture is in large measure the work of the Court," because it repeatedly defeated the people's attempts to contain and minimize it.

I think Bork goes a bit too far with "suffocating vulgarity" but his point is spot on. Knowing they can't win in the legislatures, libs have co-opted the judiciary -- where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

Also, I disagree that these things only happen here and that only we've got a hijacked judicial system. Opinion polls of many European countries show moderate to strong majority support of the death penalty by the public (as in 50 to 70%) but their governments, the self-appointed stewards of all morality, keep the topic off any public referendum. Hell, the EUrocrats didn't want either joining the EU or accepting a European constitution to be put to a vote of the citizens of each country -- just rubber stamped by their legislatures.

Our system isn't perfect (as people from both sides of the aisle here will agree) but it's the best thing going.

Didn't mean to hijack Steve's thread. Stone this particular bastard and then let the crows at him.

JP