Today Clinton, Tomorrow the Judges

by Randolph T. Holhut

The Texas Republican also earned that nickname for his power tactics in the House to keep the Taliban wing of the GOP in charge. It was no surprise that he was the one who kept the drive for President Clinton's impeachment going when every other member of the House GOP leadership was running for cover.

But it's not just President Clinton that DeLay is after. Two years ago, DeLay declared war on the federal judiciary. "As part of our efforts against judicial activism, we are going after judges," said DeLay in March 1997.

The usual rogues gallery of the Christian Right -- James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer of the Family Research Council and Pat Robertson of the Christian Coalition -- have long railed against what they believe is the tyranny of a judiciary dominated by "liberals."

Never mind that the federal courts are stuffed with judges appointed by Ronald Reagan and George Bush when they were president. Never mind that President Clinton has nominated mostly tepid centrists to the bench. Because some federal judges still believe in such quaint constitutional notions as due process, civil liberties and the separation of church and state, the conservatives have seized upon impeachment as a way of getting rid of judges it doesn't like.

Well before we heard talk about impeaching Clinton, DeLay and his House allies (such as Bob Barr of Georgia, an early proponent of Clinton's impeachment) were targeting federal judges such as Harold Baer Jr. of the U.S. District Court of Manhattan, Fred Biery of the U.S. District Court in San Antonio and Chief Judge Thelton Henderson of the U.S. District Court of San Francisco.

DeLay claims he has "a whole big file cabinet full" of information on federal judges targeted for impeachment. Combined with the Senate's footdragging in approving new federal judges appointed by President Clinton, all this is nothing more than an attempt by the conservatives in Congress to dictate the ideological slant of the judiciary.

If Congress gains this power, you can throw the concept of checks and balances out the window. Judicial independence will be just a memory.

The foundation of our constitutional form of government is an independent judiciary that is free of executive and legislative interference so it can protect our civil liberties from the tyranny of the majority. That's why federal judges serve for life and why judges can't be removed for issuing politically unpopular decisions.

Ironically, the biggest booster of judicial independence is one of the most conservative Chief Justices in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court -- William Rehnquist.

"If one were to select the two major contributions to the art of government made by the Founding Fathers in Philadelphia in 1787, I think one would have to select: first, the separation of the executive from the legislative power, and second, the creation of the independent judiciary with the power of judicial review," Rehnquist wrote in a 1991 law review article.

"The principle of separation of powers was not 'home free' simply because it was embodied in the Constitution, so long as the Impeachment Clauses were also in that document," Rehnquist concluded. "Battles were to be fought in the succeeding two hundred years to preserve the separation of powers, and two of the most important of those battles were waged outside the courts: the trial of (U.S. Supreme Court Justice) Samuel Chase in 1805, and the trial of (President) Andrew Johnson in 1868."

Both Chase and Johnson were the subjects of impeachment trials, and neither were convicted. The Clinton impeachment is just the latest chapter in this battle.

The impeachment mania in Congress has exposed the deep ideological divisions within that body. Last month, we witnessed the House approve two articles of impeachment on a party-line vote. We watched GOP moderates intimidated into silence by the bullying tactics of DeLay and others. We are seeing how a group of short-sighted ideologues are willing to destroy our constitutional system of government just so they can get their way.

Congress should make laws, not be the law. It shouldn't have the unfettered power to remove a president simply because he's hated by a vocal minority that happens to control the GOP. Nor should it have the power to intimidate the judiciary simply because it isn't doing the bidding of that same vocal minority.

So far, no one has stepped up to call a halt to DeLay's madness. Is there anyone left in Congress, or anywhere else in this nation, who has enough guts to stand up to these bullies?