This column came to my inbox this morning from the New York Times. This particular ‘journalist’ is a left-wing idiot. Some of his columns are so stunningly stupid and devoid of facts that one wonders how the guy got a high school diploma. (I know, you are thinking, “why does she read them?” I suppose it is like staring at a car wreck…). But this one today really got my attention. Suddenly, the NYT is concerned about a too-powerful Supreme Court, and unchecked judiciary. For my entire life, SCOTUS has been upending the values and traditions of America: prayer in schools, and all religious expression or connections to public life, the structure of state legislatures through byzantine and unintelligible and conflicting redistricting decisions, busing (destroying the urban schools), vetoing term limits for Congress, despite having been approved by more than 20 million Americans, abortion, same-sex marriage, New York Times v Sullivan, that has resulted in the most irresponsible and dishonest media imaginable and on and on. The Warren Court and its progeny essentially created the blueprint for today’s tortured society. And only when SCOTUS starts to right that ship do the NYT / leftist elites start to question the power the Court grabbed for itself for the past sixty years. The article below could have been written by any right-thinking American any time until now.
Apparently, the idea is dawning on them that substituting courts for legislatures might have drawbacks.
I’ve long thought Congress should curtail the jurisdiction of the federal courts: Article III is a fairly blank slate, left intentionally so by the Framers of the Constitution. Congress could legislate that federal courts have no jurisdiction to require states or localities to appropriate or spend tax dollars, for instance. That’s been a favorite of the ACLU for decades.
Congress could limit the jurisdiction of federal courts to hear or invalidate state election laws. Establish clear and very narrow standards for doing so, and codify the SCOTUS decision from last week where legislatures not only have standing to defend their election laws but are necessary parties to the cases.
We finally have a Supreme Court that is reverting to the US Constitution as the core principles on which its decisions are made. Not a “living, breathing, we-wish-the-Constitution-said-this-but-we-are-ignoring-that-pesky-fact’ decision-making by the Supreme Court. Congress should exercise its legislative authority to restrict and narrow the jurisdiction of federal courts. And we might actually get some leftist support for that proposition at this point in our nation’s history. It is time.
