Damn those judges and their pesky judgment

Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist issued a year-end statement complainingg that Congress was eroding judicial independence, in the form of a measure passed under cover of the Amber Alert "we're protecting your kids from sexual predators (or at the very least, custody disputes)" bill:

The measure at issue is known as the Feeney Amendment, for its sponsor, Representative Tom Feeney, Republican of Florida. It instructed the United States Sentencing Commission, the agency that sets the guidelines, to issue new rules to "ensure that the incidence of downward departures is substantially reduced." The commission was ordered to maintain judge-by-judge records of sentencing departures and to send the files to the attorney general, who in turn is obliged to provide the information to the Judiciary Committees of both houses.

Now, you could argue that it only serves Rehnquist right to have Congress interfering with his judgment, since some of us think his judgment unduly interfered with, say, the electoral process. But neither development bodes well for the future of our democracy. Both represent the growing consolidation of power in the hands of a minority. Both appear to be part of a concerted, and at least loosely organized effort to establish a permanent Republican government.

Yeah, call me shrill if you want. I'm gonna get my dad to write a post about what another four years of the Bush Administration will mean to the Supreme Court, and in turn what that will mean to the country for the next 50 years, cause that's a big reason he got involved in the whole politics thing this year, and it's a big reason that moderate Republicans and Independents should think real, real hard before supporting Bush in 2004.

My next post is gonna be about the 'effort to establish a permanent Republican government', which sounds like a 'vast right-wing conspiracy' thing, but turns out just to be pretty much what Karl Rove says he's trying to do, and apparently what he pretty successfully managed to do in Texas.