JUDGE GRUDGE

Religious Right Rabble-Rousers Are Preaching Impeachment To Try To Force Courts To Rule Their Way

U.S. Appellate Court Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. would seem an unlikely target for right-wing wrath.

Never tagged as a liberal, Birch was placed on the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals by President George H.W. Bush in 1990. The Knight-Ridder news service recently called Birch, a former Army lieutenant who served during Vietnam, "one of the most conservative" judges on the federal bench.

Despite these conservative bona fides, Birch is a public enemy to the Religious Right these days because he committed an unpardonable sin: During the legal imbroglio over Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman in a persistent vegetative state whose husband sought to have her feeding tube removed, Birch penned a strongly worded opinion rebuking Congress for intervening in the case.

"He needs to be impeached," Michael Schwartz, chief of staff for U.S. Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), told a gathering of Religious Right activists in Washington last month. Birch and U.S. District Judge James Whitmore, who also ruled against Congress' intervention, should be impeached "forthwith," Schwartz declared.

"I hope they serve long sentences," he added.

If supporters of the newly formed Judeo-Christian Council for Constitutional Restoration have their way, Birch and Whitmore will be the first in a long line of federal judges to be kicked off the bench. Group supporters plan to disbar judges all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where their chief target is Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

At first glance, the D.C. gathering, "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," pulled together by Religious Right preacher Rick Scarborough of Texas, might seem an easily dismissed lunatic fringe. That would be a mistake. Although attendance for the April 7-8 event was low - only about 200 people showed up - the anti-judge hatefest caught the attention of some powerful people.

House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was scheduled to address the event in person but was called away at the last minute to attend the funeral of Pope John Paul II. Two members of Congress, leaders of national Religious Right groups and Senate staffers attended.

Although he couldn't be there in person, the embattled DeLay sent a videotaped statement that endorsed the movement fully.

With DeLay's help, conference organizers have big plans to ditch some powerful judges - starting at the top.

Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald W. Reagan in 1988, is a devout Roman Catholic who has voted to approve various types of taxpayer aid to religious institutions. No matter. He has also voted to support legal abortion, in favor of gay rights and against government-sponsored prayer in schools. These votes have made Kennedy a traitor in the eyes of the Religious Right, and they want his scalp.

Kennedy's 2003 vote to strike down a Texas law banning homosexual sodomy has especially infuriated the Religious Right. A clearly agitated Schwartz could barely contain himself as he blasted the high court for finding "a right to commit buggery in the Constitution."

Kennedy, said home-schooling advocate Michael Farris, "should be the poster boy for impeachment."

What if Congress balks? Farris has an answer in mind for that.

"They ought to be impeached as well," he said. "We need to hold them to that standard."

Another speaker, Edwin Vicira, author of a book titled How to Dethrone the Imperial Judiciary, went even further. Asserting that "the fifth fool on the Supreme Court decides the issue and then according to them.. .everyone else in the world is bound by this decision," he blasted the Supreme Court for promoting "Marxism-Lcninism-Stalinism."

Vieira approvingly quoted Joseph Stalin, whom he called "the greatest political figure of the 20th century."

Stalin, Vieira noted, had a solution for dealing with his enemies: "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty. 'No man, no problem.'... This is not a structural problem we have, this is a problem of personnel. We are in this mess because we have the wrong people as judges, and we have the wrong people as judges because we have the wrong people as legislators."

(Vieira left out part of the Stalin quote. As Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank wrote the next day, Stalin said, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem." Milbank opined that Kennedy might want to find "a few more bodyguards.")

During his videotaped remarks, DeLay included a token line calling for a respectful dialogue. But the bulk of his comments just poured gasoline on the fire.

Blasting recent court rulings, DeLay said, "These are not the dictates of a mature society but a judiciary run amok.... The failure is to a great degree Congress's. The response of the legislative branch has mostly been to complain. There is another way, ladies and gentlemen, and that is to reassert our constitutional authority over the courts."

Continued DeLay, "I believe the judiciary branch of our government has overstepped its authority on countless occasions, overturning and in some cases just ignoring the legitimate will of the people. Legislatures for too long have in effect washed our hands on controversial issues from abortion to religious expression to racial prejudice, leaving them to judges who we then excoriate for legislating from the bench. This era of constitutional cowardice must end."