Where Has Equal Justice Gone

By Semperpapa

American justice is fast becoming more just for some than for others.

On Friday, a Wisconsin Dane County judge, Maryann Sumi, issued a temporary judgment against the Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s attempt to address that state’s huge financial deficit by limiting certain Unions abilities to collective bargaining.

That controversial plan was at the core of the protests we all saw from Madison, where union thugs had the chance to show their true colors by invading the Capitol building. It was also the scene of the 14 Democrat members of the State House deserting their positions by becoming fugitives in Illinois.

Walker was able to pass the law anyway by removing any financial aspect from it, which would have required at least one Democrat to be present for the vote.

Judge Sumi, in her decision, sided with Dane county’s District Attorney, Ismael Ozanne, who had filed a suit claiming that the state’s law requiring open meeting, legislation that supports public involvement in the public discourse, had been violated. Ozanne’s argument was that the Governor and Republicans in the legislature used the special session clause illegally, bypassing public involvement. Judge Sumi agreed.

So there is another legal battle taking place in Wisconsin, where it looks like the judiciary is once again taking the opportunity to interfere in the legislative process to advance political agendas. But this is not the disturbing part. What is highly disturbing is the one sided nature of this practice.

Basically, only the progressive legal challenges really mean anything in America any more.

In 1994, California voters passed Proposition 187, which would prohibit the utilization of public funds for illegal aliens, from healthcare to public education to welfare. Immediately following the elections and the victory for Prop 187, Judge Mariana Pfaelzer issued a restraining order blocking the law and effectively nullifying the will of the people of California.

Similarly, in 2008, California voters passed Proposition 8, another controversial legislation aimed at safeguarding marriage as an institution for a man and a woman. The proposition was immediately challenged and stopped from being implemented, eventually being declared unconstitutional by Federal Judge Vaughn Walker.

In Oklahoma, on November 2010, voters passed the state proposed constitutional amendment that would prohibit the state courts to consider international laws and Shariah law in the adjudication of legal cases. The people of Oklahoma spoke with a margin of 70% to 30%, which anyone would consider overwhelming, in support of the amendment. Yet, U.S District Court Vicki Miles-LaGrange deemed that the amendment was not necessary, after the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) challenged the law in court. So the judge blocked the implementation of the people’s decision.

Probably the most well known example of judicial activism can be considered the actions against the Arizona illegal immigration bill SB1070. The bill, supported by an overwhelming majority of the people of Arizona, was aimed at enforcing the long existing federal laws regulating illegal immigration, laws that the very federal government has been unwilling and unable to enforce.

In this particular case, the Department of Justice got into the controversy by filing a law suit against the state of Arizona and its Governor, Jane Brewer. Ultimately, it was another Federal Judge, Susan Bolton, to stop most of the provisions of the bill. And the legal battle continues…

These examples would appear to be judicial activism at its best, especially when the predominance of these cases is guided by the continuous pursuit a progressive agenda. In fact the opposite does not seem to be working, as injunctions against the reckless actions of our Marxist government are literally ignored.

Case in point is the moratorium on off shore oil drilling. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had imposed a ban on all deep water oil drilling in the wake of the BP disaster in summer 2010, move that had been hailed by the environmental terrorists as a victory against the oil industry.

U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman had struck down the moratorium, which the Obama administration finally lifted in December 2010. The problem remains that Interior Department has since issued one single new permit to a company associated with, what a coincidence, British Petroleum. Considering the past campaign contributions BP has made to the Obama Presidential campaign, it sure looks like the regime is merely taking care of its own.

In February 2011, Judge Feldman again addressed the issue by ordering Salazar to act upon some of the permit requests that Interior is sitting on. The judge’s order gave Salazar 30 days to address the issue, but an appellate court stayed that decision by saying that the government could take more time to make a decision. Salazar spokespeople stated that the permit requests in the case, five permits from a company called Ensco, were incomplete and that negotiations between the government and the company were ongoing. Regulatory despotism in final analysis.

What the Left calls “judicial activism” appears to be only limited to those decisions that do not fit the progressive agenda of the enemies of the Nation. And the worst case if the one regarding Obamacare.

In January 2011, Florida Federal Judge Roger Vinson issued a decision that deemed the monstrous health care reform bill unconstitutional. Vinson is the second judge to do so, following in the steps of Virginia federal judge Henry Hudson who had already done so in December 2010.

Vinson decision should render the whole bill unconstitutional and its implementation should be stopped immediately, unless the government appeals the decision to a higher court.

At the basis of Vinson’s ruling is the issue of the federal government forcing any citizen to purchase a product, which is prohibited by the U.S. Constitution. In a stroke of luck, those who authored the 2,700 pages monstrosity forgot to include the “severability clause” in the bill, clause that would limit an injunction to affect only some aspects of the bill but allow others to be implemented. Absence of such clause means that Vinson’s decision strikes down the entire bill, forbidding the government from continuing the implementation of any of the bill’s provisions until the Supreme Court takes up the ruling.

But even in this case, the government is practically ignoring the ruling. Vinson was clear in its statement that the bill should be immediately stopped unless the government filed an appeal. The government, instead, just filed a motion of clarification. All the while, with the exception of Alaska and Florida who have stopped implementation, cash-strapped states across the Union continue to spend money they do not have in the attempt to follow Obamacare requirements.

What is about the American judicial system that makes it acceptable to be forgiving of progressive judicial activism, while decisions based and documented on the application of the law and of the Constitution can just be ignored?

The answer is that decades of subversive infiltration in our political and judicial apparatus is finally paying off for those who aim at the destruction of our country. Regardless if spawned from political correctness or by forceful activism, the rule of law is no longer what governs our society. We have become a Nation where the political agenda of the few takes precedence over the canons of the law, a Nation divided by years of brainwashing conducted by the subversive elements of our society.

It used to be that all Americans were served by a Constitution that safeguarded the interests of the common American, by a set of laws governed by common sense and the interest of the individual. The Left has been able to turn the Document into a nuance for the realization of the Marxist ideology of those in power and turn all those who still believe in its importance into racists and homophobes and whatever other label one wants to use.

A real sad turn of events for American Exceptionalism.

Just my thoughts!