The Only Branch of Federal Government that Still Works Is apparently Finally Getting Fed up with the Two that Do Not — a Constitutional Crisis May Ultimately Be the Result — and that Might Be enough to Start a Revolt by Responsible Sanity against Neo-Confederate Idiocy

© 2013 Peter Free

 

14 October 2013

 

 

The judiciary is the only branch of federal government that arguably still works — and the other two have been doing their direct and indirect best to kill that capacity off

 

From reporter Josh Gerstein — on the federal judiciary’s building “had enough” mindset:

 

 

Jurists say funding for the courts has already been cut to the bone by way of sequestration — and now the government shutdown has added insult to injury, leaving the government’s third branch running on fumes that likely won’t last out the week.

 

“It is time to tell Congress to go to hell,” Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf wrote on his blog last week. “It’s the right thing to do.”

 

Kopf, a George H.W. Bush appointee who sits in Lincoln, Neb., urged his fellow judges to evade the shutdown by designating all their staff as essential and exempt from furlough.

 

“Given the loss of employees already suffered by the judiciary on account of the sequester and otherwise, why shouldn’t every remaining employee of every federal district court (including [federal public defenders]) be declared ‘essential?’” the judge asked.

 

“Such an order would set up an inter-branch dispute worth having….[Congress] could do nothing, in which event Congress loses its ability to destroy the judiciary [by] failing to pass a budget. Or, Congress could go batshit and the judiciary and Congress could have it out,” he said.

 

The chief judge of the U.S. District Court located just blocks from the Capitol building said that the shutdown’s funding lapse, piled on top of two years of tight budgets and staff reductions, has prompted his colleagues’ frustration level to rise.

 

“I have to say it’s fairly high,” Judge Richard Roberts said in an interview with POLITICO Friday. “Court budgets have essentially been slashed to the bone, with us losing nationwide thousands of judicial employees performing very important tasks…We’re being told to furlough where we’re already cut to the bone.”

 

© 2013 Josh Gerstein, Government shutdown: 'It is time to tell Congress to go to hell', Politico (13 October 2013) (extracts)

 

 

Why an angry judiciary might finally get something done

 

For people whose civics classes are cloudy memories, America’s three governmental branches are supposedly separate and equal.

 

Among these, with the exception of the Supreme Court, the judiciary hides out of sight — doing criminal justice and conflict resolution at a ceaseless rate.  If social stability is a goal — of the three branches — the judiciary is the most vitally necessary one on a day to day basis.

 

For that reason, it tends to attract reasonably grown up mentalities.  Namely people who work to get something done — rather than to curry favor for (a) pretend accomplishments on behalf of the often gesticulating “rabble” and (b) institutionalized corruption inspired by plutocratic interests.

 

What most folks do not recognize is the federal judiciary’s self-restraint, when it comes to meddling in the other two branches’ affairs.  Were that outlook to change, constitutional heck would break loose.  But possibly with some beneficial results.

 

The majority of Americans now recognize that Congress and the Executive are increasingly incompetent and societally destructive.  It wouldn’t take much for the judiciary to successfully emerge as the “parent” who returned the semblance of order to the squabbling “living” room.

 

For example, what are the two incompetent branches going to do, if the federal judiciary decides it no longer has the capacity to try federal crimes?  Or hear civil disputes among fighting plutocrats?  The resulting chaos would (literally and metaphorically) slop over into the streets.

 

And what if some lower federal courts felt compelled to start injecting themselves into some aspects of the daily stupidity that marks much of what the Executive and Legislative branches do every day?

 

Remember judicial self-restraint?  When that goes out the window, you will suddenly see the myriad ways in which the judiciary can mess with the boneheads, who populate the other branches of government.

 

 

The moral? — As an attorney myself, I’m for it — let’s force some of the idiots in the two other branches to really look at the mess they have created

 

You think the debt ceiling crisis is bad.  Just wait till the federal judiciary throws off some of its self-imposed chains.

 

Neo-Confederate, neo-Secessionist nitwits in Congress may suddenly recognize what it feels like when Mom-Dad comes home from doing the real work.  And then these flame-throwers will have to face the actuality that none of them can comfortably survive, without the rest of the United States to support them.