united colours of vruz

by Peter Hardin, GavelGrab

Former presidential candidate Ralph Nader is targeting five Supreme Court justices with sharp criticism, and he is urging impeachment action.

Justice at Stake has consistently cautioned against impeachment calls based on disagreement with specific rulings. JAS Executive Director Bert Brandenburg warned in a statement last October:

“Almost every American, liberal and conservative, has been angered by particular legal rulings, but that’s because we ask courts to settle tough legal disputes. It is reckless to threaten judges with ouster simply because we don’t like a particular decision.”

Nader declares in a commentary distributed by OpEd News, “Five Supreme Court Justices–Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kennedy are entrenching, in a whirlwind of judicial dictates, judicial legislating and sheer ideological judgments, a mega-corporate supremacy over the rights and remedies of individuals.”

“Taken together,” he writes, “the decisions are brazenly over-riding sensible precedents, tearing apart the state common law of torts and blocking class actions, shoving aside jury verdicts, limiting people’s ‘standing to sue,’ pre-empting state jurisdictions–anything that serves to centralize power and hand it over to the corporate conquistadores.”

Nader concludes: “Never have I urged impeachment of Supreme Court justices. I do so now, for the sake of ending the Supreme Court’s corporate-judicial dictatorship that is not accountable under our system of checks and balance in any other way.”

by Bruce Fein, The Huffington Post. h/t azspot

There was a time when Mr. Biden bugled opposition to unilateral presidential wars. He denounced them as impeachable “high crimes and misdemeanors” subversive of the constitutional order. In November 2007, on the campaign trail, the then Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee threatened President George W. Bush with impeachment and removal from office if the Commander in Chief initiated war against Iran without prior congressional authorization. With uncharacteristic clarity for customarily fork-tongued politicians, Mr. Biden sermonized:

But let me tell you, I have written an extensive legal memorandum with the help of a group of legal scholars who are sort of a stable of people, the best-known constitutional scholars in America, because for 17 years I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee. I asked them to put together [for] me a draft, which I’m now literally riding between towns editing, that I want to make clear and submit to the United States Senate pointing out the president has no authority to unilaterally attack Iran. And I want to make it clear, I want it on the record, and I want to make it clear, if he does, as chairman of the foreign relations committee and former chair of the judiciary committee, I will move to impeach him.

And then came the elections of 2008. As Mr. Obama’s running mate, Mr. Biden was elected vice president. His devotion to the Constitution shriveled in accord with Lord Acton’s dictum, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He became enamored of Congressman Timothy John Campbell’s retort to President Grover Cleveland’s opposition to an unconstitutional bill: “What’s the Constitution between friends?”

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