Texas legislators(Delay & Cornyn) take issue with O'Connor's warnings

[RedEarth]

WASHINGTON – Now that she's left the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor has a few things to get off her chest. One of the first was to warn that the nation could slide into dictatorship if harsh critiques of the judiciary – from the likes of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Tom DeLay – go unanswered.

"We must be ever-vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary," she said this month at a Georgetown University conference on corporate law. "It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings."

Last year, after killings of judges or their relatives in Atlanta and Chicago, Mr. Cornyn suggested that judicial activism had inflamed the public. And Mr. DeLay, then the House majority leader, called for the impeachment of judges involved in removal of life support for Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead Florida woman. Both took strong issue last week with Ms. O'Connor's remarks, which didn't mention them by name. The senator called the warning of potential dictatorship "hyperbole, to say the least."

"That's a remarkable thing for a former justice on the Supreme Court to say," he said. "There's no danger of dictatorship while people feel free to express their views, and it's a ridiculous suggestion. "Obviously she's irritated, and maybe she feels somewhat liberated now that she's no longer on the bench," he said.

Mr. DeLay, R-Sugar Land, suggested the former justice is rusty on the concept of checks and balances, noting that Congress has an explicit right to strip courts of jurisdiction over any issue as it sees fit. "I think she ought to read the Constitution again," he said. "We have an authority. They are not an ivory tower over there. All wisdom does not reside in nine people with black robes. It's in the Constitution, and it has not been exercised in 50 to a hundred years, and it's time to do it."

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