Key (R) senator: 9th Circuit to be split up

[KamaAina]

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?id=1&display=rednews/2004/04/08/build/state/30-9th-circuit2split.inc

Republican senators say they have gone from asking whether the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals should be split up to deciding how to split it up....

"I think it is inevitable that (the court) will be split up," said. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala....

Democratic lawmakers criticized the effort as a politically motivated reaction to 9th Circuit Court decisions that both Republicans and Democrats have described as liberal....

"I have long regarded political attempts to alter the makeup and structure of our federal judiciary with some skepticism," said Sen. Patrick Leahy, Vt., the Judiciary Committee's top Democrat. "I do not support politicizing the bench with ideological appointments, and I do not support politicizing the bench with geographical alterations to suit the current political winds."

One proposal from Conrad Burns (R-Mining Industry) would leave California and Nevada in the 9th Circuit, throwing the other states and territories, including Hawai'i, to the wolves in a new, presumably repuke-dominated 12th Circuit. :scared:

Unsurprisingly, Nevada repuke John Ensign chimed in with a competing proposal that would keep Hawai'i, Guam and the Northern Marianas in the Ninth, and would add two new freeper-type circuits for the remainder of the West.

Typical repuke M.O. Lib'rul Ninth Circuit standing in the way of your evil plots for world domination? Well, then, make an end run around it by chipping away at its territory until all that's left is the Civic Center BART station in S.F.

Hoo boy. If they can actually do this with a simple majority, and the pResident's X-mark, we are screwed beyond belief. :scared:

[karabekian]

1. 9th circuit is responsible for a much larger area

than any of the other appelate courts. I think a split is probably going to happen eventually.

[KamaAina]

3. But why put us in the judicial cesspool they're sure to create?

Logistically speaking, it is difficult enough to travel from Hawai'i to Seattle (the only site I can see that would work for a 12th Circuit), but from Guam or the Northern Marianas? We're talking overnight layover here. Perhaps Ensign's proposal, modified to create only one new circuit, would work -- for us, anyway.

But plain and simple, I'm terrified that any states and territories placed under a new circuit created now (i.e. packed with nothing but repuke Federalist Society states'-rights ideologues) would essentially end up under Taliban rule.

[Quetzal]

2. I don't want to be a part of some fricking

right-wing 12 circuit. Keep Hawaii in the 9th!!!