Conservatize The Courts (More)!!!

Not content with winning the Prop H8 fight at the ballot box, and then having it upheld by the CA Supreme Court ruling in their favor, the professional homophobe set here in California are now saying that Prop H8 shouldn't have even been necessary if we'd had the "right kind" of judges, using that as their rallying cry to launch an effort to ideologically purify California's courts to their liking. (via) 


A couple of Religious Reich organizations, including NOM (they of the hilariously awful and much-parodied "Gathering Storm" ad, and efforts across the country to halt our homomentum and roll it back wherever possible, including here in California, but also in Maine, NH, NJ, WV, NY, and DC), have partnered with a couple of conservative California reps to launch "BetterCourtsNow.com", a site and an organization which they hope will galvanize the conservative base into voting ever more conservative judges into California's courts.  

"It’s important that we unify our votes so we ensure that solid men and women of high morals, who will not legislate from the bench, are elected to office." - Joel Anderson, R-La Mesa

And of course, by "solid men and women of high morals," he means anti-gay, anti-immigrant, anti-abortion, the usual laundry list of culture-war topics.

Can I just say, I would be happy to listen if anyone has an intelligent reasoning why judges ought to be elected rather than appointed by people who actually know a qualified judge when they see one, but lacking a good explanation, my uneducated self cannot see why it is we allow "the people", most of whom have little to no knowledge of law or court procedures or what it takes to be a judge, to fucking ELECT judges? 

But beyond that, I love the usual accusation about "legislating from the bench".  Mind you, when a conservative-leaning SCOTUS legislates from the bench that corporations count as people -  a concept not found ANYWHERE in the Constitution that I'm aware of - these assholes certainly don't let out a peep of contention against that kind of judicial activism.  They're quite fine with judicial activism when it's conservative judges, but gods help the librul judge who dares set any kind of precedent, even one well-reasoned and in accordance with the body of case law as it stands. 

But it's not all bad, because these assholes screeching about judicial activism?  That, is the sound of the losing side scrabbling desperately to hang on to their power in the face of progress' inevitable march.