This is as surprising as rain in Seattle during January.

I've noticed for many years there was a large cohort that's been positively ITCHIN' to come out and scream their redneck creed in phonetic spelling. The line quoted by Digby from the '63 interview with George Wallace, that the civil rights "agitators" and their "allies in the government were to blame for terrorism against Black churches, is a little piece of wickedness to which I'm accustomed.

But the interesting thing here to me is the way in which these wingnuts have turned on the judiciary in a way that admits of no logical arbitration whatsoever: the term "activist judge" is invoked to suggest that somehow, this mysterious black box of referees are conniving in the most inconvenient, intellectually demanding way possible. A "liberal judge," for example, has to establsih the principle that will always be invoked the same way, in each and every circumstance, in perpetuity. A legislature that is conspiratorially liberal would have a somewhat easier time of it, an executive branch still more so. But the galaxy of judges, interpreting abstract principles to achieve reliably "liberal" outcomes? Impossible.

The only way you could establish reliably that a judge was an activist would be if a group of other judges, randomly chosen, found the opinion irrelevent to the underlying laws (or constitutional principles). But the whole class of judges is getting tarred as activist. I really think this is simply a polemic for a completete liquidation of the machinery of republican government, seriously.

These folks have been itching to dismantle the federal judiciary since the very day that the Supreme Court told the world that racially segregated schools were unconstitutional. The vituperative, threatening, spiteful language and terms of oppribium have not changed a bit in 50 years. These folks are dangerous and under no circumstances should the black community be lulled into a sense of false security and complacency regarding the threat they pose to us by liberals and so-called black leaders too inebriated with the high-toned pacifism of Dr. King's sermons. As P6 says we cannot reason these people out of a position that they did not reason themselves into. They mean us and this country harm in the worse way.

What PTCruiser said.