History Loves a Big Ol' Chomp O' Ass:
Man, those judge-hatin' motherfuckers in the Congress and on the right love to pretend that they're takin' the nation back to its alleged "roots." Look at the Constitution, they shout and wave, forgettin' that the judiciary was created to keep an eye on the other two branches of government. Oh, how they wave the Federalist Papers around, especially #78, written by repressed gay Alexander Hamilton, and they quote it endlessly.

The vampire corpse of Phyllis Schlafly quoted it while promoting her book from last year on how she perceived the judiciary as fucked-up: "Our Constitution's Framers designed the judicial branch to be the least powerful of the three branches. Alexander Hamilton wrote in Federalist 78 that the judiciary 'will always be the least dangerous' branch of government because it has the least capacity to 'annoy or injure' our constitutional rights." Actually, Hamilton said that it was the "least dangerous" because it can't summon the military or write laws. But knowing that would require reading past the first couple of lines of the document.

The creepy intellectual wannabes of the conservative bathhouse known as the Heritage Foundation also see Hamilton as siding with them: "As Alexander Hamilton correctly noted in Federalist 78, it is the province and duty of judges to say what the law is rather than what they want it to be. Judges faithful to their constitutional role exercise legal 'judgment' to enforce the original understanding of the law." Do we need, really, to define the word "judgment"? Has it gotten that stupid? Well, yeah, since supporters of Ten Commandments fetishist ex-judge Roy Moore and the batshit insane Jesus babblers at the Family Research Council also quote Hamilton out of context.

Here's Hamilton, who couldn't be fucking clearer: "[T]hough individual oppression may now and then proceed from the courts of justice, the general liberty of the people can never be endangered from that quarter; I mean so long as the judiciary remains truly distinct from both the legislature and the Executive. For I agree, that 'there is no liberty, if the power of judging be not separated from the legislative and executive powers.' And it proves, in the last place, that as liberty can have nothing to fear from the judiciary alone, but would have every thing to fear from its union with either of the other departments; that as all the effects of such a union must ensue from a dependence of the former on the latter, notwithstanding a nominal and apparent separation; that as, from the natural feebleness of the judiciary, it is in continual jeopardy of being overpowered, awed, or influenced by its co-ordinate branches; and that as nothing can contribute so much to its firmness and independence as permanency in office, this quality may therefore be justly regarded as an indispensable ingredient in its constitution, and, in a great measure, as the citadel of the public justice and the public security." (Emphasis the Rude Pundit's, motherfuckers, emphasis the Rude Pundit's.)

It's all fuckin' there, man. See, the difference is that the legislative and the executive branches are elected, by majorities (allegedly), and thus the majority of the nation has a voice through those branches. The judiciary exists, ideally outside the realm of elections, to give the minority a voice. The logic's simple: the majority will always have a voice through elections. But there's others, up to 49.9% of the population, who'd like to be considered as part of the nation. And, sure, sometimes the judiciary will piss off the other branches, but, fuck 'em, welcome to the Republic, you know? Isn't this basic civics class? Didn't we all learn this back in middle school? Admittedly, the Rude Pundit was taught the Constitution without a Bible present to coordinate the articles with, but, still, and shit, this ain't brain surgery. Hell, it ain't even temperature taking.

As for Hamilton, that poor, duel-losing, unrequited cocksucker anticipated all of it:

The role of the courts in overturning the Patriot Act? "This independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humors, which the arts of designing men, or the influence of particular conjunctures, sometimes disseminate among the people themselves, and which, though they speedily give place to better information, and more deliberate reflection, have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community."

The Terri Schiavo bill? "[I]t is easy to see, that it would require an uncommon portion of fortitude in the judges to do their duty as faithful guardians of the Constitution, where legislative invasions of it had been instigated by the major voice of the community."

Anti-sodomy and anti-gay marriage laws, which, as noted above, would have been of particular interest to the throbbing desires of Alexander Hamilton? "[T]he independence of the judges may be an essential safeguard against the effects of occasional ill humors in the society. These sometimes extend no farther than to the injury of the private rights of particular classes of citizens, by unjust and partial laws. Here also the firmness of the judicial magistracy is of vast importance in mitigating the severity and confining the operation of such laws. It not only serves to moderate the immediate mischiefs of those which may have been passed, but it operates as a check upon the legislative body in passing them; who, perceiving that obstacles to the success of iniquitous intention are to be expected from the scruples of the courts, are in a manner compelled, by the very motives of the injustice they meditate, to qualify their attempts."

So, you know, the traitorous fuckers who gathered in D.C. this week to lash out at "judicial activism" can quote Josef Stalin all they want. They can have a genocidal, mad dictator to give wind to their sails. We'll take the Founders, queer and straight, any day of the week over Stalin, Schlafly, and Dobson.