Repugs Want Impeachment? OK, Let's Impeach - Corporate Justice Roberts

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

I take back what I wrote last week. Apparently at least one Democrat does understand how to fight back against one of the worst corporatists on the Supreme Court:

With Democrats increasingly outraged over the Supreme Court's Citizen United decision that allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections -- a change conservatives have been more successful at taking advantage of -- a Democratic congressman is raising the prospect of impeaching the Supreme Court's chief justice over the issue.

"I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America," Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. "They have done more to undermine our democracy with theirCitizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They've opened the floodgates, and personally, I'm investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn't be a judicial activist, and he wouldn't overturn precedents.

"In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts famously said, "Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don't make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire."

According to DeFazio, Roberts hasn't stood by his own doctrine. He pointed to former Justice John Paul Stevens's dissent in the case, in which he said the Citizens United case was not properly brought before the Supreme Court. "This procedure is unusual and inadvisable for a court," Stevens said of the process. "Our colleagues' suggestion that 'we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell," ante, at 1, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that 'we have asked ourselves' to reconsider those cases."

"Justice Stevens makes the point that Roberts decided a case that wasn't even before the Court, and invited the issue before the Court," said DeFazio. "It was the most extraordinary condemnation I've ever read of a perverted majority on the Supreme Court, at least in recent years."

The point, of course, is not whether impeaching Roberts would succeed. The point is getting in repugs' face with the flip side of their hysterical lies about President Obama. The point is pouring sand in their investigative gears. The point is getting the American people thinking and talking about what really constitutes an impeachable offense. Doesn't sacrificing the foundation of American Democracy to corporate profits warrant impeachment more than getting a blow job or extending health care to everyone?

The point - as it needs to be from now on, regardless of the results of the Nov. 2 election - is for Democrats to play on offense. Constantly. Down by 20 points in the fourth quarter, facing fourth and 25 on our own 15 yard line, we do not punt.