HorsesAss.Org

We spend an awful lot of time in the comment threads here on HA arguing about taxes. And at the heart of most of the antitax sentiment is the unchallenged assumption that taxes are bad for the economy.

There’s just one problem, though. Despite the widespread notion that taxes harm the economy, no one has actually been able to back that up. It’s not that taxes have no effect; they are a major part of the American economic system and affect planning and behavior in many ways. Taxes influence who wins and who loses in a competitive society. But over all, there is surprisingly little evidence that tax rates are an important factor in determining the nation’s economic prosperity.

Anna Bernasek writing in the New York Times explores the notion that taxes are bad for the economy, and discovers that it is exactly that: “a notion not backed by strong evidence.” The economic theory is that taxes have a negative effect on behavior by reducing the incentive to do whatever is taxed.

That’s the theory, anyway. In practice, how many Americans will work less if their taxes rise? With mortgage bills, college tuition and car payments looming, who can afford to work less? Relatively few have the option of cutting back without risking the loss of their jobs.

So just because taxes can discourage productive behavior doesn’t mean that they do. Too many other factors are involved – like social pressures, financial needs and a job market that isn’t entirely flexible.

And then there’s the evidence. Over the last 30 years, economists have undertaken hundreds of studies to determine whether taxes hurt the economy. So far, they’ve turned up little to convict taxes of the charge. After reviewing the literature on the topic in 1993, two economists, William Easterly of New York University and Sergio Rebelo of Northwestern, concluded in a joint paper that “the evidence that tax rates matter for growth is disturbingly fragile.”

As it turns out, history shows that throughout the 20th century, in the U.S. and other developed nations, a rising tax burden goes hand in hand with rising prosperity. In fact, between 1950 and 2002, the strongest productivity growth actually occurred when the top tax rates were the highest. And on average, the highest taxed countries are also the most affluent.

Nobody is making the case that high tax rates are a recipe for growth, although certainly the things taxes pay for — public investment in education, research, health and infrastructure — are essential to a prosperous and stable economy.

But as we continue to discuss tax reform in Washington state it is important to do so without being hindered by unscientific assumptions… no matter how intuitive they might at first appear. Taxes are not antithetical to prosperity. And we shouldn’t structure our tax system or our government based on a notion that experience simply doesn’t back up.

King County Councilmember Raymond Shaw Reagan Dunn (R-Manchuria) sent a letter yesterday to Elections Director Dean Logan:

I am asking that you resign your post and give over the operation of your department to someone who will be better able to manage it, who will be more forthright in admitting mistakes, and who will have the trust and confidence of the people.

Hmmm. I nominate Shaw Dunn for the job. After all, his qualifications to be Elections Director are at least as impressive as his qualifications to sit on the county council, which last I checked consisted of the following extensive resume:

“Mommy.”

Shaw Dunn accuses Logan of mismanagement, but really… how the fuck would he know? As far as I can see, the only thing Shaw Dunn has ever managed, is to get appointed to a series of federal jobs on the strength of his mother’s political connections and reputation.

Yeah, I know… I know… I should show more respect for our elected officials… but oh wait… his mommy had him appointed to the King County Council too!

So Shaw Dunn, who has never run anything in his life (not even a campaign for the office he’s held for little more than a month,) is suddenly an expert at running county elections… you know, the way Daniel Snyder is an expert at running football teams. And like Snyder, Shaw’s Dunn’s first and only solution is to fire the coach, turning King County Elections into the bureaucratic equivalent of the Washington Redskins.

As Adams County Auditor Nancy McBroom told me, “it’s hard to wave your wand or twitch your nose and fix everything at one time.” But I guess it’s even harder to show a little patience when you’re accustomed to mommy giving you everything you want.

(Deep breath.)

I apologize for getting so personal (well… sort of) but I really find Shaw’s Dunn’s letter to be downright offensive, accusing Logan of a “cover-up” without ever alleging what exactly it is that Logan is trying to cover up. Shaw Dunn attacks Logan for not informing the council sooner about the “87” additional absentee ballots found by staff during a seven-day search through approximately 375 archival boxes of over 565,000 absentee envelopes, ignoring Logan’s explanation that he was waiting to release the information until after the search was completed.

“Otherwise, experience has shown that the story will indicate a number, and a follow-up story will claim the county was incomplete in its process and disclosure,” [Logan] said in an e-mail. “The public interest is best served by assuring an open, thorough and complete accounting. That will be done.”

As it turns out, there were 93 unopened absentee envelopes, not the 87 that Shaw Dunn prematurely alleged. And as predicted, the predictable folks over at (un)Sound Politics quickly ridiculed the changing numbers.

I’d say this is all the worst sort of political grandstanding, but that honor probably belongs to the other letter Dunn sent out yesterday… this one to U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, requesting a federal investigation of the 2004 election.

Whatever.

You can be sure he’ll get his investigation (you don’t think he’d have made the request public if mommy hadn’t already arranged it,) and I say bring it on. And when its all over, and the feds don’t find a scrap of evidence suggesting corruption, I’ll be the first one demanding that Shaw Dunn send another letter to Logan. An apology.

SPECIAL BONUS: Separated at birth?

I’ve been meaning to blog for almost a week on last Tuesday’s Social Security “town hall” held by Congressman Dave Reichert at Bellevue High. According to MSM and blog reports, the meeting didn’t go quite as smoothly as the Republican organizers intended, and I highly recommend Andrew’s excellent personal account and analysis posted over on NPI’s official blog. The Seattle Times’ James Vesely, who moderated the discussion, also describes the scene quite nicely:

If what I saw last week at Bellevue High is any indication, the reform plan to add private accounts to Social Security is a goner.

The school’s auditorium was packed, and not even three panelists urging private accounts

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Okay, let me see now… an estate tax has been on Washington’s books since 1901, but just two months ago, the State Supreme Court tossed it due to the phasing out of the federal estate tax to which ours was linked by a 1981 initiative. The Legislature is now prepared to reinstate the estate tax, that has been off the books for only two months, while more than doubling the exemption to $2 million. And according to opponents… this is going to drive businesses out of state?

“I would support a higher sales tax, even an income tax in this state, rather than having a death tax installed,” said Don Root, who wants his sons to carry on his Seattle-based manufacturing and design company after he dies.

Reinstating an estate tax at the same time the federal government is poised to abolish it would cause successful Washington businesses to leave the state, taking a lot of good jobs with them, said Root, whose company employs roughly 450 people in Washington.

I appreciate Don Root’s endorsement of a state income tax, and I urge him to evangelize the rest of the business community. But somebody please explain to me how his logic on the negative impact of an estate tax is not a total load of crap?

Washington heirs have been paying an estate tax for 104 years — and on much smaller estates than proposed in the new budget — but now suddenly, because the tax lapsed for two months, a new-found class consciousness is going to drive the wealthy out of state? Was Root planning to move his business out of state before the February ruling? If not, why, and if so, has anything really changed? Is anybody actually suggesting that our estate tax has been driving jobs out of state since 1901?

This is not a new tax. It is a tax that we have been levying for over a century, and as William Gates Sr. points out, it is an extremely fair tax.

“The question is, why are people wealthy?” Gates said at a news conference last week. “They worked hard, they’re smart, and they are American … (with) a police force that works, a court system that works, a market system that makes it possible to dispose of what you own. Economists tell us that having a stable market adds 30 percent to the value of everything you own.”

I’m not going to argue that an estate tax will never force heirs to sell off a family business… perhaps it occasionally does. But when our highly regressive tax structure is so cruelly unfair to middle- and lower-income households, I find it incredible to think that we should shift even more tax burden onto working families because a handful of multi-millionaires think an estate tax is unfair.

I’m not sure what’s more offensive: the selfish efforts to secure yet another tax break for the wealthy, or the bogus and insulting economic threats with which they are trying to sell it.

UPDATE:
The Seattle P-I editorializes in support of retaining our state estate tax:

Gov. Christine Gregoire’s proposed revised estate tax would only apply to about 250 people per year yet would generate $129 million for essential government programs. This is a tax that makes sense.

Michael Hood at blatherWatch has been blathering about the need for Seattle’s Air America affiliate, KPTK-1090 to hire some local hosts to challenge the reigning righties, like KVI’s Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson. He offers some nominees to play the role of local, liberal “blabberjockey,” and I’m quite intrigued with the name at the top of the list.

We’ ve already had some nominees for the new blabberjockeys. The irrepressible, brilliant and blognacious Goldy (really David Goldstein) of Horsesass.org has been nominated and already agreed to take the 6-9a shift.

Um… actually, I’d much prefer afternoon drive time (I’m not much of a morning person,) but I doubt 1090 would want to mess with their popular afternoon schedule. Besides, beggars can’t be choosers, and I’d jump at the chance to audition my chops on talk-radio, whatever the time slot. I like to talk. Occasionally, I even listen.

But regardless of who eventually gets on the air, I agree 100 percent with Michael that we need to start developing some local liberal talent to compete with the right-wing howlers. I love and respect Dave Ross, but we need more than just his “common sense” approach to balance the calculated propaganda propagated by John Carlson. We don’t need another journalist like Dave… we need a political partisan like John.

We also need liberal hosts who are willing to shamelessly promote the Northwest liberal blogosphere the way Air America’s Majority Report has done for national bloggers (and the way KVI and KTTH have done for (un)Sound Politics.)

So I’d be curious to hear your nominees for liberal blabberjockey (please… pick me, pick me!) And if you think I’m totally deluded in imagining myself in the role… well… okay, I suppose I should welcome some constructive criticism too.

Thomas Shapley has a very informative column in today’s Seattle P-I, giving a brief history of our antiquated 60 percent super-majority requirement for voter approval of local school levies, and the politics behind stalled efforts to get a constitutional amendment eliminating it, through the Legislature. [What, you thought it was about the schools?]

Democrats lack the two-thirds majority needed to pass the bill through the Senate, and so far have been unwilling to accept an amendment that would allow simple-majority votes only when school measures are run in November general elections. Shapley suggests that the impasse may be due more to politics than policy.

Does the Democratic leadership really want to pass the legislation this session? It’s an issue that can cut both ways in some suburban swing districts, where broad support for schools tussles with deep opposition to tax increases. Which do Democrats judge more valuable — passing the measure, at a potential political price or retaining the political hammer of blaming Republicans for yet again blocking its passage?

Now contrary to what some of you may think, I’m no Democratic insider with a direct line to the party leadership, or wide-eyed radical, defiantly belting out The Internationale in the shower. So without having the opportunity to have those who know better convince me otherwise, the Hargrove amendment sounds like a compromise I can live with.

Apart from promoting the agenda of the knee-jerk anti-tax faction, there is really no good rationale for singling out school levies to be subject to an anti-majoritarian system. If the best the Democrats can get is the Hargrove compromise, than I say use the political hammer to nail this one home.

Education funding is too important to be dictated by 40 percent of the voters… or a game of legislative Stratego. This is one issue where legislators should be encouraged to let pragmatism trump politics.

I felt a little bad about poking fun at Adams County Auditor Nancy McBroom’s quote in the Seattle P-I, so I thought I’d give her a call and chat about the election. As one might expect, she turned out to be articulate, friendly and informative.

The election has already been hashed out ad infinitum, so there wasn’t any breaking news she could add to the discussion. But she did elaborate on the circumstances behind Adams County’s failure to match signatures on provisional ballots. In the past, provisional voters have always been treated like regular polling place voters, with the exception that their ballots weren’t counted until voter eligibility could later be verified. That means provisional voters sign into the poll books like everybody else; and since poll book signatures are never matched before counting the ballot, neither were provisional signatures.

According to Nancy, with passage of legislation bringing Washington into compliance with the Help Americans Vote Act (HAVA), this was supposed to change, and starting with the November 2004 election provisional signatures were to be matched just like those on absentee ballots. Nancy confirmed that this was not done in Adams County. (Nor, apparently, in Stevens, Walla Walla, and Whitman counties.)

Nancy didn’t explain why Adams County failed to comply with the new statute, but she assured me it would never happen again… since all future elections in Adams County will be conducted entirely by mail. In any case, Nancy didn’t seem particularly concerned that her staff’s failure to comply with the new statute created much opportunity for fraud. Adams is a small county, and according to Nancy, everybody knows everybody, what they’re up to, who’s getting married, who’s getting divorced, and all the other usual gossip. When you sign into the poll book at Adams County’s single polling place, chances are the old lady behind the table knows you.

That’s right, for 6,477 registered voters Adams County has a lone polling place in Othello, serving four precincts; the other 27 precincts were already vote-by-mail. And Nancy says that Adams is moving to an all vote-by-mail system because they are finding it too expensive and too difficult to find and train enough people to staff their single polling place. The old ladies are getting older, and just don’t have the stamina to last those 12-hour shifts.

Compare that to King County, with over 3000 poll workers operating 540 polling places and 2,616 precincts for 1,082,406 registered voters. And so I asked Nancy to do exactly that, and comment on the controversy surrounding the performance of King County Elections. After a brief pause and a nervous laugh, Nancy described it as “unfortunate, but not surprising” given the large number of voters. She went on to say that King County Elections had problems before Dean Logan came in, and that “it’s hard to wave your wand or twitch your nose and fix everything at one time,” but she expressed confidence that given the necessary time, they would.

Many Republicans have called for Dean Logan to be fired, and some — like EFF President Bob Williams — have even said that he should be “jailed.” But at least on the subject of provisional ballots, it’s hard to scapegoat Logan in light of the problems in other counties. King County’s procedures regarding the handling of provisional ballots fully complied with state and federal law, and they instructed their staff accordingly; unfortunately poll workers did not always follow or enforce the procedures, resulting in a relatively small number of provisional ballots being improperly canvassed (compared to percentages in Adams, Stevens, Walla Walla and Whitman.)

Nancy, on the other hand, issued procedures and instructions that clearly failed to comply with the law, and yet nobody is asking for her to be imprisoned or forced to resign. Nor should they.

In both Adams and King, mistakes were made… mistakes that should be fixed, but which had little if any impact on the election considering the fact that the vast majority of these provisional ballots would have been counted anyway had they been properly canvassed.

If anything, the news about mishandled provisional ballots in pro-Rossi, Eastern Washington counties merely reinforces my impression that the only thing extraordinary about this election was its extraordinary closeness. None of this is evidence of fraud or corruption or gross incompetence, but rather the normal and random distribution of human errors to which human beings are prone. Of course we can and should do a better job, but until somebody proves to me that any of these errors likely changed the outcome of this election, I’ll remain comfortable with the results.

Time for the weekly free-for-all. Or perhaps maybe some thoughtful discussion. It’s up to you.

I’ve got the news, and I’ve got it first: Dino Rossi is pulling the plug on his hopeless court challenge of Washington’s gubernatorial election!

According to a very reliable GOP source, campaign staff are preparing to call a press conference for later this afternoon, at which time Rossi will also announce that he intends to start immediately campaigning for a rematch against Gov. Christine Gregoire in 2008.

The decision came after a sometimes raucous late-night meeting at Rossi’s Bellevue headquarters, in which the normally soft-spoken Rossi repeatedly castigated state GOP Chair Chris Vance and several top members of his legal team, for misleading him about his prospects of winning in court.

According to my source, when Rossi asked if the recent revelation of nearly 1800 improperly handled provisional ballots in heavily Republican Eastern Washington would hurt his chances of prevailing in court, attorney Harry Korrell bluntly replied “No. You didn’t have much of a chance to start with.” A heated exchange followed, in which Rossi complained of being “lied to” and Vance accused Rossi of not being a “team player.”

Rossi, who continues to maintain a full campaign staff months after the official campaign ended, has asked key staffers to stay on for another three years. He will not run for Maria Cantwell’s U.S. Senate seat in 2006, having no desire to move his family to the other Washington. When asked if he would support a Vance candidacy for the Senate, Rossi reportedly quipped “I’d rather see that lying, cock-sucking, sack-of-shit roast in Hell than represent my party.”

On second thought, maybe the GOP’s “proportional analysis” proposal isn’t such a bad idea.

The Seattle P-I reports that four Eastern Washington counties that voted overwhelmingly for Dino Rossi, tallied 1793 provisional ballots without first matching signatures to those on file.

“We did not check their signatures against our signatures in-house,” said Auditor Nancy McBroom in Adams County. “With the new law, it says, I guess, you’re supposed to confirm the signatures,” McBroom said.

Yeah, gee… I guess I s’pose so, Nancy.

If the courts were to use proportional analysis to toss out these ballots, it would expand Christine Gregoire’s lead by an additional 360 votes. However….

Republicans, who would like the proportional analysis applied in Gregoire’s stronghold of King County, say the problems with provisional ballots in Eastern Washington can’t be compared to those in King County.

Uhhh… that’s because, um… us city folk just can’t be trusted, whereas you can forget about your cares, it is time to relax at the Junction. See, big ol’ nasty King County is filled with Democratic cheats, so we had to carefully check each signature for three points of similarity (tossing out thousands of absentee and provisional ballots in the process.) But Billy Jo, Bobbie Jo and Betty Jo are honest as the day is long, thus Adams, Stevens, Walla Walla, and Whitman counties didn’t need to bother checking signatures at all.

Right.

What these revelations really tell us is that shit happens, it always happens, and that it happened throughout the state… even in Rossi country. Indeed, when it comes to provisional ballots, it looks like quite a bit more shit happened outside of King County than within.

             Ballots   Fucked   Error
County       Counted   Prov.    Rate
Whitman       18,122   783      4.32%
Stevens       20,606   560      2.72%
Adams          5,204   108      2.00%
Walla Walla   23,269   342      1.47%
King         899,199   660      0.07%

So much for gross incompetence and corruption in King County. Hmmm… why haven’t I heard EFF President Bob Williams squawking on talk radio that Nancy McBroom is a “crook” who should be jailed? Could it be that she’s a Republican?

Marsha Richards of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF) was whining over on (un)Sound Politics recently about the Legislature failing to honor the will of the people.

It seems Senate budget-writers didn’t even attempt to follow the state’s voter-approved spending limit (I-601) this year. (Um. Surprise?)

This is a line of argument that the EFF has trod out relentlessly over the past few weeks, and to back up her point, Marsha cites the EFF (of course,) “here, here, here and here.”

I have often ridiculed Tim Eyman for honoring the will of the voters only when they agree with him, and apparently the EFF has the same cynical view of the initiative process. Indeed, their primary recommendation for balancing the budget while following the intent of “voter-approved I-601” is to repeal voter approved I-728:

Rather than ignore the intent of the voter-approved I-601 spending limit, Democrats should instead balance the budget by:

1) Repealing Initiative 728. This “free” class-size reduction initiative passed by the voters in 2000 is currently diverting $809 million from the general fund to the student achievement account. This means, if repealed, an additional $809 million would be available for the 2005-07 budget.

The EFF has similar disdain for I-732, the initiative that automatically gives cost of living adjustments (COLAs) to teacher salaries… at least, that is what it would have done if, like I-728, it hadn’t been suspended to balance the last biennial budget.

Clearly, the EFF believes some voter-approved initiatives should be more inviolate than others. But their criteria for measuring the will of the people appears a bit backwards; examining the margins by which these initiatives passed, a pattern quickly emerges:

    Year   #       Yes Votes
    1993   I-601     774,342 (51%)
    2000   I-728   1,714,485 (72%)
    2000   I-732   1,501,261 (63%)

Hmmm… so let me get this straight… according to the EFF, I-728, which passed by a landslide margin of 72% as recently as 2000, should be sacrificed in the name of I-601, which received nearly a million less votes, barely squeaking by with a 51% margin all the way back in 1993? So logically, I can only assume that the EFF believes that the older the initiative, and the fewer votes it received, the more it represents the true will of the people.

By that measure, I fully expect the EFF to join me in demanding that the Legislature honor the clear and indisputable will of the people, by fully implementing voter-approved Initiative 69… which enacted an income tax way back in 1932.

Or is the EFF’s indefatigable support of I-601 based more on “the will of the EFF” than it is the will of the people?

Personally, I’ve never been a big fan of the initiative process, and nothing illustrates my skepticism better than the 2000 election, a year when voters approved huge tax cuts and huge spending increases… simultaneously. If voters expressed any “will” in that election, it was that a majority of us want something for nothing. But for the EFF to argue that a 12-year-old squeaker has greater claim to legitimacy than newer, far more popular initiatives, is a laughable exercise in political bullying.

The EFF makes great sport out of criticizing the Democrats’ budget and attacking them for “ignoring the intent of voter-approved spending limits,” but what they never bother to do is defend the initiative itself. In truth, I-601 was an ill-conceived, toothless bill, that tied budget growth to an unsustainable economic metric, while relying on a non-constitutional super-majority provision that could always be abrogated on a simple majority vote. The fact that nearly a decade and a half later, facing a whole new set of economic challenges, the Legislature is doing exactly that, should come as no surprise to anybody.

The EFF doesn’t defend the rationale for a spending limit that doesn’t keep pace with the demands of our growing economy, because it can’t. Instead it falls back on a bogus “will of the people” screed, rhetoric that is all the more unconvincing considering the fact that initiative profiteer Tim Eyman attempted to strengthen I-601’s provisions two-years ago, and couldn’t even drum up enough support to qualify his initiative for the ballot.

Will of the people, my ass.

Terri Schiavo passed away today, 13 days after her feeding tube was removed. An autopsy will be performed.

I think this New York Times editorial expresses my feelings on her death well enough that I have little to add.

Some people hold religious convictions so heartfelt that they could not bow to public opinion or the courts and accept the fact that Ms. Schiavo should be allowed to die. They deserve respect, just as her husband and her family members deserve sympathy. The frightening thing about the case was that other people, far more powerful and far less emotionally involved, looked at the world we live in today, in which politics is about maximizing hysteria at the margins, and concluded that the fight was one that would pay off in worldly terms as well.

But today, finally, there is a moment of consensus. Rest in peace, Theresa Marie.

But please, read the whole thing before commenting.

Thank you Columbia Watch for um, watching the Columbian, and pointing me towards yesterday’s excellent editorial on “Illegal Voters.” It turns out that 31 convicted felons illegally voted in Clark County.

That might sound shocking, but it’s only 0.0001799 percent of the 172,277 votes cast in this county, or one illegal felon in every 5,556 voters overall. If those 31 illegal ballots were voted in the same proportion as the whole of Clark County […] 16 of them favored Republican Dino Rossi and 14 went for Democrat Christine Gregoire.

Okay, so their math sucks (they need to slide that decimal point over a couple notches,) but the rest of the piece is still on target. The editors point out that with all the talk about better procedures to purge felons from the rolls, there is a simpler and more societally beneficial solution.

What this state really should do is what 36 others have done: Allow felons the automatic right to vote after serving their time. But, unfortunately, one or more members of the state House Rules Committee didn’t cotton to a bill that would have done just that, so it died quietly without a floor vote earlier this month.

As Kimsey said, allowing felons who have served their time the automatic right to vote would make things administratively easier, obviating the need for much of the paperwork that’s now required to keep them from voting.

But more important, Kimsey’s right when he says, “If part of the rehabilitation process is getting people reconnected with society, and someone is released from incarceration and wants to take the time and effort to register and cast a ballot, is there a more positive engagement than that?”

Before we devote any more time, money or resources towards preventing felons from voting, we need to sit back and ask ourselves: “what exactly is the problem that we’re trying solve?” Clearly we should do whatever is reasonable to prevent people from voting illegally… but does society actually gain anything from making it illegal for felons to vote?

No less than the American Correctional Association has called for ending the practice of withholding voting rights from parolees and those who have finished serving their terms. Studies show that these laws serve no correctional purpose, and may contribute to recidivism.

Unfortunately, the continuing partisan rancor over November’s extraordinarily close gubernatorial election makes it impossible for legislators to address this issue during the current session. Perhaps next year we can have a reasoned debate over a policy that disenfranchises 25 percent of WA’s black males, dangerously disengaging a large segment of our population from the civic mainstream.

No surprise… the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has once again rejected a petition for a new hearing on the Terri Schiavo case, just 15 hours after agreeing to consider it.

“Any further action by our court or the district court would be improper,” Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr. wrote. “While the members of her family and the members of Congress have acted in a way that is both fervent and sincere, the time has come for dispassionate discharge of duty.”

Birch went on to scold President Bush and Congress for their attempts to intervene in the judicial process, by saying: “In resolving the Schiavo controversy, it is my judgment that, despite sincere and altruistic motivation, the legislative and executive branches of our government have acted in a manner demonstrably at odds with our Founding Fathers’ blueprint for the governance of a free people — our Constitution.”

Personally, I’m not so sure how sincere President Bush and the Republican leadership was, but I agree with the court’s public scolding. The court — all the courts — ruled based on the law.

UPDATE:
While the 11th Circuit’s decision today was a single sentence long, The New York Times reports that a concurring opinion by Judge Stanley F. Birch Jr., a conservative judge appointed in 1990 by Bush the Elder, was absolutely scathing, arguing that the federal courts had no jurisdiction, and that the law enacted by Congress and President Bush seeking federal judicial review was unconstitutional.

“When the fervor of political passions moves the executive and legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene,” wrote Judge Birch, who has a reputation as consistently conservative. “If sacrifices to the independence of the judiciary are permitted today, precedent is established for the constitutional transgressions of tomorrow.”
…
In particular, Judge Birch wrote, a provision of the new law requiring a fresh federal review of all the evidence presented in the case, litigated for seven years in state court, made it unconstitutional. Because that provision constitutes “legislative dictation of how a federal court should exercise its judicial functions,” he wrote, it “invades the province of the judiciary and violates the separation of powers principle.”

David J. Garrow, a legal historian at Emory University who closely follows the 11th Circuit, said Judge Birch’s opinion was striking because the judge was a conservative Republican, especially regarding social issues. […] “This is a Republican judge going out of his way to directly criticize the Congress and President Bush for what they’ve done,” Mr. Garrow said.

When it comes to nominating judges who strictly interpret the Constitution, right-wingers are learning they should be careful what they wish for.

UPDATE:
Justice Anthony Kennedy has denied the Schindler’s request for a hearing, marking the sixth time the U.S. Supreme Court has chosen not to intervene in the Terri Schiavo case.

As the Rev. Jerry Falwell lies in critical condition, hooked up to a ventilator in a Lynchburg, VA hospital, let me be the first to urge doctors to take all extraordinary measures to keep him alive, in accordance with the wishes of Falwell, his family, and his God.

Feeding tubes, IVs, ventilators, repeated and prolonged defibrillation… anything to keep Falwell from shuffling off this mortal coil. And if his body ultimately fails, I hope they keep his brain alive in a jar of nutrient-rich fluid. It is God’s will.