By now you've all heard that a federal district court in Michigan has ruled that Bush's warrantless wiretapping plan is illegal and unconstitutional. The media and the blogosphere are both full of it. Here's the memeorandum aggregator for this morning, with all the reports and opinionating.
The basics of the kerfuffle are:
Liberals are happy that the court has ruled against the Bush administration, strengthening the viewpoint after the Hamdan ruling that says Bush and his entire cabinet could be arrested and prosecuted for various criminbal acts. Rightwingers are annoyed that yet again those turbulent judges have failed to back up Bush appropriately and have made the country less safe against terrorism.
However both sides seem to realize that the decision will likely be overturned on appeal to a higher court.
and...
Rightwingers think that its horrific that a liberal judge appointed by a liberal President can make such a ruling while being perfectly happy that rightwing judges appointed by a rightwing president can overturn it. Liberals meanwhile feel exactly the opposite way.
Which leads me to an inescapable conclusion -
The rest of the world is wondering why the nation that supposedly leads the way on freedom, liberty and justice has such a cockarsed and partisanly biased method of getting its judicial bums on seats.
Isn't it about time America put its ingenuity to a different method? Do away with elections for judges at local levels and partisan appointments at higher levels. Have every judge from now on appointed by a panel of their peers as being competent enough and impartial enough to do their jobs - and make sure that the panels are rigourously bipartisan in their makeup. Whichever politicians decided to back such a move could truly be called "uniters not dividers".
Anyone want to argue that doesn't make sense?
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