GOP Effort to Intimidate Judges is Successful

Submitted by Hans on Tue, 01/08/2008 - 12:11pm.

It appears as though Jeff Roe and James Harris --who've created an entire entity whose purpose is to attack Missouri judges and threaten them with the same treatment they gave Cole County Circuit Judge Tom Brown in 2006-- have achieved their poorly hidden goal.

Congrats to the governor's henchmen on successfully intimidating elected Missouri judges into making wrong decisions.

­As blogger Dan at Gone Mild noted months ago, Roe himself has celebrated the successful intimidation of judges in other cases.  Dan noted a since-deleted blogpost by Roe which reveled in the idea that political pressure by conservative interest groups had goaded a judge into trying to appease them with his decision and avoid the fate of Tom Brown (emphasis mine).

Unfortunately, Callahan’s decisions could be overturned by judges at a higher level who have not yet learned the lesson Callahan seems to have learned. Given the recent controversy surrounding judicial nominations, The Source has to wonder if political favor, and not the Missouri Constitution, will ultimately win the day.

This was, in no uncertain terms, an overt and ugly victory dance by Roe.  He's surely doing the same thing today. A sad moment for justice in Missouri.


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Callahan made the right call

Submitted by kahunah on Tue, 01/08/2008 - 8:00pm.
Whether it was for the right reasons or not, Judge Callahan made the right call. The SOS was attempting to confuse the voters (for political reasons). That should not be the agenda of either party. The wording of the initiative that Robin attempted to put on the ballot was more than a little confusing; it was outright deceptive.
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Quite a change of heart for you about Callahan, no?

Submitted by Hans on Tue, 01/08/2008 - 9:04pm.

I find it interesting, Mr. Byrne, that someone who has regularly attacked Judge Callahan, calling him a "dictator" who considers himself "above the law" and who has wrongfully "assumed the power of the Missouri Supreme Court,"
is now praising the man for making "the right call." ­

All of a sudden, you're taking up for the guy in blog comments.  While you've busied yourself screaming from the rooftops about the injustice of Circuit Court judges undoing statutes, you seem to have no problem with a Circuit Court judge writing ballot language despite the statutes that explicitly assign that duty to other officials. 

Maybe you're just not concerned about judicial "dictators" so long as they're making decisions which suit your peculiar political preferences? 

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