 by Michael Reagan March 10, 2005
The ruling came after Missouri's highest court overturned the death sentence given to Christopher Simmons, who was 17 in 1993 when he kidnapped a neighbor, Shirley Crook, hog-tied her and while she was still alive threw her off a bridge to drown. Prosecutors say he planned the burglary and killing of the woman. This murderous thug had bragged that he could get away with the brutal killing because of his age. The Supreme Court proved he was right. Speaking for the majority in a 5 - 4 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy noted most states don't allow the execution of juvenile killers and those that do use the penalty infrequently. The trend, he said, is to abolish the practice because "our society views juveniles ... as categorically less culpable than the average criminal." Incredibly he invoked "international opinion" as a justification for letting teenage killers off the hook. "It is proper that we acknowledge the overwhelming weight of international opinion against the juvenile death penalty, resting in large part on the understanding that the instability and emotional imbalance of young people may often be a factor in the crime," he wrote. In his blistering dissent, an outraged Justice Antonin Scalia argued that there is no trend and chastised his colleagues for taking power from the states. "The court says in so many words that what our people's laws say about the issue does not, in the last analysis, matter: 'In the end our own judgment will be brought to bear on the question of the acceptability of the death penalty,'" he wrote. "The court thus proclaims itself sole arbiter of our nation's moral standards," Scalia wrote. And by allowing "international opinion" to color their rulings, the justices have thrown both the Constitution of the United States and our national sovereignty into the trash heap. This ruling proves once again that Mark Levin was right when he wrote that in everything from same-sex marriage, illegal immigration, and economic socialism to partial birth abortion, political speech, and terrorists' "rights," judges have abused their constitutional mandate by imposing their personal prejudices and left-wing beliefs on the rest of society. According to Levin, no radical political movement has been more effective in undermining our system of government than the judiciary. And we, the people, should not put up with it he insists. And it's not merely the Supreme Court. Judges across the country - from the radical Ninth Circuit Court in California, that ruled the Pledge of Allegiance violates the mythical separation of church and state and is therefore an assault on the Constitution, to the Massachusetts Supreme Court that was able to find grounds supporting the absurd notion that homosexuals have a right to be legally married - judges are assuming the role of tyrants, casting aside the rule of law for their own prejudices. Under our system of constitutional government, the right to make law is restricted to the federal and state legislatures. Today, however, both the federal and state judiciaries have taken it upon themselves to make law, and to do so without regard to the public's will as expressed by the Congress, and by state and local legislatures. The people's right of self-government is therefore usurped by the judiciary which becomes nothing short of a dictatorship. Moreover, a judiciary that turns its back on the Constitution and the laws of the land to embrace foreign law and international opinion is a dagger pointed at the heart of individual liberty. As Mark Levin writes, the idea has taken hold that Supreme Court Justices are somehow imbued with greater insight, wisdom, and vision than the rest of us -- and that for some reason Almighty God has endowed them with superior judgment about justice and fairness. That idea must be abandoned. Nothing less than our freedom and our national sovereignty are at stake.
Mike Reagan, the eldest son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is heard on more than 200 talk radio stations nationally as part of the Radio America Network. Look for Mike's new book "Twice Adopted".  All Rights Reserved. Distributed exclusively by Cagle, Inc. www.caglecartoons.com to subscribers for publication.
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