I get too many newsletters.  Back a couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article titled 'A Nation at War with Itself'  It would have been nice to have read this article by Newt Gingrich to include a few points about how the war is being fought.  I suppose I could call this a supplemental post, but the newsletter was there sitting in my inbox the whole time.  This happens on a regular basis, but more so in the last month or more.  I've addressed, so I should be able to do a better job of it now.  I've posted the article here so you can read it for yourselves.

Judges overstepping their authority is nothing new.  Newt informs us of the historical precedence of the presidential powers combining with the legislative powers to set them straight on their job description as I described in the original post.  He specifically cites a case pertaining to Habeus Corpus and presidential authority to make policy in regard to enemy combatants.  This authority may not be popular with the America hater crowd, but it is essential to the war effort.  Since we do have a fifth column seated in Congress and since the MSM is complicit with enemies of the state and since the term is coming to an end for the current president, he will not be the presiding president over the correction of the judicial authority.  Will the maverick do it?  Probably.  Depends on how far they go during his tenure.

Congress and the President Need Not Acquiesce to a Tyrannical Court

There is significant precedent in American history for believing that the legislative and executive branches can act to restrict the reach of judicial decisions as well as force the judicial branch into changing its views when they are out of touch with the constitutional values, practices, and traditions of America.

President Thomas Jefferson and the Jeffersonians successfully fought back against the Federalists' use of the courts to impose their agenda over the will of the people. After the Federalists lost the election of 1800, but before the new Jeffersonian congressmen took office, the Federalists more than doubled the number of federal circuit judges (from seventeen to thirty-five) and packed them with loyal Federalists. The Jeffersonians reacted by simply eliminating all eighteen new federal circuit court judgeships.

President Abraham Lincoln refused to treat the Dred Scott decision, which both declared unconstitutional a federal law that had limited the extension of slavery and that blacks were not citizens under the Constitution, as legally binding on the executive branch. For example, his administration issued U.S. passports to free blacks and signed legislation that placed restrictions on slavery in the federal territories, positions at odds with the Dred Scott decision.

And in June 1942, when German spies who had landed in the U.S. to carry out acts of industrial espionage were captured by the FBI, President Franklin D. Roosevelt acted swiftly to signal to the Supreme Court that he was not going to entertain court intervention. First, FDR issued an executive order on July 2, 1942 that the detainees were to be subject to trial immediately by military commission. FDR also made clear to his attorney general what his reaction would be to any writ of habeas corpus: "One thing I want clearly understood . . . I won't give them up . . . I won't hand them to any United States marshal armed with a writ of habeas corpus." FDR understood the Supreme Court was supreme in the judicial branch but it was not supreme over the other two political branches.

The executive and legislative branches possess clear constitutional powers to check and balance decisions of the judicial branch. The Boumediene decision requires that the executive and legislative branches act to reestablish a constitutional balance among the three branches. I will be writing more about this subject in weeks to come.

		Your friend,
		Newt Gingrich