Sandy D Sings

Daily News Blogger, Will Bunch, reports on a speech given by the dearly departed (from the Court, not life) Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, in Sandra Day O'Connor rips into GOP, DeLay, Cornyn, and warns of the "beginnings" of dictatorship.

Nina Totenberg of NPR aired a story about a speech that O'Connor gave at Georgetown University, stating: "In an unusually forceful and forthright speech, O'’Connor said that attacks on the judiciary by some Republican leaders pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedoms."

In concluding her report, Totenberg noted:

O'’Connor observed that there have been a lot of suggestions lately for so-called judicial reforms -- recommendations for the massive impeachment of judges stripping the courts of jurisdictions and cutting judicial budgets to punish offending judges. Any of these might be debatable, she said, as long as they are not retaliation for decision that political leaders disagree with

I, said O'Connor, am against judicial reforms driven by nakedly partisan reasoning. Pointing to the experiences of developing countries and formerly Communist countries, where interference with an independent judiciary has allowed dictatorship to flourish, O'’Connor said we must be ever vigilant against those who would strong-arm the judiciary into adopting their preferred policies. It takes a lot of degeneration before a country falls into dictatorship she said, but we should avoid these ends by avoiding these beginnings.

A transcript of the NPR report is at The Raw Story. The audio can be heard at NPR. The entire story/transcript is worth listening to.

Seeing how the country has evolved of late, there might be a vote in an important decision that O'Connor is regretting these days.