All Rise And Come To Order

We are all at the mercy of the courts! We may have not yet found ourselves in that position yet, as a defendant, but we recognize that on any given day it could happen. For some of us it is a given. But the mercy of the court, or how a court decision will affect us, goes well beyond sitting in the court accused of a crime. Court decisions, based on cases that we had nothing to do with, can alter the way that each of us manage our daily lives.

The obvious examples of such cases whereby the court's decisions dictate our lives are on abortion, imminent domain, and an occasional election for those of you with a short memory. But, throughout all of this acknowledgement, we have always been able to hold on to the principle that once the black robe finds its way to the Judge dujour, we could count of fairness, impartiality, objectiveness, and a total absence of political one sidedness being an issue. While albeit a bit overused, it is very comforting to see the familiar iconic scales of justice, perfectly balanced, prominently placed in our nation's courtrooms waiting for the truth to prevail.

But lately, the scales are swaying from one side to the other looking more like they have been placed on the wave of a tsunami than in a court of law. And the sway of the scales has less to do with the Judge who makes the decision than it does the driving force who put the Judge in the position to make the decisions in the first place. Black Robeitis, an ailment that has plagued our court for many years, and apparently is incurable, is nothing in comparison to our judicial system's new ailment. Our courts are now seeing the beginning phases of a much worse outbreak. This disease, called judicious politicious, or political judges, is spread by close contact to the donkey and elephant species, which are well known carriers. In a nutshell, politics have officially entered the one sanctum of our society where they can have devastating results. Not that politics have not already ruined about every other phase of our lives. Everything from the Big Leagues, to the Junior Leagues, to Little Leagues has been affected. Their swath of destruction has been wide spread.

We have always been told that the courts and our judges on the bench were non-political and our judicial candidates continue to run on bi-partisan tickets because they have no political leaning or affiliation. Riiiiiight! If that is the case, how do we explain the fact that judicial candidates are showing up at political functions by one party or another and espousing the fact they are in alignment with everything that Party X believes in and that they will judge in that fashion if elected. Does it mean anything when a candidate says that they are neither a republican, democrat, or whatever and they appear in political rallies with every other candidate from that party; hands raised in the air with the victory symbol. It will be hard for gods not to provoke a roll of thunder in the courts when those same judges sit on the bench with the scales of justice tarnished beyond recognition. How did we let this happen?

Quite frankly, it was bound to happen. Politics have become a machine that is well oiled, is well financed, and is well