Clear The Bench Colorado Launches Judicial Non-Retainment Initiative

A followup to BlueCarp's earlier post--Clear the Bench Colorado launches anti-retainment campaign targeting Colorado Supreme Court justices who value partisanship above the rule of law:

The Colorado Supreme Court has trampled our Constitution one too many times…

This is a rogue court, populated with partisan “justices” with no respect for justice or the rule of law.

This partisan court violated accepted legal practice in ignoring the “findings of fact” of the trial court which heard the case and ruled (correctly) on the unconstitionality of the mill levy tax rate freeze.

The majority on the court is apparently incapable of interpreting the plain language of the Colorado Constitution (including TABOR) which “specifically says voters must approve ‘any new tax, tax rate increase, mill levy above that for the prior year … or a tax policy change directly causing a net tax revenue gain to any district.‘”

The court’s majority is also apparently incapable of interpreting the plainly expressed will of the people, who previously “crushed a ballot amendment [32] in 2003 that would have frozen property tax rates.”

It is time to remind the court’s majorityof their responsibility to the rule of law, the state Constitution, and the will of the people.

John Andrews has more:

"We are a nation that has a government, not the other way around." Reagan's words speak defiance to statism, but they are only as true as we make them. The 2010 election is Coloradans' chance.

Supreme Court justices Mary Mullarkey, Michael Bender, Alex Martinez and Nancy Rice will be up for another 10-year term. Poor stewards of the law since they last faced voters in 2000, all four deserve dismissal. Whether they're retained or bounced will signal how much we cherish liberty.

Voting judges into office ended here in the 1960s. Gubernatorial appointments replaced the unseemly spectacle of jurists soliciting campaign funds. No court can overrule us, nor need we explain why. In this, at least, we're still sovereign.

Capriciousness isn't justified. "Prudence will dictate" avoidance of political changes "for light and transient causes," the Declaration of Independence cautions. But terminating a dishonest judge is warranted, and so is termination for breach of trust. Mullarkey, Bender, Martinez and Rice have failed their constitutional trust.

The justices up for renewal are poster kids for the "living constitution" racket of legislating from the bench in disregard of the written text. Under Chief Justice Mullarkey, as The Denver Post's Vincent Carroll wrote after last month's TABOR ruling, "the Colorado Supreme Court seems to think that it is . . . free to redefine words however it likes." Let's answer their abuse of judicial review with electoral review and retire them.

Clear the Bench Colorado--bookmark it.