I read an article at Radio Iowa while eating lunch that made my blood boil. Former Iowa Supreme Court Justice Michael Streit whined to the liberal legal establishment (I realize that is redundant) that politics have now “distorted” the process.
Mark Geary of KCRG Radio in Cedar Rapids, IA reports:
He said the court’s controversial 2009 ruling on gay marriage followed the law, rather than the “weather-vane” of public opinion. “We read the law. We read the decision and we voted the way we did…,” Streit said last night. “Anyone with legal, intellectual integrity would have voted the same way.”
Streit read the lyrics of the Green Day song “American Idiot” to illustrate his frustration. The lyrics are: “I’m not a part of a redneck agenda / Now everybody do the propaganda / And sing along to the age of paranoia. Don’t wanna be an American idiot / One nation controlled by the media / Information nation of hysteria / It’s going out to idiot America.”
Good riddance Mr. Streit. He has just confirmed that Iowans made an excellent decision throwing him out of the Iowa Judicial Building on his keister. The problem isn’t with the Iowa Supreme Court “reading” the law, but reading into the law. This is a judicial philosophical debate – strict constructionalism or legal positivism – the justices embraced the latter and Iowans rejected that. So an appeal to “legal, intellectual integrity” is laughable coming from him since he has none.
As far as the process being distorted by politics, guess what? It already has been distorted by politics. There is zero accountability and zero transparency, of course the legal establishment likes the status quo. They get to keep control. Mr. Streit’s quoting Green Day is symbolic of the snobbery that exists in the legal establishment and it is good to see that there is one less purveyor of it on the Iowa Supreme Court. It also demonstrates that he is still clueless as to why he lost his job.