Looks like the American left will have a conniption if the US Supreme Court exercises judicial review powers it has had for more than 200 years and overturns heath care reform.  The Court is “run by hacks dressed up in black robes” the ever thoughtful New York Times columnist Maureen Doud informs us. Television talking head Paul Begala warns of a “rarefied world of bloodless abstractions preferred by the court’s right-wing majority.”  And of course President Obama had this to say: “I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”

That “strong majority” was greased along by the likes of the Cornhusker Kickback to win over mighty senate barons and killing medical malpractice reform to keep Democratic money men happy; the “democratically elected congress” was actually elected in gerrymandered districts the congressmen and women drew for themselves.  But that’s small stuff, what we have here is the latest in a two century fight between politicians and judges.  The war drums are already beating to impeach the current Supreme Court. “Impeach the Supreme Court Justices If They Overturn Health-Care Law,” writes David R. Dow in The Daily Beast.

Well, let’s do it.  Impeaching Supreme Court justices goes way back.  Justice Samuel Chase was impeached in 1805 on perfectly good political grounds.  And a half century ago, the right wing was on the warpath to impeach Chief Justice Earl Warren.  On June 17, 1957, known as Red Monday, the Warren Supreme Court handed down four rulings favoring American Communists, including one, Yates v US, that freed Communists convicted of trying to overthrow the US government.  The outrage was palpable, leading to the Impeach Earl Warren movement; “Register Communists not Firearms” was a favorite bumper sticker.

I have a little list and they surely won’t be missed, so here are the grounds for impeaching the five Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices (and thus allowing President Obama to appoint his most favorite Harvard law professors in their place).

No one should still serve once the president who appointed them has died: that will rid us of Justices Antonin Scalia and Anthony Kennedy, appointed by the late President Ronald Reagan.  Nor should any justice continue serving if the president who appointed him was defeated.  That takes care of Justice Clarence Thomas, appointed by President George H. W. Bush.  And no justice should serve if he was appointed by a president who stole the election.  It is dogma on the left that the Supreme Court stole the 2000 election for George W. Bush by not allowing the Florida recount to proceed a few more months until Al Gore finally found enough votes to win.  That’s all that’s needed for Justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

Stealing Florida was the first apostasy by the Great Satans of the Supreme Court, the second was Citizens United, the 2010 case that allowed corporations to spend unlimited funds on independent campaigns, something that was personally condemned by President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address while the justices were sitting right in front of him: “I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests.”  Now this is the same Obama who bundled more campaign cash for his 2008 campaign than any politician in American history and personally killed off the post-Watergate public funding of presidential campaigns.  But not to worry, the special interest funds raised by the Bundler in Chief was good campaign money because it came from unions and Hollywood liberals, and their hearts are in the right place.

And now the final blasphemy: overturning health care reform that has evoked such hysteria from Obama land.  But it’s not new, beating up on judges has been a favorite sport throughout American history; Thomas Jefferson abolished numerous district courts because he did not like the judges; Andrew Jackson openly defied the Supreme Court; Franklin Roosevelt tried to pack the Court and actually succeeded when enough of the old guys died off.  And then there was the McCarthyite hysteria over the commie pinko decisions of the Warren Court.

As Doud, Begala, Obama and their friends descend into the muck of court baiting, they’ll find plenty of company.