Although he’s not my Congressman, I have a lot of respect for Peter DeFazio, but I was very surprised to learn that he is suggesting the impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts.

With Democrats increasingly outraged over the Supreme Court’s Citizen United decision that allowed unlimited corporate spending in elections — a change conservatives have been more successful at taking advantage of — a Democratic congressman is raising the prospect of impeaching the Supreme Court’s chief justice over the issue.

“I mean, the Supreme Court has done a tremendous disservice to the United States of America,” Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) told The Huffington Post on Tuesday. “They have done more to undermine our democracy with their Citizens United decision than all of the Republican operatives in the world in this campaign. They’ve opened the floodgates, and personally, I’m investigating articles of impeachment against Justice Roberts for perjuring during his Senate hearings, where he said he wouldn’t be a judicial activist, and he wouldn’t overturn precedents.”

In his 2005 confirmation hearings, Roberts famously said, “Judges and justices are servants of the law, not the other way around. Judges are like umpires. Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them. The role of an umpire and a judge is critical. They make sure everybody plays by the rules. But it is a limited role. Nobody ever went to a ball game to see the umpire.”

According to DeFazio, Roberts hasn’t stood by his own doctrine. He pointed to former Justice John Paul Stevens’s dissent in the case, in which he said the Citizens United case was not properly brought before the Supreme Court. “This procedure is unusual and inadvisable for a court,” Stevens said of the process. “Our colleagues’ suggestion that ‘we are asked to reconsider Austin and, in effect, McConnell,” ante, at 1, would be more accurate if rephrased to state that ‘we have asked ourselves’ to reconsider those cases.”

“Justice Stevens makes the point that Roberts decided a case that wasn’t even before the Court, and invited the issue before the Court,” said DeFazio. “It was the most extraordinary condemnation I’ve ever read of a perverted majority on the Supreme Court, at least in recent years.”… [emphasis added]

Inserted from <Huffington Post>

Go Peter!! I have to say that, even if a 2/3 majority in the House voted to impeach Roberts, it will be a cold day in hell before we get 67 votes in the Senate to convict him. However, impeachment hearings would be great, because they would keep the issue in the public eye and keep Republicans denouncing the transparency they promised. Oregon 4th, vote DeFazio!

Update: Someone posted this article on Free Republic, an extreme right-wing site, so we are getting some rather offensive comments. I request your patience in remembering that here, we treat prople with respect no matter how little they deserve it. If they refuse to respect our policy that we argue issues without personal attacks against me, this blog or anyone who comments, I will deal with it by deleting their comments and banning them. Thank you for your cooperation.