Ann Coulter's Human Events article, "Supreme Court Opinions Not Private Enough," is very good. It could use some editing (and I've done some below), but it is quite powerful. I've boldfaced a key idea: that constitutional amendments are useless as a solution to a Supreme Court ignoring what the Constitution says.

During oral argument in Roe, the entire courtroom laughed when the lawyer arguing for abortion law ticked off a string of constitutional provisions allegedly violated by Texas's abortion law: the due process clause, the equal protection clause, the 9th Amendment "and a variety of others." According to The Brethren: Inside the Supreme Court by Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong, the law clerks felt as if they were witnessing "something embarrassing and dishonest" about the decision-making process in Roe, with the justices brokering trimesters and medical judgments like a group of legislators. Never has the phrase "judge, jury and executioner" been more apt than with regard to this landmark ruling.

The nation was so shocked and enraged by the ruling in Roe that state legislatures meekly rewrote their laws in accordance with the decision. The Supreme Court building wasn't burned down. No abortion doctors were killed for the next two decades. No state dared ignore the ruling in Roe. Even when dealing with lawless tyrants, conservatives have a fetish about following the law.

Instead, Americans who opposed abortion spent the next 20 years working within the system, electing two Presidents, patiently waiting for Supreme Court justices to retire, fighting bruising nomination battles to get three Reagan nominees and two Bush nominees on the court. Then they passed an abortion law in Pennsylvania that was immediately appealed to the Supreme Court. At that point, Republican Presidents had made 10 consecutive appointments to the Supreme Court. Surely, now, at long last, Americans would finally be allowed to have a say on the nation's abortion policy.

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In the past few years, federal courts have proclaimed a right to sodomy (not in the Constitution), a right to partial-birth abortion (not in the Constitution), a right not to have a Democratic governor recalled (not in the Constitution), a right not to gaze upon the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courthouse (not in the Constitution), a ban on the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance (not in the Constitution), and a ban on voluntary student prayers at high school football games (not in the Constitution).

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In response to the court's sodomy ruling last term, conservatives are talking about passing a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. It's really touching how conservatives keep trying to figure out what constitutional mechanisms are available to force the courts to acknowledge the existence of the Constitution. But what is the point of a constitutional amendment when judges won't read the Constitution we already have? What will the amendment say? "OK, no fooling around-- we really mean it this time!"

While conservatives keep pretending we live in a democracy, liberals are operating on the rule of the jungle. The idea of the rule of law is that if your daughter is raped and murdered, you won't go out and kill the guy who did it. In return for your forbearance, you get to vote for the rulers who will see that justice is done. But liberals cheat. They won't let us vote on an increasingly large number of issues by defining the entire universe--abortion, gay marriage, high school convocations--as a "constitutional" issue.

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Is there nothing five justices on the Supreme Court could proclaim that would finally lead a president to say: I refuse to pretend this is a legitimate ruling. Either the answer is no, and we are already living under a judicial dictatorship, or the answer is yes, and--as Churchill said--we're just bickering over the price.

It would be nice to return to our federalist system of government with three equal branches of government and 50 states, but one branch refuses to live within that system. How about taking our chances with a President and the Congress? Two branches are better than one.

There may be practical difficulties with the President and the states ignoring the court's abortion rulings-- though there's nothing unlawful about following the Constitution and I for one would love to see it.

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