Retentionageddon Update

Here comes the Judge Bus.

It's rolling across Iowa this week, painted in Halloween black and purple, adorned with big photos of three Iowa Supreme Court justices up for retention votes next week. The word “No” partially covers the faces of these “black-robed bandits,” as a speaker called them at the bus's launch Monday.

It's sort of like the movie “Slap Shot,” when a guy is smashing dents into the hockey team's bus. “I'm makin' her look mean,” he snarls.

Instead of the brawling Hanson brothers, the imported bruisers on this bus are the National Organization for Marriage, which has spent $500,000 against the justices, and the Family Research Council. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, former Pennsylvania U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum, who has caucus aspirations, and Family Research President Tony Perkins are also on board.

So this is no ragtag band of underdogs. Apparently, the grass-roots trappings are now officially off this mercenary mission to dent up Iowa's courts, as a warning to judges across the country. “This is certainly an intimidation campaign, but an entirely justified and proper one,” wrote Davenport attorney Nathan Tucker, a leading legal light among retention opponents. Yep, no sugarcoating left.

The Judge Bus will be running on high-octane outrage when it comes to Cedar Rapids on Wednesday, But things may be getting a bit overheated.

Chuck Hurley, leader of the Iowa Family Policy Center, says he'll vote “no” on every judge on the ballot, not just the three justices. He can't be exactly sure which ones pass his political litmus tests, so toss 'em all.

Hurley's reasons:

I've not heard any of them repudiate what the Iowa Supreme Court judges did, and some are actively defending them.When we sent questionnaires to judges in the past, they've followed the Iowa Supreme Court's advice to not answer them. This leaves us with what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “state-imposed voter ignorance.” Since I am being asked whether to re-hire someone with my own tax dollars, I won't hire him or her without knowledge of motivation, experience, and philosophy; especially when, as a group, judges have refused in the past to answer our respectful questions about those issues.If some judges are defeated because of their ties to the Iowa Supreme Court judges, it will strengthen our ability to get them to answer future questionnaires on their judicial philosophies and methods of constitutional interpretation.I don't know any of them well enough personally to be sure that they hold to the original intent of the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions.

When we sent questionnaires to judges in the past, they've followed the Iowa Supreme Court's advice to not answer them. This leaves us with what the U.S. Supreme Court has called “state-imposed voter ignorance.” Since I am being asked whether to re-hire someone with my own tax dollars, I won't hire him or her without knowledge of motivation, experience, and philosophy; especially when, as a group, judges have refused in the past to answer our respectful questions about those issues.

If some judges are defeated because of their ties to the Iowa Supreme Court judges, it will strengthen our ability to get them to answer future questionnaires on their judicial philosophies and methods of constitutional interpretation.

I don't know any of them well enough personally to be sure that they hold to the original intent of the U.S. and Iowa Constitutions.

So failing to fill out an IFPC questionnaire now now disqualifies you from serving as a judge.

The father of the throw-the-justices-out drive, Bob Vander Plaats, gave his slippery-slope warning a scarier ending last week in Sioux City by arguing that unrestrained justices “won't even blink an eye when they get to determine who gets to live and who gets to die ...”

“They don't get to evolve our Constitution, only we the people get to amend the Constitution,” Vander Plaats. “If they do this to marriage - make law, execute law, amend the Constitution, hand out rights that our Founders could never have imagined - they won't even blink an eye as they take your private property. They won't even blink an eye as they take away your Second Amendment rights, they won't even blink an eye while telling you how you have to educate your children. They won't even blink an eye when they get to determine who gets to live and who gets to die, in regards to which life is valuable and which one is not.”

I keep telling myself this is more circus than substance, that even if judges get tossed out, others will bravely carry on and do their duty to the law and constitution without fear. I have to believe that no judge worth his or her robe will say, “The law and evidence are clear, but what would Rick Santorum do?”

Still, I fear that even small cracks in an important institution like the judiciary could grow, and lead to an erosion of trust and competence in the long run. We've already seen this in our legislative branches, with skittish lawmakers polling and pandering themselves into a functionless knot.

Our courts have yet to be yanked fully into the dysfunctional muck of our poisoned politics. Please, let's think twice before we throw them under the bus.

Note: The Judge Bus is scheduled to stop at Greene Square Park in Cedar Rapids at 1:15 p.m.

A pro-courts rally, the

Homegrown Justice Tour, will stop at the Linn County Courthouse at 12:30 p.m.