Sometimes all you need to do is report the day’s news to prove a point:  Activist judges are out of control and Americans want it stopped. A couple days ago I wrote about a grassroots effort in Iowa to defeat three of their state supreme court justices who are up for a “retention” election this fall. The entire court voted in 2009 to impose same-sex marriage on the state, but these three are the first ones up for an accountability object lesson this fall. Today, Rasmussen released a national poll about folks’ opinions on judges in general. The shocker answer came in response to a question whether judges should be appointed or elected:

By a 62 percent to 25 percent margin, voters believe that most judges should be elected rather than appointed.

Why would that be, do you suppose? Hmmm? No rocket scientists needed for this one. Rasmussen analyzes it correctly, in my opinion:

That’s likely the result of the fact that 53 percent believe judges have their own political agenda. Only 29 percent believe they generally remain impartial. Republicans and unaffiliated voters overwhelmingly believe that most judges have their own agenda. Democrats are evenly divided on the question.

Those are pretty impressive, and nonpartisan, views.Who could fail to get the message behind it? Well, the biggest cheerleader for stopping all this talk about “elections” for judges is none other than former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. Seems she’s even going to make a trip to Iowa to talk some sense into those Hawkeyes. But according to professor Matthew Franck, with an appropriate nod to The Music Man, she doesn’t know the territory

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And that brings us to Sandra Day O’Connor, one of the most effective and successful “politicians in robes” ever to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States.  She is dedicating her declining years to the cause of “judicial independence,” which for her means: no judicial elections in the states; no talk of reform in the federal judiciary; no probing questions during Supreme Court nomination hearings; no wild talk of impeaching federal judges no matter how obvious their usurpations; and, in fine, no criticism of the judiciary that actually calls the judges what they are, usurping tyrants.  Justice O’Connor, you see, is dead set against us mere voters “politicizing the judiciary.”  Don’t we understand that that’s the judges’ job?

Hopefully, this November, Iowans will be singing “O-ho the Wells Fargo wagon is a-comin’” and bringing them “something special” in the form of judicial accountability and perhaps “a new rockin’ chair” for three newly retired judges.

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