DeLay's Goal - Impeachment of Federal Judges

But this was not a strict constitutional scholar talking. This was "The Hammer," whose solution to an uncooperative, independent judiciary was to intimidate federal judges with threats.

DeLay rejected the idea that the Constitution limits impeachment of federal judges to "high crimes and misdemeanors," the same standard required to impeach a President. Instead, DeLay argued, whenever a judge ruled in ways that "usurped the powers of Congress," he or she should face impeachment. What DeLay was suggesting was a coup d'etat by members of Legislative Branch against members of the Judicial Branch. It was precisely the kind of politically motivated intimidation of the judiciary that America's Founding Fathers wished to avoid by putting the judiciary safely outside the political arena.

DeLay's position was closer to one put forth three decades earlier when Rep. Gerald Ford was trying to get Supreme Court Justice, William O. Douglas impeached for being too liberal. Back then Ford defended his position this way: "An impeachable offense is whatever a majority of the House of Representatives considers it to be at any given moment of history."

It took the legal wrangling in Florida during the 2000 Presidential race to reveal that DeLay's outrage over judicial activism had its limits. When the Florida Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Gore campaign for a hand recount of contested ballots, DeLay roared that the court had "squandered and violated the trust of the people of Florida in trying to manipulate the results of a fair election." And he vowed, "This judicial aggression must not stand."