What if I said that a given state judge wasn't aware there was a first amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and the press? What I also told you that same judge wasn't even sure whether a federal election fell under his jurisdiction?

You would wonder how a man could make it though law school in America (much less to an important judicial seat) without having heard of freedom of the press, no? You would call such a person a threat to our liberties and freedoms.

Unless the plaintiff was Dennis Kucinich, and the ruling was in his favor.

Then, if you're a liberal blogger, you would say it "makes sense", not because of Constitutional reasoning, but because you favor the outcome. And indeed, that's what the judge was thinking too. An undoubtedly learned judge, who is certainly well aware of the law, is willing to completely throw those laws out the window as long as his actions produce what he sees as a "good" result.

That's judicial activism in a nutshell. It converts very intelligent human beings into very stupid ones, so long as a "good" outcome will be obtained, we suppose.

The left likes to argue that the right (meaning Republican leaders) aren't interested in rule of law. People like Cheney, they say, are willing to run roughshod over the Constitution as long as they're justifying the end result using some vague concept like "the war on terror." (I disagree that has happened, but that's not my point here.) Yet judicial activism is exactly that: all the laws of the land can be tossed out the door (not to mention common sense) as long as the result will benefit our group.

Of course "Sweet Dennis" Kucinich is just as guilty as the judges in this case, since he didn't believe NBC has a first amendment right to invite whoever it wanted onto it's debate. Even more tellingly, after the Federal Election Commission explained to him what the law was, he was willing to go jurisdiction shopping to find a sympathetic judge. Can you imagine that he would honor freedom of the press if he were President?

His followers aren't horrified that he tried this.

Hat tip to "Captain Ed" who noted the verdict was overturned, and responded to his commenters who had complained:

The particular MSM outlet DOESN'T want him to appear. We can speculate about the reasons. Is it fair that NBC has this power? No, not really.

By saying:

Oh, and when a court violates the First Amendment and its jurisdictional restraints to impose a result for the purpose of "fairness", that's exactly what we consider judicial activism.

Life isn't fair. Sometimes one man inherits a fortune for being born into the right family, and another has to work hard just to make end meets because he was born into another. In the mind of liberals, that "unfairness" trumps every right, whether it is freedom to give your money to your children, freedom of the press, freedom of speech (it's unfair that I know how to argue more cogently than some opponents!), freedom of association, etc.

They do not mean to do evil; they mean to do good. And that's actually worse.