The Bible says that a talking serpent changed the course of humanity, and now Esquire blogger Charles Pierce has suggested that America has, figuratively speaking, its own troublemaking, highly verbal snakes: Republican-appointed federal judges, one of whom, Andrew Hanen, on Monday ruled against President Obama’s executive actions on immigration.
Pierce snarked that Hanen’s decision “reads more like an audition for Fox And Friends than it does a serious judicial ruling” and compared Hanen, as well as “dozens” of like-minded judges, to the Gaboon viper, an exceptionally venomous snake found in sub-Saharan Africa that Pierce had seen footage of in a program on the Smithsonian Channel.
From Pierce’s Tuesday post (bolding added):
There are dozens like Hanen out there, moving silently within the judicial underbrush, their camouflage nearly perfect, invisible until the strike and deadly when they do. This is the long project of the conservative legal movement and its adjuncts among the various intellectual chop-shops financed by the seemingly endless battalions of corporate sugar daddies and mommas. You really have to admire the thoroughness and the stealth with which they have pulled it off, just as you can admire the beauty of the Gaboon's camouflage until, of course, you step on one and he bites you and your leg swells up and you die.
That Hanen is as full of shit as the Christmas goose should go without saying, but we'll say it, anyway. The discretion of both prosecutors and of the executive branch in deciding the merits and ultimate value of what cases they choose to pursue is well established in law, especially in U.S. v. Armstrong, a decision handed down by that hippie chief justice, the late William Rehnquist.
