Right-Wing Revenge Campaigns Against Florida And Iowa Justices Go Down In Flames #p2 #tcot

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/07/1155651/right-wing-revenge-campaigns-against-florida-and-iowa-justices-go-down-in-flames/

Iowa Supreme Court Justice David Wiggins

Two years ago, a coalition of anti-gay groups spent nearly $800,000 to exact revenge against three justices who joined their court's unanimous opinion supporting marriage equality — turning them out of office in their 2010 retention election. Last night, they attempted to do the same to a third justice, Justice David Wiggins. They lost.Wiggins will remain a justice.

Americans for Prosperity, a tea party group chaired by infamous energy billionaire David Koch, backed a similar revenge campaign against three Florida justices who kept an unconstitutional attempt to nullify the Affordable Care Act off the 2010 ballot. This campaign failed as well. All three justices won their retention races by comfortable margins.

Lest there be any doubt, these two campaigns were nothing less than a rejection of the idea that judges are bound by the law. The Iowa Constitution provides that "[a]ll laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens." These words unambiguously require gay couples to be granted the same marriage rights as straight couples. Similarly, the Koch-backed effort to remove the Florida justices centered around the dangerously wrongheaded notion that a state can nullify a federal law it does not want to follow. This notion simply cannot be squared with the U.S. Constitution, which provides that duly enacted federal laws "shall be the supreme law of the land."

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/11/07/1155651/right-wing-revenge-campaigns-against-florida-and-iowa-justices-go-down-in-flames/