Big-Headed Newt Gingrich is Nuts

Big-headed Newt Gingrich has now removed all doubt. He’s nuts. He sounded pretty loopy earlier this month, when he came out with his Mops for Tots program, where he wants to teach poor children a proper work ethic by putting them to work as school janitors at age 9 or so. But this weekend, Newt doubled down on his bat-flapping crazy notion about how, as president, he would treat federal court rulings he didn’t like. With that, Newt removed all doubt to the contrary. He’s nuts. And, by the transitive properties of political algebra, anyone who votes for him in a primary is nuts, too.

In an interview over the weekend with CBS’s Bob Schieffer, Gingrich had the appearance of a man who lives on a diet consisting entirely of Crisco and psychedelic mushrooms. He made it clear that if he becomes president, there might be times when he would simply ignore rulings by the Supreme Court or other federal judges if those rulings were unpopular.

And if a federal judge makes a ruling that’s just too darn liberal for his liking? Then he might just send out the Capitol Police to apprehend that miscreant judge and bring him before the mighty Newt to “explain” himself. I am still looking through the Constitution for that section on executive powers that must be titled Power to Give Judges a Good Talking To.

Newt gave the example of the no-good, dirty, rotten, elitist, activist U.S. District Court Judge Fred Biery, who ruled on a school prayer case in Texas this summer. Newt characterized Biery as someone who was “totally out of sync” with the entirety of American culture. To hear Newt tell the story, you might think that Biery must have received his law degree from the University of Phoenix Online College of Free Love and Hot Law. But as it turns out, Bubba Biery got his B.A. from Texas Lutheran College and his J.D. from Southern Methodist University School of Law. He also served six years in the Army Reserve.

Biery’s ruling, the one that drove Newt so nuts, came in the case of a young atheist who attended High School in Castroville, Texas, and who did not want to be compelled by the power of the state to have to pray as part of his public school’s graduation ceremonies.

Based on what he thought was Supreme Court precedent, Biery ruled that, at this year’s graduation ceremony, school-led prayer was out — but according to the local paper, he left the door open for student speakers to invoke their individual beliefs as long as they didn’t ask the audience to pray along with them.

Newt the Historian fumed that the whole idea of judicial review was recently made up out of whole cloth by the dirty, rotten, liberal Warren Court. I guess Newt must have skipped history class the day they taught about Marbury vs. Madison. That’s the famous case all U.S. historians regard as firmly establishing the principle of judicial review: that the Supreme Court has the absolute authority to review acts of Congress and to determine whether or not they are unconstitutional. And there is no doubt that in this particular case, the intent of the Founding Fathers was fully considered since many of them were actually involved in the case, such as John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. The year was 1803. I wish Schieffer asked Gingrich about this.

I also wish the venerable Schieffer asked Gingrich his thoughts about an even more extreme position on the subject of public prayer, one which holds that Christian prayer is best when in the privacy of one’s own room. Basically, it holds that:

When you pray, you shouldn’t be like the hypocrites. They just love to pray in places where other men can see them. But that’s not the right way to do it. The best thing to do is — when you want to pray — go into your room, and close the door. That’s the way to pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who can see what you do in secret, will reward you.

Just in case Newt doesn’t recognize that passage or agree with it — that’s what Jesus said. You can find it in Mathew 6:5. Call me crazy, but I figure Christ probably knows more about Christianity than the newly minted Catholic, Mr. Gingrich who, by the way, is nuts.