He asked the state's Supreme Court to order what the Legislature would not enact -- a tax increase, the largest in Nevada's history, to solve a budget problem. The court obligingly did so, reasoning that the state Constitution's requirement of a two-thirds majority for passing tax increases is merely ``procedural'' and therefore is somehow trumped by the Constitution's ``substantive'' requirement that the state fund education, which the budget dispute has delayed. The Legislature tugged its forelock and passed an increase by a two-thirds majority.
Illinois' Supreme Court just ordered the state to give all judges, including Supreme Court justices, a raise. Budget difficulties caused the governor to veto a cost-of-living increase for judges. The Supreme Court says this violates the Constitution's requirement that judges' salaries shall ``not be diminished.''
There was no suit filed or hearing held. Just a judicial fiat. The Supreme Court's position -- that denial of a COLA is a diminishment of pay, and a veto cannot vitiate a 1990 resolution requiring COLAs for judges -- is arguable.
But is it seemly to argue it during painful budget cuts needed to close a $5 billion deficit? Last Thursday considerations of taste, or perhaps just prudence, caused the court to retreat, vacating its order and allowing a trial court to decide the question.
Political incivility feeds on itself. The attempt to recall California Gov. Gray Davis will encourage the idea that elections settle nothing -- campaigning is permanent and ubiquitous.
A dialectic of aggression and retaliation began with the defeating in 1987 of the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. Democrats established the principle that the custom of broad deference to presidential choices would be superseded by political tests of strength over nominees' philosophies. Hence today's confirmation acrimony. Last week Democrats said yet another nomination would be filibustered.
Life has been called a series of habits disturbed by a few thoughts. Civil society is kept civil by certain habits of restraint. Inflammatory political ideas can overturn habits, sometimes for the better, usually not. But no discernible ideas, at least none that are more than appetites tarted up as ideas, account for the vandalism by political overreachers of both parties.
Each vandal seems to think that his or her passions are their own excuse for existing. As Santayana said, such thinking is the defining trait of barbarians.