I love it. Keep it coming Rep. DeLay. The hole you are digging is your own. - More attacks on judiciary.

Representative Tom DeLay, the House majority leader, escalated his talk of a battle between the legislative and judicial branches of government on Thursday, saying federal courts had "run amok," in large part because of the failure of Congress to confront them.

"Judicial independence does not equal judicial supremacy," Mr. DeLay said in a videotaped speech delivered to a conservative conference in Washington entitled "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith."

"The failure is to a great degree Congress's," Mr. DeLay said. "The response of the legislative branch has mostly been to complain. There is another way, ladies and gentlemen, and that is to reassert our constitutional authority over the courts."

Mr. DeLay's comments are the latest evidence of his determination to follow through on his vows to hold federal judges accountable in the aftermath of the failure of the federal courts to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube as Congressional conservatives intended.

He spoke against the backdrop of a looming confrontation in the Senate over potential changes to the chamber's rules that would end the power of the Democratic minority to filibuster President Bush's judicial nominees. But Mr. DeLay's confrontational tone differed starkly from that of Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, who says he seeks only to preserve the current independence of the courts and hopes a compromise can avoid a fight to change the rules.

Judges, including Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and one member of the federal appeals court who heard the Schiavo case, have already been sharply critical of Congressional efforts to interfere with their authority as a violation of the Constitution's separation of powers. In a recent report, Chief Justice Rehnquist called one such measure "unwarranted and ill-considered" and said "a judge's judicial acts may not serve as a basis for impeachment."

Democrats and other critics are accusing Republicans of seeking to undermine the courts just because they do not like their decisions.

[DeLay also said,] "Legislatures for too long have in effect washed our hands on controversial issues from abortion to religious expression to racial prejudice, leaving them to judges who we then excoriate for legislating from the bench. This era of constitutional cowardice must end."

(4-8-05, The New York Times.)