Koschnick Channels His Inner Drama Queen

Jefferson County Judge Randy Koschnick must be really desperate as Election Day is now imminent. It seems that he is trying to throw just about everything against the wall, just to see if it will work. What good right wing extremist would go through an entire election cycle without trotting out their favorite boogie man, "the gays." Perhaps Koschnick is preparing to move to Iowa and run for their state Supreme Court since he is now attacking them for protecting the equal rights of gay people in that state.

Koschnick, not being satisfied with name calling distinguished jurists in Wisconsin, decided to start calling names of the Iowa justices that ruled for equal rights under the law. He said Friday that this gay marriage decision was the result of "activist" judges. Naturally he didn't bother to mention that this decision was unanimous and that several of the justices on Iowa's high court are "conservative" which is how he describes himself. Actually it is Koschnick's uninformed reaction that proves to be "activist" as he clearly would push away and ignore the constitution in an effort to reaffirm his own personal beliefs and prejudices.

In his comments Koschnick fell back on the same old shtick, saying that these sorts of issues should be decided by the legislature. Frankly it is quite bizarre that Koschnick doesn't know that there are three co-equal branches of government, including the judicial. In the real world, there is no such thing as a super legislature as Koschnick appears to be suggesting. The judicial branch actually has an important role and without it we never would have had decisions protecting things like freedom of religion, the right to privacy and the right to get an education anywhere regardless of color. Koschnick must believe these were terribly "activist" decisions, if he is going to be consistent.

Clearly the Iowa Supreme Court saw Koschnick's kind of bumper sticker attack coming when in their very well reasoned decision they commented:

This court, consistent with its role to interpret the law and resolve disputes, now has the responsibility to determine if the law enacted by the legislative branch and enforced by the executive branch violates the Iowa Constitution.

Yeah, because that is their job. Unfortunately for the Koschnick's of the world, they had to state the obvious.