Attack Update: March 11, 2007

• The Radical: Kentucky State Senate President David Williams
• The Attack: State Senator David Williams and the GOP-controlled Kentucky Senate failed to address the end date for the state’s senior judges program. When asked whether the legislature would clean up the confusion, Williams replied: “That’s what courts are for.”
• The Kentucky legislature refused to pass a law clarifying the General Assembly's own ambiguous statutes, which stated the program will end in 2007 or 2009, and shifted the burden to the courts to clean up the state legislature’s mess of poorly written statutes.
• State Sen. Williams also was the genius behind a state constitutional amendment that would have banned judges from writing “activist decisions.”  The measure never received sufficient support.
• The Significance: State Sen. Williams wants to have it both ways—crying foul over complaints of judicial activism to the point where he proposes an absurd and unenforceable constitutional amendment, and simultaneously “passing the buck” to the judiciary to spend its time and money to resolve a simple question caused by legislative carelessness and inaction. Well, which one is it?  This led one critic to strongly question the validity of the complaints against judicial activism.