It turns out that your worst suspicions regarding activist judges are true. 

In a remarkably revealing interview on "Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace," Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer finally conceded what liberal judges have attempted so relentlessly to deny:  that policy objectives guide his rulings. 

In his December 3, 2006 appearance, Justice Breyer baldly proclaimed that the Constitution's "text isn't clear."  As an example, he cited the First Amendment's seemingly-straightforward freedom of speech protections. 

To mere mortals, of course, the First Amendment's admonition that "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" seems abundantly clear. 

To the more enlightened Justice Breyer, however, the simple phrase "freedom of speech" is so equivocal that only elitist shamans such as he are capable of deciphering it for the rest of us: 

"The freedom of speech.  Do you know what it means?  Basically.  But you don't know its entire content, and it doesn't tell you itself.  Those words, 'the freedom of speech,' 'Congress shall pass no law abridging the freedom of speech.'  Neither they, nor the founders, nor those words tell you how to apply it to the Internet." 

Justice Breyer continues his convoluted explanation, rationalizing the McCain/Feingold campaign finance "reform" legislation: 

"When you get a case like that, you start to look to slogans to decide the case.  It won't work.  The First Amendment itself, 'the freedom of speech,' doesn't tell you the answer.  Nor does a slogan...  Because think about that First Amendment.  It was done, enacted, passed, to help our country of now 300 million citizens run free and fair elections.  The very point of speech in an election is to get a message across.  And that may mean, in part, that you don't want one person's speech, that $20 million giver, to drown out everybody else's.  So if we want to give a chance to the people who have only $1 and not $20 million, maybe we have to do something to make that playing field a little more level in terms of money." 

To illustrate the absurdity of Justice Breyer's rationalization, imagine for a moment the following scenario.  James Madison, attempting to persuade new citizens of this country to ratify the Constitution in The Federalist Papers, quoted Justice Breyer's contorted declaration, "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, unless necessary to make the playing field a little more level in terms of money." 

Justice Breyer simply aims to legislate his preferred policies from the bench.  Toward this end, he must show that straightforward text from the Constitution is instead somehow elusive, requiring elites such as himself to guide us. 

When judges refuse to impartially apply unambiguous laws and Constitutional provisions to cases, they act as a sanctimonious superlegislature, immune from democratic correction.  At least when elected representatives make mistakes, citizens can vote them out of office.  Supreme Court justices, in contrast, have life tenure.  Their abuses are therefore beyond democratic correction, and we're stuck with them. 

Our founding fathers did not fight the Revolutionary War merely to replace the English monarchy with an unelected judicial oligarchy as our governing system.  Rather, they fought to establish a democratic republic under which an elected Congress makes laws and answers to the citizens. 

The Constitution is nothing less than the foundation of our liberties and the structure of our republic.  The primary feature of that Constitution is its separation of powers, whereby Congress makes laws, the President enforces laws and the judicial branch interprets laws.  There is not the faintest suggestion in the Constitution that the Supreme Court shares any power to make laws with Congress, because that would create an unelected oligarchy of five. 

Judges have no authority to impose their elitist policy preferences upon us, and Americans must fight to ensure that judicial nominees don't dictate laws, but rather interpret them.