Michael Foot Quotes
How long will it be before the cry goes up: "Let's kill all the judges"?
Foot, Michael. Speech to the Union of Post Office Workers. Quoted in The Times [London], 17 May 1977.
Presidential dissatisfaction with the judiciary is an old and common problem.
The country was growing and the number of Federal Judges were totally inadequate. The main reason is that the Senators were appointed by state legislatures and states did not want any Federal Judges perhaps weakening the power of the state governments and the judiciary.
This shameful quotation was shocking to most readers. It is subject to two interpretations: One that judges who did not rule on Constitutional issues the way conservative extremists wanted would come to physical harm. The other, that conservatives should pressure judges by withholding appropriations for the courts, impeachments and recall elections where they exist, as well as funding potential opponents for those jurisdictions where judges are elected. Both meanings were disgraceful in the view of most Americans. Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.
Johnson thought that he was 5 votes short to pass the Economic Opportunity Act to launch his War on Poverty. This quotation shows the master of Presidential vote getting in action. Jones came from a very conservative and racist district in Florida. In addition to the general conservative concern about the bill. White Southern racists were still angry about the Civil Rights Act that had just passed and saw the anti-poverty programs as another opportunity for the Federal Government to have racially integrated employment and training programs in the South. If Jones voted for the anti-poverty bill, he might well be defeated in the 1966 election. The President promised to appoint him as a Federal Judge—a lifetime appointment—if he were defeated. A potential problem was that there would not likely be a vacant judgeship open in Alabama. Johnson promised that he would create another judgeship for Jones if necessary—a judgeship that was not really needed. Jones was reelected and President Johnson did not have to create a new judgeship.
Michael Mackintosh Foot FRSL was a British Labour Party politician who served as Labour Leader from 1980 to 1983. Foot began his career as a journalist on Tribune and the Evening Standard. He co-wrote the 1940 polemic against appeasement of Adolf Hitler, Guilty Men, under a pseudonym.
