GOP Wants to Keep Govt Open for one Thing: Continue Flagging 'Fast and Furious'

     Truly the party with no sense of irony, they asked a federal judge last week for no delay on the case the House lawyers are pushing against Eric Holder. 

     "When lawyers for the House urged Judge Amy Berman Jackson to keep a case demanding Operation Fast and Furious-related records from Attorney General Eric Holder moving forward during the shutdown, the judge said lawmakers could cool their heels, just like others with claims pending against the government."

     “While the vast majority of litigants who now must endure a delay in the progress of their matters do so due to circumstances beyond their control, that cannot be said of the House of Representatives, which has played a role in the shutdown that prompted the stay motion,”

      http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-courts-judges-98233.html?hp=t1_3

     That's a great point-the House Republicans can't say that delays in their frivolous case are due to circumstances beyond their control. 

     It's interesting what they consider to be essential and what they don't. Right now some federal judges are so frustrated-having this shutdown after already having their judicial budgets cut to the bone thanks to the sequester-that they are considering redefining the meaning of 'essential' employees and personnel. 

      “It is time to tell Congress to go to hell,” Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf wrote on his blog last week. “It’s the right thing to do.”

     "Kopf, a George H.W. Bush appointee who sits in Lincoln, Neb., urged his fellow judges to evade the shutdown by designating all their staff as essential and exempt from furlough."

     “Given the loss of employees already suffered by the judiciary on account of the sequester and otherwise, why shouldn’t every remaining employee of every federal district court (including [federal public defenders]) be declared ‘essential?’” the judge asked.

     As usual you have GOPers mocking a real problem-the judiciary branch of government being grinded to a slow gear. 

    "At a Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing in July, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) suggested some of sequestration’s impacts on the courts were being exaggerated."

    “Congress voted and [the] American people seem quite comfortable with the idea that we can reduce spending for a little while around here instead of having steady growth and they’re not panicked, and I know we have stories that there’s not enough copy paper in a clerk’s office somewhere. Well, I would say…you need a new clerk. It’s like those school people that would require the students to bring in toilet paper because they can’t find enough money to do that, or fix their roof. That’s a mismanagement to me.”

     Yep. That's what it's come to: we have a House Republican-the most unproductive species of bird on earth- accusing someone else of mismanagement. Somehow the normal functioning of our judicial system is not essential but pursuing the pointless Fast and Furious boondoggle is. 

      However, no trouble if our judicial system is being hobbled:

     “Justice delayed is often justice denied,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) warned. “And with the cuts under sequestration coming on top of other cuts, we are at the point where we are delaying justice.”

     “We don’t want to go to hyperbole but would you say we are near collapse as it relates to our justice system?’ Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee asked at the session.

     “I hate to say the word collapse, but it’s very close to that,” American Bar Association President James Silkenat replied. “If the hurdles remain in place, that is exactly what will happen.”

      "Meanwhile, judges — who, as lawyers, are accustomed to choosing their words carefully — have been all but shouting from the rooftops that a grave situation faces the courts if sequester cuts imposed in the last fiscal year continue into this one."

      “A second year under sequestration will have a devastating, and long lasting, impact on the administration of justice in this country,” the chief judges of 87 federal courts wrote in an August letter to congressional leaders.

      Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-courts-judges-98233_Page2.html#ixzz2hbveKS2m

     Indeed, the pain inflicted on the judicial system via the sequester may point to an actual constitutional flaw-the judicial system is supposed to be co-equal with the legislative and executive branches but doesn't set it's own pay. 

     "Several judges said the courts are getting squeezed because of what could amount to a flaw in the Constitution: the judiciary is supposed to be an equal branch of government, but — unlike the executive and legislative branches — lacks any real leverage over its own budget."

     “We don’t exert the kind of control to keep up resources to match the need,” said Roberts, a Clinton appointee. “We don’t have ultimately any authority to set appropriations Congress decides on. We do not necessarily get to decide what the White House sends to [the Office of Management and Budget] and to Congress. We can’t go out and stir up constituents to do talking for us. Structurally, there’s a bit of an imbalance.”

     "Appeals Court Judge Julia Gibbons, who oversees the judiciary branch’s budget committee, said the judiciary has moved to contain costs in several ways in recent years. However, she said the judicial branch lacks some of the options other government agencies have to deal with funding cuts."

     “We have no control over our own workload. It comes to us,” she said in an interview Friday. “We don’t operate any optional programs or activities that we can eliminate or sharply reduce. Everything we do is either constitutionally or statutorily mandated. We differ a great deal from other entities in that respect."

     The government shutdown insult to injury as the sequster itself has taken a real bite out of the judiciary. What reallyl may be a developing problem is slowing the pace of criminal cases into the courts. So law enforcement will be hurt.

     "While the budget woes generally mean delays in court cases that already take years to resolve, Gibbons said some of the cuts like those in pre-trial services present danger to the public. “We are not able to give the level of supervision to these dangerous offenders that is required to ensure public safety,” she said.

      The sequester is also taking a bite out of the FBI which will have to begin furloughing workers next year for 10 days of unpaid leave if something isn't done about the sequester by then. 

    "In many ways, the most serious impact at the Justice Department comes from the sequester. The FBI has said if sequester cuts continue at the current level, FBI offices will close for about 10 days next year with agents put on unpaid furlough."

     “Unless something is done to relieve us of the burden of sequestration I can say that FBI agents, prosecutors will be furloughed,” he said late last month. “Now, what the number of days will be we’re still in the process of working that through, but sequestration at the level that we had to deal with in the past fiscal year will necessarily result in furloughs.”

     Things like this, however, don't seem to get the GOP's attention, just a delay in their Fast and Furious obsession or if White House tours are cut back.