Before I get around to kicking our judges all over Ottawa and elsewhere for the weird rulings they come up with, I have a gem of a true story to bring you from a trade magazine called Coverings.

Clara Null of Oklahoma City, Okla. remembered one of the worst days of her life. She said, “The washing machine had broken down, the telephone kept ringing, my head ached, and the mail carrier brought a bill I had no money to pay. Almost to the breaking point, I lifted my one year old into his high chair, leaned my head against the tray, and began to cry. Without a word, my son took his pacifier out of his mouth and stuck it in mine!”

Getting back to judging judges … I think the problem with judges is that they are all ex-lawyers. That gives them a certain bias towards verbosity. The more endless palaver that goes on, the more the judge thinks it’s getting profound.

I think all of our judges should be former police officers. The judge would wear his police uniform – with cap. Instead of a gavel he would have a loaded, big, black revolver lying on the counter in plain view. This would discourage lawyers from mouthing off and defendants who might think that they could get away with lying.

The judge would just look over menacingly at the gun when he thought he heard a whopping lie, or when he heard evidence from an expert witness who was flown in from southern California that the defendant suffered permanent brain damage in his youth as the result of bird droppings from a bald eagle.

Three shotsWhen the judge came to a decision, he would reach for his revolver and fire three shots into the ceiling. That would get everybody’s attention. Then the judge would announce the verdict. This would also discourage appeals. Sentences of 10 years, but out in three, would be a thing of the past. And so would former Nova Scotia premier Gerald Regan’s recent “trial by crony” farce. Plea bargaining in the judge’s chambers would be conducted on prime time TV, and that would kill that.

Sentences for horrendous crimes that used to be served concurrently would be only in the history books. Crooks writing letters to their lawyers claiming they were framed would be likened to child pornography. Lawyers who like to keep the meter running would find that they only would get paid for half the time spent on the case. (The Law Society would pick up the rest of the tab. Yeah, right.)

Part of the trouble is what cops refer to as pussycat judges. These are judges before whom every lawyer in town dreams (and schemes) to appear with his client. These judges are so kindly disposed towards the accused that they make Mother Teresa look like a Third World tyrant. These pussycat judges must have been bitten by a police officer when they were young.

When a police officer arrests a prostitute in a red light area at midnight, she claims that she was waiting for a bus to take her on a pilgrimage to the Martyrs Shrine in Midland, Ont. And the only one in the courtroom who believes her is the judge.

Then you have appeal court Judge Nitpicker, who just loves to overrule other judges for some obscure technical mishap that normally appears in almost any court case. His motto: “Feed the system!”

We at one time sought a Supreme Court judge who had just a smidgen short of the virtues displayed by Saint Thomas More, but all we ask for now is someone who has memorized The Feminine Mystique.

Supreme Court nominee Judge Louise Arbour lived with pro-abortionist Larry Taman, Ontario’s deputy attorney-general and a Bob Rae NDP holdover, for 28 years and had three children. (Friends claimed that she couldn’t find the 10 minutes it would take to get married.) Yeah, right. You can imagine what kind of personal morality Louise will bring to the court.

Among her ghastly rulings were: giving prisoners the right to vote (glad handing politicians line up) and letting off Imre Finta, a former captain in Nazi-occupied Hungary, who admitted a role in deporting 8,617 Jews to death camps in World War II because it was beyond Canada’s jurisdiction. (Finta said that he was just following orders. Sound familiar?)

A terrible choice – but in a quasi-dictatorship who can complain?