WASHINGTON, April 8 (UPI) -- You shouldn't have to risk your life or the lives of your family to be a federal judge, but apparently you do.
Congressional leaders should take a break from threatening judges and come up with a few dollars to protect them.
And by "threats" I don't just mean the recent comments from a Texas snake-oil salesman because the Terri Schiavo case didn't turn out the way he wanted. I mean the barrage of the last few years against "activist" judges -- which translates into judges who ignore the law and hand down rulings based on their personal feelings.
If the Schiavo case taught us anything, it's that judicial critics in Congress want judges to be more "activist" than less. They just want judges to hand down decisions based on the personal feelings of powerful congressional leaders, not the judges themselves.
Federal judges -- conservatives, moderates and liberals -- are supposed to look at the law and the Constitution as they exist, and rule accordingly without fear. But there are signs that judges are getting rattled.
I have to admit feeling a frisson of apprehension myself over the media coverage of Chief Justice William Rehnquist's fight against thyroid cancer. Photographers and camera crews camped out near his home in the Washington suburbs, as they should have done, taking pictures of him as he left for medical care or returned to the Supreme Court. They were just doing their jobs.
But increasingly, members of the lunatic fringe are finding out where judges live. I remember hoping that some nut job wouldn't be attracted to the chief's house by all the cameras.
There was even one story out of Florida that said Schiavo protesters were freely passing out the address of the Florida judge who ruled that Schiavo's feeding tube could be removed. You tell me the legitimate, non-sinister purpose of that action, if you can.
By now we all know the story of U.S. Judge Joan Lefkow in Chicago. That gallant jurist has suffered the loss of her husband and mother, killed by an intruder in her home in March. The intruder turned out to be a disgruntled party in a legal dispute who later killed himself.
Before the identity of the murderer was known, white supremacists' sites all over the Internet were praising the deed, mainly because one of their leaders was awaiting sentencing for trying to have Judge Lefkow killed.
A federal judge sentenced that white supremacist leader, Matthew Hale, to 40 years in prison last week. U.S. Judge James Moody imposed the maximum sentence, ruling that an element of terror in the charge justified it.
Now federal marshals will have to watch both Lefkow and Moody's backs. And their homes. And their families.
The recent killing spree that began at an Atlanta circuit courthouse, though it involved a state judge, doesn't help the climate of fear.
You have to ask yourself, where are we living? You would have thought, before recent events and the threats from Congress, that we were living in a stable society, one where the rule of law prevailed.
The Judicial Conference of the United States, the main policymaking body of the federal judiciary, this week called on Congress to do the absolute minimum -- and I do mean the absolute minimum -- to protect U.S. judges.
In a Tuesday letter to President George W. Bush and congressional leaders the conference said the recent killings in Chicago and Atlanta have left judges "feeling particularly vulnerable, not only for themselves but also for their families."
The letter said the U.S. Marshals Service, which is part of the Justice Department, should join the judiciary in seeking immediate funding for off-site security, including $12 million to install a home intrusion device for each U.S. judge.
The Justice Department should also seek funds to increase the "woefully inadequate" staffing of the marshals' Office of Protective Intelligence; to develop marshals' threat investigations; to increase marshals' staffing to allow deputy marshals in the courtroom during criminal cases; and to increase marshals' salaries.
Congress should put partisan sniping aside, get up on its hind legs and provide the funding immediately.
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I'm going to reserve the last few lonely paragraphs of this column to completely change the subject to something even more personal.
Many of us rose early Friday to watch live television coverage of Pope John Paul II's funeral at St. Peter's Square in Rome. This is a pope who, when his time came, refused to die hooked up to tubes and machines in a hospital but chose to leave this world in his own bed.
The earliest baby boomers included many Roman Catholics who, like me, cut their teeth on the Latin liturgy. For us, the funeral mass in Latin brought back many memories. But for anyone with an interest in history, watching the full panoply of the church was like staring down the long vortex of Western Civilization.
To be sure, the seemingly endless liturgy must have seemed strange to those who are not familiar with it. It's not a faith for the weak of knee.
And if you're thinking that in your 21st-century insularity this event cannot touch you, I can only point to the waves of love and respect from the hundreds of thousands who tried to attend the mass, saying goodbye to this good and brave and remarkable man.
Santo subito.
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(Mike Kirkland is UPI's senior legal affairs correspondent. He has covered the Supreme Court and other parts of the legal community since 1993.)
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