Misguided Iowan Doesn't Seem to Understand Judicial Activism

In an article about the politicizing of appointments to the Iowa State Judicial Nominating Commission, the Sioux City Journal interviews new commissioner Tammy Kobza, who just seems terribly confused about many things.

"I want my children and future grandchildren to enjoy the liberties, freedoms and safety that I enjoyed growing up," Ms. Kobza wrote in her application to the commission.  And how will her children and grandchildren enjoy liberty, by destroying "judicial activism."

By judicial activism, she means Varnum v. Brien, the case which legalized same-sex marriage in my home state.  Taking her at her word, this decision somehow means that giving freedom to homosexuals somehow endangers her own personal safety, but what's more confounding is that Ms. Kobza's definition of "liberty" is perversely wrapped in her own Christian faith.

She criticized "judicial activists" for being more than just secular but "'Anti-founder' is more like it."  "The founders of this country were very religious people. Very, very God-fearing people," Ms. Kobza stated in a later interview.

Let's forget the fact that this simply isn't true.  What's truly confounding about Ms. Kobza is that her notion of religiosity is exclusively Christian in its outlook.  Writing for the Iowa Eagle Forum, she insists "we are a nation where Shari'a law is acknowledged" even as America is exceptional because our law is based on the "rightness of Scripture and the truth of man's nature."

When she's not celebrating our freedom to be Christian, she's railing against a health system she doesn't seem to understand. ("There are few truly elderly or mentally or physically handicapped children around anymore.  Socialized medicine doesn't pay for their care.") Or lamenting the "false science of carbon emissions" and the rampant drug and alcohol abuse "that plagued Russia."

All of this from a woman who insists that everyone should understand the Constitution "and Iowa's Constitution," documents which craft a society in which Ms. Kobza is free from anyone who isn't just like her.