WASHINGTON -- In early 2011, after Republicans swept into power in both houses of the North Carolina state legislature, the conservative John Locke Fo...

Judicial races are under-the-radar for most of us, but not for industries likely to go before the judges in the future. So, what do we want? Well, we want political contests that lead to an absence of politics in the courtroom. Are we are kidding ourselves?

This is a crisis that has long murmurings in our political culture, but one that the LGBT rights movement has brought to a nasty and shameful head. The crisis: a threat to judicial independence.

Judges who allow the burning of the American flag, allow Nazis to march, protect the rights of those charged with crimes and even those found guilty and uphold gay and lesbian rights should be revered for their courage and integrity, not punished.

If there were contested general elections in every political race, there would be no talk of mandatory term limits because the voters would have a greater ability to vote out of office those who did not deserve to be there.

Justices of our Supreme Court -- lawyers at the pinnacle of that system -- have opened the door to an unprecedented assault on judicial independence.

What next? The facts are undisputed. The email was racist; its content despicable. It was forwarded by a sitting federal judge, indeed the chief judge of the district. Is this a wrong that can be righted by an apology?

WASHINGTON -- In Thursday night's Republican presidential debate, the Fox News moderators announced that they would ask one question that had not been...

Thanksgiving could be an interesting holiday in one western New York family, coming just after a grandson goes head-to-head with his grandfather in a ...

Our courts have as of yet been exempt from the same level of scrutiny as Congress and our politicians, but there is a pervasive, ongoing corporate attack on judicial integrity, and what we're seeing is that a lack of aligned interests, secrecy, and corruption are eroding that system as well.

You may remember that three Iowa Supreme Court justices were voted out of office based on targeted attacks about their votes on gay marriage.

Can we count on judges to be truly independent, to make decisions only based only on the law, and not based on politics and/or what is popular, if they must stand before the public every few years in order to keep their jobs?

Will the Court that permitted the injection of unlimited corporate expenditures into our election process now prevent one of the best ways to ensure candidates without corporate backing have a fighting chance? We'll know the answer soon.

In approximately 40 states, judges are elected, and as part of that process the candidates or incumbents accept campaign money from parties or attorneys who later appear before them in lawsuits.

The lessons from Illinois and Iowa are that judicial retention elections are becoming increasingly ugly and are beginning to look like contested political contests instead of non-partisan judicial retention elections.

Proposition 1's defeat in Nevada last week says a lot about what Americans think they know about state judges, and a lot of that is wrong.

It is often the least of these who have the most at stake in elections. Nov. 2, 2010, was a night of reckoning for advocates of working people, immigr...