Sunday, July 23, 2006

Auf Widersehen Justice HendryWhat an fine example of a Chief Justice we have in the Cornhusker State. Chief Justice Hendry only 57 years old announces his retirement, effective before Democrat candidate David Hahn takes back the governors mansion (old school Democrat pipe dream.) Justice Hendry was above the political fray, yessiree. EBen put him up on the supremes because Karen Flowers was pro-choice and we know the EBen needs to earn his Nebraska Right to Life endorsement every election cycle. The Nelson court overruled misguided second degree murder rulings which allowed many killers to walk or receive reduced sentences. Justice Hendry was not to "legislate" from the bench, but that didn't stop him from trying to throw out our Medical malpractice law and succeeding in throwing out an elected official not for what he did in office but for what he did to get elected. Now to you cynical pols and inside political baseball types, resigning to "spend more time with your family" means you are cutting your losses or leaving under pressure. Not here in America's heartland where such smokescreens are unheard of. Well if there were any slightly inappropriate shenanigans, they happened too long ago to matter and are not fresh, such as how Hendry's law firm defended the Nebraska Investment Finance Authority from shareholder class action lawsuits after the failure of the Executive Life Insurance Company in 1991. Executive Life remember offered much better investments for those hard earned dollars that flowed into NIFA. And then Justice Hendry's law firm zealously defendant jilted UNISYS employees who lost nearly everything in the Executive life failure helping them to win a claim from the state insurance Guaranty associations assets. The good Justice Hendry recused himself from considering the appeal in the Supreme Court even though by then he had been out of the firm for 9 years.

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