DOUBLE THUMBS DOWN JUDICIAL JUGGERNAUTS

A very special DOUBLE THUMBS DOWN to those two aging Tribunes of the Trinity, Federal Judges Jerry Buchmeyer, 62, and Barefoot Sanders, 70. The suburbs celebrated in this issue ought to erect statues to both men-they’ve done more than anyone else to build them. Sanders has been the biggest contributor to suburban growth: He has spent the better part of his career ram -rodding the DISD desegregation case that has sent 110,000 white families packing (there are now just 18,000 white students in the entire Dallas school system). But Buchmeyer has learned how to play the social engineering game. Not content with overturning elections or ordering massive spending programs, he is now deciding which housing projects should be located where, moving welfare families around like pieces on a chess board. Buchmeyer may not have yet achieved Sanders’ level of destruction, but he’s trying, It’s sometimes hard to keep up with who’s doing the most damage. Barefoot s latest diktat to the DISD threatening to keep his favorite case alive-in spite of the facts, and without even asking the school board for its rebuttal of an auditor’s faulty findings-is a case study in liberalism’s hardening of the arteries. Old liberals-especially those endowed with almost unlimited power–are unburdened by any need to consider results: Their good intentions are justification enough for whatever they want to do. Meanwhile, Dallas continues to suffer under a regime it didn’t elect and can’t get rid of. Which leads us to ponder a larger question: Why does Dallas need six Federal judges anyway? Besides inventing Utopian schemes that destroy cities, what do these people do all day? in the interest of cutting the budget and increasing government efficiency, perhaps House Majority Leader Dick Armey and judiciary chairman Henry Hyde should consider getting more real work out of the federal judiciary by abolishing a few district courts. We can think of two that Dallas doesn’t need.