Taking a stroll through THOMAS, the online database of U.S. legislation, I happened upon the following, which are currently in the House of Representatives (links are not provided because direct links to legislation on THOMAS expire after a certain period of time):

H.R. 3633, The Ronald Reagan Dime Act: "To provide for dime coins to bear the likeness of President Ronald Reagan, the Freedom President, in honor of his work in restoring American greatness and bringing freedom to captive nations around the world."

H.R. 3674, The Financial Customer Identification Verification Improvement Act: "To amend section 5318 to prohibit the use of identification issued by foreign governments, other than passports, for purposes of verifying the identity of a person who opens an account at a financial institution, and for other purposes."

H.R. 3717, The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004: "To increase the penalties for violations by television and radio broadcasters of the prohibitions against transmission of obscene, indecent, and profane material, and for other purposes." One of the punishments for an FCC licensee that broadcasts such material is requiring the licensee "to broadcast public service announcements that serve the educational and informational needs of children."

H.R. 3775: "To impose a ban on the importation of soybeans and soybean meal that are products of Argentina or Brazil." Free trade, indeed.

H.R. 3799, The Constitution Restoration Act of 2004: "To limit the jurisdiction of Federal courts in certain cases and promote federalism." I have written about this bill before, which would prohibit federal courts from ruling on matters pertaining to God in government. A Federal judge who does such a thing would be subject to impeachment and removal.

H.R. 3893, We the People Act: "To limit the jurisdiction of the Federal courts, and for other purposes." This one's a doozy, beginning with its title. According to the bill, Congress finds that "Supreme Court and lower Federal court decisions striking down local laws on subjects such as religious liberty, sexual orientation, family relations, education, and abortion have wrested from State and local governments issues reserved to the States and the People by the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." The bill would prohibit any Federal court from ruling upon the relationship of any unit of government to religion, the right to privacy ("including any such claim related to any issue of sexual practices, orientation, or reproduction"), or gay marriage. A judge who violates these prohibitions would be subject to impeachment and removal.

H.R. 3920, Congressional Accountability for Judicial Activism Act of 2004: "To allow Congress to reverse the judgments of the United States Supreme Court." I have also written about this before. It allows Congress to override a Supreme Court decision that deals with an Act of Congress.

H.R. 4005: "To exempt certain animal identification information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act."

H.R. 4118, American Justice for Americans Citizens Act: "To ensure that the courts interpret the Constitution in the manner that the Framers intended." Because we know what the Framers intended, especially given the social changes that have happened since then. Better do something about the Thirteenth Amendment: what are black people doing not being slaves?! According to this bill, Congress finds the following: "the Federal judiciary has increasingly disregarded the will of the American people, transforming constitutional principles that were originally designed by the people to be permanent into a set of evolving standards subject to change by judicial opinion, and thereby undermining the American people's right to establish a government according to written constitutional provisions ratified by their elected representatives in constitutional convention." The Act also insists that a straw-man, "transjudicialism" or "global law" is becoming prevalent in the Supreme Court. The evidence for this goes back to Lawrence v. Texas, 02-102 (2003). Conservatives have taken this wildly out of context, suggesting that the Supreme Court wants to base its legal decisions on international law. This is not the case. Justice Kennedy wrote that many other courts around the world have followed the European Convention on Human Rights and its assertion that laws proscribing consensual sexual conduct (who may have sex with whom) were illegal. He notes that the decision in the case Bowers v. Hardwick, 478 U.S. 186 (1986) -- which denied the right of homosexuals to engage in sodomy -- emphasized the values that we share with a wider civilization. Kennedy observed that "wider civilization" (encompassing the whole of humanity) has since rejected Bowers's reasoning. Nowhere did he assert that we should be bound by the laws of other countries (although he has publicly said as much). Furthermore, a large portion of the decision rests on the fact that the Texas statute in question violated the Equal Protection clause. It defines "deviate sexual intercourse" as occuring when a person "engages in deviate sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex"; however, such activity is not illegal under the statute when the people involved are of opposite sexes. Kennedy cites a United States case, Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), in which "the Court struck down class-based legislation directed at homosexuals as a violation of the Equal Protection Clause." Justice O'Connor, concurring, wrote, "I am confident, however, that so long as the Equal Protection Clause requires a sodomy law to apply equally to the private consensual conduct of homosexuals and heterosexuals alike, such a law would not long stand in our democratic society." In other words, the prohibition of sodomy by the state of Texas was due to the fact that the state had a moral objection to homosexual sodomy. The compelling interest of the government in prohibiting an act must extend beyond its personal objections to that act, as noted in Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993). It should be noted that, of the nine justices, only one appears to believe in this "transjudicialism" (a word I heard for the first time in the legislation). Lawrence was not based on laws and decisions of other countries, but on our own laws.

H.R. 4168, Individual Tax Freedom Act of 2004: "To promote freedom, fairness, and economic opportunity for families by repealing the income tax, abolishing the Internal Revenue Service, and enacting a national retail sales tax to be administered primarily by the States."

Most of these bills attempt to take over the Supreme Court by limiting what the Supreme Court can and cannot do. To some degree, Congress has power over the Supreme Court. In Article III, section 2, referenced by one of the bills, Congress has the authority to regulate the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction "with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make." But it never gives Congress authority over the Court's decisions. The Supreme Court would render such a law unconstitutional. If Congress attempted to override that decision, certainly the Supreme Court would rule such a vote unconstitutional, as well. The only power Congress has over the Supreme Court is the power to confirm the president's appointees to the bench. With all this talk about what the Framers intended, the people drafting and sponsoring these bills would do well to remember that the intention of the Framers with regard to the judiciary is that it be independent of interference by the legislature. This is why federal judges are not elected and serve for life: they don't have to worry about re-election, and they don't have to worry about politics.