I like this guy more and more.
http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2010/05/gov_chris_christie_draws_sharp.htmlexcerpt
Gov. Chris Christie sparked a political firestorm Monday with his unprecedented decision to jettison a sitting New Jersey Supreme Court justice, inciting harsh criticism from political opponents and reshaping the relationship between the governor’s office and the state’s highest court.
The governor nominated Anne Patterson, a Morris County lawyer, to replace Justice John Wallace, the only African-American on the court, setting the stage for a vicious fight with Senate Democrats opposed to his ouster.
"I have no intention of putting her up for a hearing," said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), an ally of Wallace. "It would be doing an injustice to the entire court system to have a hearing on this nominee at this time."
Christie said dropping Wallace was a necessary step in his push to remake the Supreme Court, the final arbiter on state law and the state constitution.
"The court over the course of the last three decades has gotten out of control," he said. "The only way to change the court is to change its members."
Conservatives have long criticized the court for decisions on school funding and affordable housing that influenced decades of public policy. But Democrats and some legal experts said Christie was infringing upon the New Jersey court system’s independence by not renominating a sitting justice, imposing his political will and breaking more than six decades of tradition in state government
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