American humourist Franklin P. Jones once quipped that "honest criticism is hard to

take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger."

Which pretty well sums up the predictable reaction of various Supreme Court justices - and their myriad of judicial and media apologists - to the news that Justice Minister Vic Toews has had the audacity to say he plans changes in the way our almighty Supremes are chosen.

Like Pablov's dogs, who barked at a given command, the justices and journalists immediately broke into their chorus of complaints that Toews - who, after all, is a Conservative, and worse, a conservative - is trying to "politicize" the judiciary.

Oh please. Is there anything in our system already more politicized than the unelected, unaccountable Supremes? I think not.

So what, pray tell, does Toews actually plan to do?

While it may indeed be too horrible to contemplate for those who want the judiciary to remain as it is, i.e. a haven for small "l" and capital "L" liberals, Toews simply wants to add one more person to the judicial advisory committees responsible for vetting judicial candidates and ranking them.

Even worse, at least to his critics, the eighth member of the committee would be a federal appointee - giving federal appointees a one-vote edge on the committee - and Toews thinks police officials should be allowed a say in all of this.

This was enough - once again - to prompt Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin to attack Toews and claim - once again - that the "independence" of the judiciary is at stake.

From her perspective, alas, it probably is. Let us hope so.

McLachlin and several of her cronies have made it clear time and again that their notion of judicial independence, i.e. judicial activism, should certainly never be constrained by those mere mortals whom we elect to represent us and write the laws for us.

Oh no, judges, having been plucked out of the appropriate political/social stream and planted on a bench, suddenly are transformed into all-wise, allknowing and completely impartial persons who surely no better than our elected people - or anybody else - what is best for us.

McLachlin, who has strongly advocated blatant judicial activism for years, once defended this by saying that our elected system of majority rule unbridled by the courts "offers no protection against the tyranny of the majority."

Apparently for her, and for those like-minded activists like her, the tyranny of a handful of appointed judges - who, unlike the politicians, are not subject to any public review at all - is far superior to that old system of electing people to represent us.

I mean really, what do politicians know? After all, they're open to playing politics. Judges, we're told, are above that sort of thing.

The really incredible thing is that judges, law associations, journalists and editorialists, routinely claim both in writing and orally that the courts, unlike our legislatures, are not politicized.

This is utter nonsense. What really irks the current office holders is that with a Tory government in place - and particularly Tories who want a little more justice in our justice system - the comfortable arrangement between Liberal appointers and liberal appointees might be upset.

In the later stages of his term as attorney-general,

for example, Liberal Irwin Cotler's judicial appointments included his former executive assistant and policy advisor, his former chief of staff, a former legal counsel to the Ontario Liberal Party, the wife of a close personal friend of his, a senior Alberta Liberal fund-raiser, and a former New Brunswick Liberal minister of finance.

It goes on. But you get the point.

The real story here isn't fear that the court will be "politicized," but that the Tories will give somebody else a chance who isn't part of the cosy little federal Liberal (and liberal) cabal which now runs roughshod over both our democratic system and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, in order to shape our society in their own ideological image.

In Christian theology, we have the concept of "grace," a way of describing a person's experience with new insights upon their public acceptance of the belief that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior.

Whatever your view of that concept, it kind of serves as a model for what McLachlin and her likeminded judicial activists see as happening to those appointed to the bench.

They may have garnered their appointment in return for their political loyalties and/or ideological bent, but suddenly, upon their appointments, any political thoughts they have had in the past are miraculously wiped from their minds and all they seek is truth, justice and the Canadian way.

And if the majority of citizens don't see it their way - and even if our elected representatives pointedly vote for something entirely different - none of that matters.

It's amazing how many people still buy into this nonsense. Happily, Toews isn't among them.