US: Karl Rove, the deputy White House chief of staff and President Bush's longtime political strategist, has denounced liberal judges for engaging in "judicial imperialism", telling conservative activists that reform of the federal judiciary was on the way, led by the Supreme Court's new chief justice, John Roberts.
The speech, likely to anger liberal senators engaged in the current confirmation process for Samuel Alito to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, pulled no punches about the scope of the conservative agenda for the courts.
"The wind and tide are running in our favour," Mr Rove said in a speech on Thursday night before about 1,500 lawyers and their guests in which he also predicted Judge Alito would win approval.
Mr Rove excoriated state courts around the country and singled out the highest court in Massachusetts for having upheld same-sex marriage.
But the man Mr Bush dubbed "the architect" of his re-election victory reserved his harshest language for the federal judiciary, which he said was "fundamentally out of touch" with mainstream America.
Mr Rove castigated the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco for ruling in 2002 that the phrase "under God" in the pledge of allegiance was unconstitutional. He also criticised a majority on the US Supreme Court for having ruled earlier this year that "national consensus" prohibited the imposition of the death penalty on murderers who committed their crimes while under age 18.
"These attempts, and many, many more ... have led to widespread concern about our courts," said Mr Rove. But he said that more than 200 of Mr Bush's nominees to the federal bench have been confirmed and added: "In America, conservatives are winning the battle of ideas on almost every front."
Mr Rove's remarks came on the first day of the annual convention of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, an influential conservative organisation founded by law students and legal scholars in 1982.
Mr Rove's appearance before a friendly audience marked somewhat of a return to the spotlight for the beleaguered White House adviser, who has been implicated in the leak of a covert CIA officer's name. Mr Rove's name has come up in the investigation, and it is not certain that he will escape indictment.