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indicted congressman Tom DeLay lectures recently retired Justice O'Connor about law and the Constitution. The Dallas Morning News has the story (alas, registration is required… but it's free) Texas legislators take issue with O'Connor's warnings Todd J. Gillman WASHINGTON – Now that she's left the Supreme Court, Sandra Day O'Connor has a few things to get off her chest. One of the first was to warn that the nation could slide into dictatorship if harsh critiques of the judiciary – from the likes of Texas Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Tom DeLay – go unanswered. … Mr. DeLay, R-Sugar Land, suggested the former justice is rusty on the concept of checks and balances, noting that Congress has an explicit right to strip courts of jurisdiction over any issue as it sees fit. "I think she ought to read the Constitution again," he said. "We have an authority. They are not an ivory tower over there. All wisdom does not reside in nine people with black robes. "It's in the Constitution, and it has not been exercised in 50 to a hundred years, and it's time to do it." Conservatives have stepped up complaints in recent years about "activist" judges legislating from the bench – allowing gay marriage, banning public displays of the Ten Commandments, striking down mandatory recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, upholding abortion rights, letting local governments condemn homes to make way for private development, and in one Supreme Court case, citing a precedent from a foreign court. "I mean, they're out of control," Mr. DeLay said. During the Schiavo episode, he decried the "arrogant, out-of-control, unaccountable judiciary that thumbed their nose at Congress and the president," and warned that "the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior." Such comments drew much of Ms. O'Connor's ire. Court officials declined to provide a text, but according to accounts in the Chicago Daily Law Bulletin and on National Public Radio, Ms. O'Connor – who left the bench a month earlier – said such statements "pose a direct threat to our constitutional freedom." While she was still on the high court, she made several speeches warning that judicial independence was at risk through intimidation. Her language this time was more forceful by far. She mentioned neither Texan by name but clearly alluded to them.