Well-gasted flabber

On Thursday in the Bow-Wow Parliament, Dr. Darin King expressed is shock, shock, at the antics of the opposition, which he felt offended the notion of judicial independence:

MR. A. PARSONS: Mr. Speaker, I would say that the minister knows full well that the chief judge gets his budget from the Department of Justice and the Minister of Justice.
In 2006, this government committed to a comprehensive review of public prosecution in our Province. At the time, the minister said that this independent review will be done immediately and that retired Justice William Marshall was named to conduct the review. Seven years later it is not done.  

I ask the minister: Why haven't you completed this long promised review? Since it was never done, what compelling evidence did you have to justify the cuts in Budget 2013?  

MR. KING: Mr. Speaker, the decision on circuit courts – I am absolutely flabbergasted that a member would stand in this House and challenge the independence of the chief judge of this Province. I cannot believe that a member believes on the floor of this House that this House and this government ought to be telling judges in this Province what to do.  

I say to the member opposite, it is absolutely shameful as a trained lawyer to stand in here and to suggest that any minister or any member of this government would interfere with the decisions of the chief judge of this Province. Shame on them, I say.

For the record, Dr. King was a Member of the House of Assembly, and of the sad-sack cabinet, when his predecessor in office, and his former Dear Party Leader and Premier, impugned the motives of Mr. Justice Clément Gascon of the Quebec Superior Court. He also came within a few dozen votes of being in Former Premier's caucus at the time when Former Premier instructed the provincial courts to haul down their Canadian flags, breaching their independence, and when he suggested that a Newfoundland and Labrador Supreme Court Judge must have "got up on the wrong side of the bed" for having had the temerity to decide a case wrongly.