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It appears that Sam Brownback and his posse of Republican legislators are hell-bent on resurrecting “bleeding Kansas” in some bizarre 21^st-Century form. Having blown up the Jayhawk state’s formerly sound fiscal condition with sweeping tax cuts, Brownback’s Ruffians were forced to cut spending and loot the state’s reserve fund to comply with the statutory balanced budget requirement. One of the areas in which they reduced spending was education and the results have been disastrous. Some school districts were forced to end their academic terms early this Spring in order to save money. Of course, saving money means short-changing students.

Worse yet for the Brownback camp was a ruling last year by the state Supreme Court that the reduced spending levels were unconstitutional and ordered the legislature to come up with a solution.  In response, the legislature enacted an administrative law that restricted the power of the Supreme Court to administer the district court system. Not only did the law seem like obvious retaliation, it may very well be unconstitutional.

We now arrive at the point where quirkiness becomes insanity, where marginal becomes fringe. Last week, Brownback signed into law a bill which declares that if the Court declares the administrative law unconstiutional, the entire state judiciary will lose its funding.* (Isn’t Kansas one of the places where locoweed grows wild?)

There is a notable historical precedent for a Supreme Court so infuriating an executive he took drastic measures to appropriate the Court’s authority for himself- Adolph Hitler. In 1934, upset with the decisions of Reichsgericht, the Fuhrer ordered the creation of the People’s Court to handle important cases.

Is history repeating itself?

*See Mark Joseph Stern’s piece at slate.com.