Finding the cornerposts of liberty ...

... and then scrupulously driving around them:

Evangelical Christian leaders, who have been working closely with senior Republican lawmakers to place conservative judges in the federal courts, have also been exploring ways to punish sitting jurists and even entire courts viewed as hostile to their cause.

An audio recording obtained by the Los Angeles Times features two of the nation's most influential evangelical leaders, at a private conference with supporters, laying out strategies to rein in judges, such as stripping funding from their courts in an effort to hinder their work.

(from the L.A. Times, courtesy of Oliver Willis)

RW conservatives generally treat the Constitution as a roadmap ... of the places to find bypasses around, like that railroad track or river that keeps you from getting to wherever you're hell-bent to go. So they make sure to not notice this little part of the Constitution:

Article. III.

Section. 1.

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

U.S. Constitution, Article III (emphasis added).

The Founders were quite prescient in a number of ways, and anticipated the attacks that numbnuts like today's ERW might mount on the judiciary. So they put that little bit in there. The RW Republicans, ever eager to find a semi-plausible loophole, seem to be of the considered opinion that as long as the judge's salary is not diminished, such attacks on the independence of the judiciary, even as obvious and outright as this one is, are perfectly permissible. Like it was the salaries of individual judges not yet a gleam in their great-grandmothers' eyes that was what so concerned the Founders so as to put in this little clause. . . .

Let's face it, folks. The RW has nothing but contempt for the Founders' wisdom, and would use the Constitution for toilet paper if it served their purposes of jamming a RW agenda down the throats of everyone else that gets in their way.