RALEIGH - If some pollster asked voters for their opinion of North Carolina's judges, I suspect that the men and women in black robes would fare better than Gov. Beverly Perdue or state legislators.

They shouldn't.

Despite the importance of their rulings, particularly at the appellate court level, for the public the decisions of North Carolina' judiciary tend to get lost in the weeds.

But some recent decisions indicate that our judiciary has fallen into a pretty sorry state.

Without even hearing full arguments, judges undo a state ban of video gambling, an industry at the heart of a major political corruption scandal; another judge fails to acknowledge a key provision of the state constitution before making a muck of public school governance; the state Supreme Court restores a convicted felon's gun ownership rights because he seems to be a good guy; and most recently, a three-member panel of the state Court of Appeals decides California-style budgeting is preferable to giving governors wide latitude to address budget deficits.

A decade or so ago, my predecessor, Paul O'Connor, wrote a series of columns calling for the entire 170 members of the legislature to be tossed out. He called the effort Project 170.

Tossing out all the trial-level judges across the state would probably be impractical. Besides, District Court judges forced each day to parry with lawyers sorting through traffic offenses are being tortured far beyond anything that I could dream up.

So, let's confine our efforts to the 15 members of the Court of Appeals and the seven members of the state Supreme Court. Perhaps a Project 22 is in order.

I know what some of you are thinking: Is it fair to throw out the entire group when some of these folks objected to the idiotic decisions of their colleagues?

Take Court of Appeals Judge Linda McGee. She wrote a dissent to this latest judicial blunder longer than the majority opinion.

But did she also slap her colleagues up side the head?

The majority opinion, written by Judge Robert Hunter of Morehead City, amounts to some of the most contorted legal logic ever cast into print.

Hunter apparently likes the idea of being paid in IOUs.

I prefer something else: Project 22.