How much must former Justice Sandra Day O'Connor rue her vote installing Mister Bush in office over 2000 popular vote winner and probable Florida recount winner Al Gore? All her good work come undone, she chose to serve on the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Commission only to have that effort tossed back in her face like mud. And now the man that replaced her has joined the four other rightwing reactionaries to give us resegregation, corporate smear ads, limits to student free speech outside school grounds, license for developers to ignore the Endangered Species Act, and protection for Bush/Cheney-style faith-based graft using our tax dollars.
Justice Stephen Breyer made his point aloud, in this case after a reported shouting match with Chief Justice Roberts over the affirmative action case and what it means to be an American, to the Court in session (via Jeffrey Toobin at CNN):
Justice Breyer used a phrase, "Never in the history of the court have so few done so much so quickly." And he was talking about Chief Justice Roberts and Justice [Samuel] Alito making this court a far more conservative institution in just one year. And at that phrase, "And never have so few done so much so quickly," both Justice Alito and Chief Justice Roberts looked over at Breyer and went, whoa, that's pretty personal by the standards of the Supreme Court.
You think I'm reaching with a quarter century realignment for the Dems? It happened the last time Republicans drove America into the ground. Hell, even Fox has Bush polling at record lows. Even better, they have Dems polling ahead of Republicans on facing off against a jingoistic threat!
I look forward this Supreme Court's first opportunity to rule on a woman's right to choose what to do with her own body when she finds herself pregnant.
Make it 50.
2 comments:
The last few days have been disgraceful for the SCOTUS, but indicative in stark terms of the essence of the fundamentalist rightwing in the US -- they're liars and they have contempt for compromise.
1) Alito & Roberts both flatly lied in their confirmation hearings regarding their "deep respect" for stare decisis (and no doubt laughed themselves silly watching the subsequent media coverage of them as serious and honest legal minds with a respect for precedent.)
2) They played for dupes the nattering Senate "Gang of Fourteen" (read: "Lieberman") and their insipid enablers (read: "Broder") who with much public handwringing felt they needed to promote that great imaginary american civic virtue -- political harmony -- by opposing the filibuster of Alito.
At the time, they (Lieberman especially) frolicked in the warm waters of public self-congratulation for supposedly racheting down partisanship and saving the nation from itself. Aetna Joe, who loves to regale the soon-to-be-bored with manly tales of his manning the front lines in Selma must be very proud of Alito's handiwork in rolling back Brown v BOE, an event that I would've bet hard money would never happen in my lifetime.
I hope this is a lesson to the Dems in general and the 2008 nominee in particular: the rightwingers are liars and contemptuous of compromise. They need to be dealt with as such.
-m
Interesting that the Justice Department official who was in charge of prepping Roberts and Alito for their approval hearings resigned today, in the very same week that the decisions tumbled out.
I guess "her work was done here."
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