The New Yorker magazine of June 25 has an op/ed by Jeffrey Toobin written before this week's raff of 5-4 SCOTUS decisions that with one exception--a stay on a death penalty execution in Texas--describes like a reading from a crystal ball the decisions that go against the progressive movement I think most of us want in this country.
As Mr. Toobin points out the appointments made to SCOTUS are any president's lasting legacy and I think the court appointments made by the Bu$h Junta will parallel in destructiveness the current illegal occupation in Iraq.
Anyone, whether GOPer, Demo, Libertarian, Green, and all shades in between, and interested in human progress, should consider what kind of appointments the new president, should there be one, in January, 2009, will make.
I remember reading that justice must not only be fair, it must be SEEN to be fair!
As SCOTUS has reversed Roe v. Wade in all but name, and put a very big dent in Brown v. Board of Education, I fear that Lawrence v.Texas, which overturned all state sodomy laws and recognized personal privacy in one's life, regardless of sexual orientation, will be overturned as well.
You can read the complete article at the link here, http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2007/06/25/070625taco_talk_toobin while below I've posted the excerpts which stood out to my mind. Any emphasis is added by me.
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As George W. Bush staggers toward the conclusion of his second term, he can point to at least one major and enduring project that has gone according to plan: the transformation of the Supreme Court. In the next week or so, the justices will begin their summer recess. The first full term in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., have served together will thus be completed, and the changes on the Court, and their implications for the nation, have been profound.
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The conservative agenda has remained largely unchanged in the decades since: Expand executive power. End racial preferences intended to assist African-Americans. Speed executions. Welcome religion into the public sphere. And, above all, reverse Roe v. Wade, and allow states to ban abortion. [This has been demonstrated by this week's decisions.]
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When it comes to the incendiary political issues that end up in the Supreme Court, what matters is not the quality of the arguments but the identity of the justices. Presidents pick justices to extend their legacies; by this standard, Bush chose wisely. The days when justices surprised the Presidents who appointed them are over—
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At this moment, the liberals face not only jurisprudential but actuarial peril. Stevens is eighty-seven and Ginsburg seventy-four; Roberts, Thomas, and Alito are in their fifties. The Court, no less than the Presidency, will be on the ballot next November, and a wise electorate will vote accordingly
