Sandra Day O'Connor Throws Us to the Wolves

I was somewhat surprised that I didn't hyperventilate when I heard that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor had resigned from her seat on the Supreme Court. You might say that this is the beginning of the end of our Civil and Religious freedoms in the United States. But however strongly we might feel about the dangers that this resignation forbodes, we all knew that this day was bound to come. If not at the hands of O'Conner, then with Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist. O'Conner made good on her old threat, that she had no intention of leaving the Supreme Court under a Democratic President.

I don't know where to begin to talk about the dangers here. We have a President who is arguably a Right-Wing Christian Fundamentalist who has no respect for the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Rule of Law. At his disposal is a Republican controlled Senate and a Republican controlled House of Representatives, both of which have been eager to support him on practically every issue. Some would say he has a Republican controlled Supreme Court. The Conservatives on the Supreme Court certainly handed him the election in 2000, appointing George W. Bush to be President in defiance of the norm of Due Process (by stopping the ballot recount that was not only legally justified, but expected by nearly every clear-headed thinker).

However, in the Republicans' war against the American people, we have repeatedly been saved from insane legislation and pending law by the conscience of some of the dissenting Conservatives on the bench. By this, I mean people like Sandra Day O'Connor. Without her voice to balance out the neo-Conservative agenda, I shudder to think about what's going to happen next. Given Bush's predilection for appointing Right-Wing nutjobs to the lower courts, it's hard to imagine him appointing anything less to the Supreme Court. Whoever gets appointed will allow Bush to elevate the King of Right-Wing nutjobs, Antonin Scalia, to Chief Justice. Don't count on William H. Rehnquist being around much longer. Yes, I know he's far from a moderate, but compared to Antonin Scalia he looks like one.

We are now on the slippery slope. Buckle up and try to enjoy the ride. Perhaps we should all try to make peace with the fact that, wherever we wind up, democracy as we have known it for the 224 years prior to the 2000 elections is a thing of the past. Our democracy is about to become a historical footnote; a grand experiement that, in the end, was undone by the base greed of mankind and the treachery of the Republican Party.

I would expect that the American people would be up in arms. But I've long since given up on Americans. It has taken me a very long time to admit to myself that perhaps I and my parents held Americans to an unreasonable standard. Simply put, I've always expected more of Americans than Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Yet according to the Conservatives, those horrors are no big deal. I encourage everyone to visit the links I just provided. This is what the future of the United States of America looks like.

Sandra Day O'Connor has, indeed, thrown us to the wolves.