Look at this:

Interesting - to rebut the assertion that Scalia, Thomas, Roberts, et al. are political, you throw out the fact that Earl Warren (R) was a lifelong politician and Governor of California. But what does this prove? Nothing. It's a non-sequitor. Hell, William Howard Taft (R) was a life-long politican, former president of the United States, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Indeed, I'm sure you could go through the entire list of Supreme Court justices and find many who - gasp! - had backgrounds in politics. So?

So... you're right. But among the politicians who found their way onto the high court, Scalia, Thomas, Roberts and Alito are not among them. Indeed, some commentators have remarked how interesting it is that this is the first time in eons that we have a court composed entirely of former judges, or at least people who all had judicial experience.

The point - my point - is that there is no biographical information, and no legal data, to suggest that the four justices you names are overtly "political" in any serious sense.

"Are the new conservative justices somehow more ideological than Justice Ginsburg, who was an ACLU lawyer?" Well, Scalia, Alito and Thomas are all members of the Federalist Society which is arguably a much MORE partisan and ideological body than the ACLU.

No, it is not. You are wrong. One big difference is that the ACLU files lawsuits -- lots of them -- to enforce/support/exapnd its point of view in the public sphere. The Federalist Society doesn't do that. The ACLU has a very public and aggressive fundraising and advertising operation. The Federalist Society doesn't. Ginsberg, if I am not mistaken, was a paid employee of the ACLU. None of the Justices were ever employees of the Federalist Society.

Lastly - on a variety of subjective grounds, I'd say that the ACLU is further to the left, and much more determined as a poiltical lobbying body, than is the Federalist Society on the right.

"Strict constructionism" is just one judicial philosophy among many in the history of the court. It's probably very tempting to assume that any judicial philosophy that you don't agree with is simply invalid, but if all the justices had the same judicial philosophy there wouldn't be much point in having nine justices, would there? We could just have Scalia up there telling us what the Constitution means and how it applies to each case of the day.

I don't understand this; are you suggesting that a Democrat President wouldn't appoint 9 Ruth Bader Ginsbergs if given the opportunity to do so? I don't want to find out, and I am confident it'll never happen.

By the way, can you really assert with a straight face that Bush v. Gore was NOT decided on partisan grounds?

Watch me. "Bush v. Gore was NOT decided on partisan grounds. George W. Bush didn't start that lawsuit. Al Gore did."

Now a question for you. Can you really assert with a straight face that Al Gore got more votes in Florida in 2000 than did George W. Bush?

And when Bush was looking to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, wasn't the point to find someone who could be counted on to deliver the desired results? When conservatives promise "more justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas" aren't they just talking about court-packing?

God, I hope so. Any Republican president who wouldn't promise to appoint more Justices and lower-court judges in the mold of Scalia and Thomas wouldn't be worth working for and voting for. With the the exception of nutjob Ron Paul, I think every Republican in the field can be counted on to nominate the same kind of judges.

The irony is that in the foreseeable future, the courts are going to be the CONSERVATIVES' best chance in effecting large-scale changes in American society. Even long after Bush has left office, his legacy in Alito and Roberts is going to outlast him, reshaping the American legal landscape with their own surrepitious form of judicial activism.

Wait a minute. Isn't "effecting a large scale change in American society" what YOU want the Court to do? Don't YOU want the SCOTUS to outlaw capital punishment for you? Without bothering with a messy Amendment to the Constitution? You've made my point for me. Thanks.

A couple of people accused me of being an ignoramus because as everybody knows, it is the Plaintiff's name that goes first in civil litigation; ergo, Bush was the Plaintiff.

Not so.

The case was filed in Florida as Gore v. Bush. It was tried, and then an appeal was taken, on application, immediately up to the Florida Supreme Court, which ruled in Gore's favor, mostly. Bush then petitoned the U.S. Supreme Court for cert, and as a result, the case was captioned in the SCOTUS as "Bush [Petitioner] v. Gore."

This is a common occurrence in Supreme Court captions. That a criminal or civil defendant's name ends up going first in the event that cert is granted.

I wonder why these lawyers didn't think of suing Janet Reno for the shootout in Waco?

By the way, where is Padilla, uh, 'residing' these days?

That statement by Gary Kamiya is a pure falsehood, is it not?

"MoveOn" came into existence during the days of the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton. The credo of the nascent MoveOn.org was to just forget about silly inconsequential things like oval office blowjobs (while discussing U.S. troop deployments in Bosnia with a member of Congress on the telephone); MoveOn wanted the country to "just move on."

So MoveOn.org did not come into existence in response to any "depredations" of the George W. Bush (43) administration. MoveOn ONLY came into existence to DEFEND the depredations of the CLINTON administration!