One Bush appointment to the Supreme Court and our democracy is gone.

[Cyrano]

Why this didn't come up during the debates is beyond me.

The next president will get to appoint at least one, and probably as many as three supreme court justices. Bush has already said he admires Scalia and Thomas.

If Bush wins, say goodbye to Roe v Wade, separation of church and state, workplace protections, environmental protections, a free press, stem cell research, privacy rights, the right to sue corporations, and on and on. In other words, say goodbye to democracy.

This is the single most important issue in the upcoming election. Yet it seems to be flying beneath the radar. Our freedoms are teetering on the edge of a cliff and half the morons in this country are planning to cast a vote for the man who's planning to take them away from us.

WTF.

[UpsideDownFlag]

1. kick nt

[barb162]

2. this is such an important issue and I agree. We can't have any

more reactionaries appointed or this country will go down the hill even faster than it is now.

[seabeyond]

3. view of a fundie friend

says voting for bush to keep liberal off bench because she didnt want constitution changed. told her repugs are the ones wanting to change it, and walk all over it. four year of examples, well and prior with the impeachment, that they want to change it.

she says, well it will have to be a moderate to be appointed, couldnt get in otherwise.

ah in all my sarcasm i ask, forced to do a moderate, and do tell, where is going to be the pressure on the repugs seeing the have the house senate and presidency, why do you imagine they would have any challenge at all getting another scalia or thomas.

and once they have the supreme court, we have our dictatorship in place, no need for another election, for repugs to steal votes

[lawladyprof]

4. I agree wholeheartedly--eom

[Lefty48197]

5. It's that important

plus we have about 20 years of right wing judicial appointments, to other courts, to undo.

[IndianaGreen]

6. Roe was gutted by the Casey decision

Abortion rights have further been subverted by Congressional bans on surgical procedures such as the one on the so-called "late term abortion."

People think that the fight for abortion rights will be fought on the Supreme Court, while ignoring two important facts:

1. Over the years Democrats have joined Republicans in passing restrictive abortion legislation, and

2. All the Supreme Court has to do is to decide not to hear abortion cases decided at the appellate level. While we have been babbling about Supreme Court appointments, we have largely ignored the large number of conservative justices that have been confirmed to the federal bench by the Senate since the 1980s. Case law is being decided by appellate judges when SCOTUS chooses to not grant certiorari to abortion rights cases.

On edit:

As to our "democracy being gone," I suggest to you that it was the PATRIOT Act, together with our undemocratic winner-take-all electoral system that prevents real democracy from taking root in this country.