Bush's last laugh
President Bush's poll numbers could drop into the teens. He could be widely reviled by the mass of the American people. He could even be impeached and removed from office. But even if all this happened, he would still have the last laugh, because he put John Roberts and the ideologue Samuel Alito on the U.S. Supreme Court. They'll be there for the next 20 years, along with Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, acting as a roadblock to every good and decent thing the Congress does, and every attempt by the people to stop bad businesses and bureaucrats from hurting them.
Yesterday, joined by another conservative Republican appointee, Anthony Kennedy, they handed down four 5-4 decisions that, among other things, weaken the separation between church and state and expanded the rights of schools to limit student free speech. They upheld the right of anti-abortion groups and others to run expensive, corporate-funded "issue" ads in the 60 days before an election, and they weakened the Endangered Species Act. Here's another story about it from the Los Angeles Times.
You made this all possible, George W. Bush voters. You may hate him now, but he's doing this for you. Bush lied and dissembled about a lot of things in the 2000 election campaign, but one thing on which he was crystal clear was his plan to appoint Supreme Court justices like Thomas, a self-loathing black who pretends he didn't benefit from affirmative action, and Scalia, like Alito an authoritarian right-wing Catholic. Much, much more is coming. Give yourselves a pat on the back. Bush may be down, but like the Terminator, he is programmed to get up and continue on his mission to destroy everything good and just in American society.