After Scalia's dissent in Lawrence v. Texas

This would be the obnox factor. He's an incredibly sore loser, and I find he's a sore winner, too. It's not just that I personally find it annoying and embarrassing, that public speech can be so snarly-nasty, but I also expect more decorum out of our Supremes.

They require those who come to argue before them to wear morning coats, you know. If you're going to get all formal with the cut of a man's suit, I should think the cut of a man's tongue (or pen) would matter too.

Good point, Frank. It's exactly the people who, when they were the age I am now, were thinking, "Things are as bad as they've ever been in my lifetime," who are now in charge.

I think that what were seeing is the people who felt just this way when the Democrats were (mostly) in charge

I think people just want strong authority figures, and the Dems are really bad at that.

It's the will of the people, right?

The whole Constitution is designed to keep the will of the people from getting too obnoxious. The founders were well aware of the public's ability to swing far in one direction and consciously sought to mitigate those swings.

It's kind of a bad bit of timing though that Clinton didn't get to nominate that many Supremes during an eight year run. It was sandwiched by 12 years of Republicans on one side and 8 years of Republicans on the other.

It is disheartening though.

I find his stated opinion on Roe vs. Wade disturbing. Given my druthers I'd rather have someone who said that abortion was the choice of the pregnant woman, period, full-stop. But I don't know if we could get that someone through the Senate at the moment. Roberts may be as good as we're going to get at the moment, scary though that is.

In utterly unrelated news, I've been toying with the idea of going back to school for my MLS. Partially because I like the thought of being a librarian, and partly because I'm thinking it might make me a bit more employable. There's a school in town (NC Central University) where I could get my degree through a mix of evening and online classes. Do any current librarians have an opinion? Am I dreaming about the whole better employability thing (my current degrees are in English, so I'm thinking it's all kinda relative)?

I think things are really crazy right now.

We're spending about as much money on our military (not counting the cost of the war) as the rest of the world combined and in we keeping hearing how we need a stronger military.

We're the only industralized country without universal health care and we're spending about twice as much per capita on health care. And as medical costs are driving more and more bankruptcies, the solution is to toughen bankruptcy laws.

We have huge deficits and an expensive war and we pass tax cut after tax cut.

We have a tremendous concentration of wealth at the top and tax cut after tax cut that benefits the most wealthy gets passed.

With warning after warning about Global warming and the simple economics of growing oil demand in the World, our energy policies make tax subsidies for oil companies a higher priority than alternative energy technologies.

There is the war in which over 25,000 people have died and that all the justifications made beforehand have proven to be false. Yet no one is held responsible.

It just seems like I could go on and on...

Good point, Frank. It's exactly the people who, when they were the age I am now, were thinking, "Things are as bad as they've ever been in my lifetime," who are now in charge.

And in a lot of cases I think it wasn't the issues per se (civil rights, women's rights, increasing secularization, etc.), but the way some people's perception was that they got rammed down their throats. Granted, you can get into a long and heated discussion that things wouldn't have changed if the issues hadn't been forced, and I also know there were many who vehemently opposed those changes on any level.

And in a lot of cases I think it wasn't the issues per se (civil rights, women's rights, increasing secularization, etc.), but the way some people's perception was that they got rammed down their throats.

And people thought Carter was a jackass as president, right?

What was your advice?

Charlie.

I think things are really crazy right now

It makes a lot more sense if you are really really rich. And own oil companies.

This is the main thing that bugs me about the "will of the people" though - I see that "will" as coming from a position of ignorance. I talk to so many Republicans who are okay with everything their party does for the insanely wealthy because they believe that they themselves are or soon will be part of that group. Just as soon as they get their raise from $60,000 to $65,000, they'll be in the American elite. When Bush revoked the inheiritance tax, they were happy...I asked "Why? Do you actually have a million dollars to leave to your heirs?" They had no idea it only kicked in at $1 million.

I could go on, but I will spare you.