Oh, Sandra

Anoth­er rea­son I hate pro­gram­ming: I was so wrapped up in it yes­ter­day that it was­n’t until Ken mes­saged me that I became aware of San­dra Day O’Con­nor’s deci­sion to throw away years of mod­er­a­tion in the Supreme Court.

Her rea­sons for resign­ing have not yet become clear, but it had bet­ter be some­thing life threat­en­ing. Because by resign­ing now, she has vir­tu­al­ly assured us of a con­ser­v­a­tive court for years, maybe even decades to come. Sure, she was appoint­ed by Rea­gan, and she’s con­ser­v­a­tive (at least rel­a­tive to me) but on a Court that is already right-lean­ing, she was a swing-vote mod­er­ate whose most con­ser­v­a­tive views were on issues of Fed­er­al­ism, where I could give her a pass.

I just hope the Democ­rats (you lis­ten­ing, Har­ry Reid?) find a spine on this one. The last “stand” they made on the fil­i­buster was a total sham, the “com­pro­mise” they reached did what exact­ly? Oh, right, it allowed the Repub­li­cans to get a pass on Priscil­la Owens. I’m not exact­ly sure what the Democ­rats got for that… a pat on the butt?

I would like the par­ty sup­pos­ed­ly rep­re­sent­ing 49% of the Amer­i­can peo­ple to actu­al­ly stand up against George Bush.