Forty Years of Extremists

[atommom]

You've got to hand it to the Senate Republican leaders. Launching debate on May 17, Majority Leader Bill Frist offered the most succinct argument for ramrodding President Bush's most extreme judicial nominees through the Senate confirmation process. With dazzling simplicity, he opened the debate with the statement that, as a matter of simple fairness, all 10 of Bush's nominees are entitled to "an up or down vote" because a majority of senators supports their confirmation.

The radical right went ballistic when truly conservative federal judges refused to be "activist" -- by turning back the shabby attempt by a Republican-dominated Congress to reverse a Florida judge's decision favoring Terri Schiavo's husband in that tragic case. What is clear is that Bush doesn't want to curtail judicial activism -- he wants to stack the judicial deck for the next 40 years by appointing activists of the far right.

Once the religious right's theocratic agenda has been fulfilled, it will not be reversible or derailed during the lifetime of Bush's judges. Even if the religious right's current agenda were to be overwhelmingly rejected by the voters for the next 30 or 40 years, it would be locked in -- by "activist judges" of the radical right.

If some are still confused over the meaning of this filibuster battle, it is because the Democrats have so far failed to explain the long-term stakes.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/22046/