Here are today's SCOTUS decisions in a nutshell, from the WaPo Court watcher (all four links in the block are pdf): Conservatives go 4-4 today at the Supreme Court
Legal and political conservatives hit for the cycle Monday morning when they "won" four long-awaited rulings from the United States Supreme Court. The Justices further chipped away at the wall that separates church and state, took some of the steam out of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, neutered federal regulators in environmental cases to the benefit of developers and slammed a high school kid who had the temerity to put up a silly sign near his high school.Yep. This is part of what federal elections do: they give us Justices like Roberts and Alito, both of whom joined Scalia, Thomas and Kennedy in denying taxpayers the right to complain about Bush's faith-based organizations getting federal money, allowing corporations to run ads saying "Vote agin' X, he's a bum!" all the way up to election day, stating that EPA has no requirement to assess the potential impact of a developer's actions, and deciding that a school principal has the right to discipline a kid who puts up a dopey sign reading "Bong Hits for Jesus" outside his school.
Elections matter, and Presidential elections matter more than people like to think. Had Kerry won, it's safe to bet that a more moderate justice than Alito would have been appointed to replace Sandra Day O'Connor, particularly with a Democratic Senate.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 25, 2007 02:02 PM | TrackBack