(Scalito) In a few hours...

this chap Alito will start a meteoric arc towards the coveted jumpseat on the Supreme Court. I guess he's going to replace someone only slightly more qualified than himself. Despite my liberal tendencies, I just can't muster any real optimism about defeating this fellow. The best I can do is recall accusing Judge Alito of being a cheap imitation of J. Antonin Scalia in the course of delivering a very drunken tirade to someone's video camera following an after-school party. J. Scalia is very smart and very scary. For those who value privacy and personal autonomy (the only things that really separate the yoke of our government from that of say, Saudi Arabia), Scalia's words pour like molten lead into one's ear. Alito's arguments, on the other hand, will sound in the register of a honeyed potion laced with hemlock. I can't doubt that every Democrat on the judiciary would be taken in were it not for Alito's long record of outrageous dissenting opinions. What's worse is that Mr. Alito's naturally affable demeanor and knack for diplomacy will win him lots of friends on the Court and he will almost certainly surpass Scalia in shaping some very ugly precedents.

Right after that, I demurred from a bong hit...And shyly asked if anyone in the house had "psychostimulants."

This place (that is, the intellectual landscape of the US legal system) has been going to the dogs at an alarming rate ever since I started paying attention back in '96ish. The best historical parallel we might draw is from Ronald Smye's description of the situation in Rome prior to Caesar's rise to prominence: "For revenge and as an example to deter posterity from raising dissension at Rome, Sulla outlawed his adversaries, confiscated their property and deprived their descendants of all political rights." For purposes of clarification, I'm not suggesting that any one Republican is tough enough to bear comparison to Sulla but I'm sure that between Cheney and whoever happens to be in charge of the whole redistricting fiasco (plus any complicit federal judges who ruled the exercise "constitutional"), they've got their bases covered.