A brilliant choice?

As much as I hate to say it, Bush's choice of John Roberts was brilliant. Remember there was some concern that if he picked a pro-corporate person he might risk losing his fundamentalist base and vice-versa. So he managed to find a candidate that was both pro business and anti-abortion. John Roberts, Republican, must have emerged from the womb waving an American flag and vowing to be a Republican forever. A white male, 50 years old, two small children, said to be a brilliant lawyer, congenial, clever, and whatever. And because he has no paper trail to speak of he will be very hard to oppose. NARAL is outraged. The Democrats are not happy (although I will bet you whatever you want they will approve him). Republicans will try to manage the news so that the Rove scandal will take the back burner (if not disappear entirely). They can't be allowed to get away with this. I suggest that one of the ways to make sure this doesn't happen is to question Roberts repeatedly about what he thinks should happen to Rove and Libby.

I can see that from Cheney's point of view Roberts may be an ideal choice (I seriously doubt that Bush had much to do with it). But here, again, the Republicans are trying to get away with something. There was pressure to appoint a woman, and now there will be only one woman out of nine justices (when women, you might recall, make up more than 50% of the population). There was pressure to appoint a Hispanic (as there is no Hispanic on the court even though they now make up a very substantial proportion of the population). Indeed, apart from Clarence Thomas (who never should have been appointed in the first place) there are no minorities represented on the court. So why appoint a 50 year-old white male? Because he represents exactly what they want - an anti-abortion, pro-business candidate who will be difficult to oppose. Brilliant, however disgusting. I'm sure everyone will breath a sigh of relief - because it could have been worse. But could it?

While I cannot be certain I am pretty much convinced that this is by now a fait accompli. I'll bet the Democrats have already agreed to this even though they will probably go through the motions of resisting. Never forget, our current Democrats are in the same boat with Republicans. They only pretend to be an opposition party. The very few Democrats that might honestly be opposed to the current Republican takeover of our country are simply ignored. Rove/Libby should surely be fired. Bush/Cheney should surely be impeached. Good should triumph over evil. Don't hold your breath. This is American 2005. It no longer operates as a functioning democracy. If we continue much longer along the current path it may not function at all. Oh, by the way, send more money to Israel. Their genocidal attack on the Palestinians can always use more money. They probably need to build an even bigger illegal wall.