Today was an historic day. Samuel Alito was confirmed by the Senate (and immediately sworn-in, I suspect so that Messrs. Kennedy and Kerry couldn’t rally the troops to somehow rescind the approval). I predict that this event will go down in history as the day that the Supreme Court began an inexorable swing back to the right, and traditional values of God and Country.
For the last fifty years or so, the court has moved more and more to the left. Even the man I credit as our greatest president, Ronald Regan had little luck in swinging the court to the right – his pick, retiring Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, became the court’s most famous mugwump (look it up). President Regan called her “my biggest mistake.” I can’t disagree. Thanks to her waffling, she became known as a “swing vote,” a clever liberal turn of phrase that essential means “conservative turncoat.” Today, a solidly conservative judge has taken her place, and President Bush has promised that, should another opening come along, he’ll again nominate someone cut from the same bolt of good conservative cloth as is Chief Justice Roberts, and Justices Alito, Thomas, and Scalia.