Deciding vote in the 5-4 ruling: Alito.

If O’Connor were still on the bench, it would have been 5-4 the other way.

There will be many more rulings like this in the coming twenty years.

In the week before the 2004 election, I kept a big ol’ picture of the aging Supremes on the top of the site, correctly pointing out that Rehnquist wasn’t long for this world. Preventing Chimpus Maximus from stacking the court with authoritarian judges really was the key issue in that election.

Sigh.

So other than no-knock entries, the destruction of habeus corpus, imprisonment without trial, rendition of suspects for overseas torture, rigged elections, "signing statements," and massive illegal domestic spying, this whole freedom and democracy thing is all working out just swell.

[singing quietly to myself, as if to give myself a little hope:] "… we’ve golden soil and wealth for toil; our home is girt by sea…"