Twenty-five reasons to vote for Obama: #10--SCOTUS

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is 79 years old.  Justices Antonin Scalia and William Kennedy are 76.  Stephen Breyer is 74. Though it isn't unheard of that Supreme Court Justices remain on the court into their eighties, there is a good  chance that whoever is elected President in 2012 will be nominating at least two Justices for the Supreme Court.  While I would be surprised, should Obama win, that either Scalia or Kennedy would retire, it would be comforting to know that the President could put two young Justices on the Supreme Court to replace Justices Ginsburg and Breyer should they decide to retire.

Point is, we're already down 5-4, and were Ginsburg's well known health problems to force her from the bench, it is hard to see how being in the minority at 6-3 would be good for the causes we support:  Roe v. Wade and abortion, gay rights and gay marriage, the continuation, a la the Citizen's United decision of the Roberts' Court acquiesence to corporate America and its whims (is it only me who finds it somewhat hypocritical that corporate America bemoans lawsuits while buying/bullying their way upon the rest of us through the courts, see also the chamber of commerce?).

Frankly, for all the republicans bitching about "activist judges," they seem awfully hunky dory with asking the courts to impose their philsophies on the rest of us.  For all their talk about individual rights, they'd be more than happy to have the courts outlaw abortion, gay marriage (for those states which already have it), our right to birth control, and have it allow prayer in our schools.  And in a nation where the middle class and the poor are already fighting to keep their heads above water, the republican appointees to the Supreme Court seem to have little problem giving more power to corporations and taking it away from workers.

In the end, it comes down to whether or not you want a Supreme Court that's interpreting the Constitution as a living document or one that is being used to further the agenda of religious freaks and Wall Street.  We just cannot afford more decisions like Citizen's United that is doing unlimited damage and may take a generation to overturn.

Peace,
emaycee