Jeffrey Toobin has a good piece up in the New Yorker where he asks whether McCain will be a "Maverick" when it comes to Supreme Court appointments, or whether he will follow in the steps George W. Bush. After reviewing the evidence, Toobin concludes that this is one area where McCain has NEVER been, is not now, and never will be a Maverick:
The question, as always with McCain these days, is whether he means it. Might he really be a "maverick" when it comes to the Supreme Court? The answer, almost certainly, is no. The Senator has long touted his opposition to Roe, and has voted for every one of Bush’s judicial appointments; the rhetoric of his speech shows that he is getting his advice on the Court from the most extreme elements of the conservative movement.
With Alito replacing O'Connor, only five votes remain in support of Roe v. Wade -- Ginsburg, Souter, Breyer, Kennedy and Stevens. There is no chance that all five of them will stay on the Court until 2012.
John Paul Stevens, the leader of the Court’s four embattled liberals, just celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday; Ruth Bader Ginsburg is seventy-five; David Souter is only sixty-eight but longs for his home in New Hampshire.
And it's not just Roe v. Wade, the current four radical right-wing Justices, Thomas, Scalia, Alito, and Roberts (and who are occasionally supported by Kennedy), threaten to turn back the clock on nearly 70 years of jurisprudence, taking us back to the 1930's:
Bush’s conservative appointees to the Supreme Court—John G. Roberts, Jr., and Samuel A. Alito, Jr.—have joined Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in a phalanx that is more radical than any that the Court has seen since F.D.R.’s appointments. Those Justices allowed the New Deal to proceed, and set the stage for the noblest era in the Court’s history, under Chief Justice Earl Warren, when the civil and individual rights of all citizens finally received their constitutional due. By contrast, in just three years the Roberts Court has crippled school-desegregation efforts (and hinted that affirmative action may be next); approved a federal law that bans a form of abortion; limited the reach of job-discrimination laws; and made it more difficult to challenge the mixing of church and state.
I still sense some anger and frustration over the rapidly concluding primaries. Apparently even Geraldine Ferraro is making encouraging noises to those who would just as soon drop out.
We cannot afford to let that happen. We must come together to save the Supreme Court. We cannot afford the alternative.
[T]he stakes in the election, for the Supreme Court and all who live by its rulings, are very, very high.
The time for unity is now. We all need to do everything in our power, whether it be volunteering, donating money, or blogging, to assure that a Democrat is elected as the 44th President of the United States in November.