Democrats: about to take a Tom Cruise in their pants

Well, it’s on. Despite Congress’ half-hearted reassurances that the impending debate over the Supreme Court judicial nomination will be civilized and cooperative, the word on the street is that it’s going to be a bloody, ugly, desperate political fight.

Sandra Day O’Connor is vacating one of the most powerful and influential seats in the country and William Rehnquist will soon follow—it’s like waiting for the friggin’ Pope to drop, except more important. The Pope might make the rules that govern our souls, but the Supreme Court makes the rules that govern our earthly asses. Gun control, prayer in school, abortion, civil liberties, free speech, gay rights and environmental protection—this is what those extra 4 million evangelicals crawled out to vote for in the presidential election. Dubya will be out in three years, but these new Justices will be around for the next 40.

And things aren’t looking good. The Democrats have already been cowed out of filibustering nominees to the federal appeals court and for lack of any real political power at the moment they might soon be searching for the nearest legislative fallout shelter. But no matter where we hole up the fact remains that this may be the war to end all partisan wars, or at least squash any semblance of a balanced democracy. Now, in the past when Turkey’s fledgling democracy began to stray from the balanced, elected-by-the-people parliament system that Father Turkey founded, the military staged a coup and stepped in to realign government priorities in order to set the country back on the straight path of freedom and democracy—three times in sixty years. It’s not a great system, but it’s worked. Unfortunately, there will be no one around to save us. They’re too busy fighting for our freedom, half-way across the globe.

My advice? Start scoping out Baghdad real estate now while it’s still cheap and smoldering—at this rate, in a few years the Iraqi government will stand a better chance at exercising freedom and democracy than we will.