Rulings show Supreme Court's conservative shift

From the AP via the Houston Chronicle:

The Supreme Court liberated corporate and union political spending, limited students' speech and shielded the White House faith-based program from legal challenge today in 5-4 rulings that pointed up the court's shift to the right.

President Bush's two appointees, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, were front and center. They wrote the main opinions in those three decisions — including the "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" free-speech case — as well as another ruling that had been sought by the administration and business groups in an environmental case.

Five justices — Roberts, Alito, Anthony Kennedy, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas — formed the majority in each decision. The court's four liberals, Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens, dissented each time.

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You know, I used to have respect for conservative Supreme Court Justices because I believed them to be honest and wise, truly deliberating over complicated Constitutional issues, and then rendering verdicts that were more about principle than partisanship. Not anymore. Ever since 2000's incomprehensible party-line decision in Bush v. Gore, I've tried to look a bit more closely at some of their decisions, particularly the reasoning. What I've found is disturbing. Instead of the "strict constructionist" approach touted by conservatives for decades, I've seen what's best described as a high school debater approach, mixed with some Bill O'Reilly style arrogance. That is, the conservative majority on the court already knows how it's going to rule for any given case before they hear it; then they cherry-pick facts and and torture bits of logic in order to get the ruling they've already decided on. I mean, these rulings make very little sense. Their decision in the gender discrimination case was amazing in it's bullshit. The fact that suppressing the phrase "bong hits 4 Jesus" will do nothing at all to curb teen drug use makes their rationale behind chopping away at free speech rights stupid at best. And on and on.

We're being adjudicated to death by a bunch of fucking monkeys.

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