The politicization of the Supreme Court

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Friday that John Roberts misled the Senate during his confirmation hearings by pretending to be a moderate — and that the United States is now “stuck” with him as chief justice."

If Reid really believed that, then he is an idiot. There was never anything "moderate" about John Roberts. He was a Bush appointee who had clerked for Rehnquist, worked in the Reagan administration, and was on the steering committee for the conservative Federalist society. Maybe because he had a friendly demeanor and was a decent looking guy he was assumed to be "moderate"? Most liberals would have been shocked if he had turned out to be anything but conservative, and most conservatives would have been outraged.

And the reality is there is nothing wrong with that, at least in my opinion. Bush was a conservative President, and since he actually won in 2004 (contrasted with his 2000 "victory") he earned the right to appoint Supreme Court Justices. A good portion of modern day Presidential campaigns center around the types of liberal or conservative judges that will be selected depending on which party wins. Voters know that everything from the right to choose, to environmental laws, to health and safety legislation will all be impacted by the courts. It's part of the calculus now in who you vote for for President.

Yet appointees for the high court still have to parade in front of the Senate and pretend that their whole judicial and academic history didn't really mean anything, that they have no real opinions on the major legal issues of the day, and they will be judicial moderates (whatever that means) when they are confirmed to the bench. Why go through the charade? Why not just accept that liberal Presidents will appoint liberal judges and conservative Presidents will appoint conservative judges? Isn't that how democracy is supposed to work?