Alito to be confirmed.

They just voted for closure. Alito is now going to be voted on in the full senate and he has the votes to make it through. I don't have any respect for the few democrats that jumped ship. I feel they're dinosaurs from a more congenial time, and they've made their party a feeble and pitiful group, unworthy of serious consideration.

With Alito on the SCOTUS the nature of the country will change over time. Roe vs. Wade will fall within the next two years and I expect that they'll soon cement GOP dystopian ideals in stone. Money will be defined as speech. Anti-trust legislation will be de-fanged. Worker's rights will erode and minority rights and privacy rights will shrink. They've finally accomplished what they've worked these last 20 years to do.

Bush will gain enormous authority through a SCOTUS which will back up his every whim and power-grab and he'll leave a 'Unitary Executive' authority ripe for breakdown into dictatorship. People will laugh at this, but democracies break down into dictatorship all the time. The first examples are Greece and Rome, which were both full of people just as smart and aware and apprehensive as people are today. All that is old is new again.

Maybe the Left will gain traction soon. Otherwise we'll go the way of Spain in the 16th century and spin out of control into some sort of quasi-feudal, stratified, sterile society. We've lost the largest battle of the decade. Right now the mullah's are in the majority. Only time will tell if there will be anything left to salvage, or whether the (Northeast) American ideal can survive in politics or will it become a marginalized joke. Continued population growth in the sunbelt and the failure of Northeastern politicians to gain any traction down south means that the D-democratic ideal has to grow independently down there if it is to stay viable. No more JFK's. We'll need a homegrown Texan LBJ, or it's all over.

S