The New Yorker has a well-written editorial about our choice next week between Bush and Kerry. I hate Bush for a lot of very good reasons, but the main reason I'm going to go ahead and vote for Kerry is this (from the above article):

"Even so, to the extent that Bush and Ashcroft have been thwarted it has been due largely to our still vigorous federal judiciary, especially the Supreme Court. Like some of the Court’s worst decisions of the past four years (Bush v. Gore again comes to mind), most of its best—salvaging affirmative action, upholding civil liberties for terrorist suspects, striking down Texas’s anti-sodomy law, banning executions of the mentally retarded—were reached by one- or two-vote majorities. (Roe v. Wade is two justices removed from reversal.) All but one of the sitting justices are senior citizens, ranging in age from sixty-five to eighty-four, and the gap since the last appointment—ten years—is the longest since 1821. Bush has said more than once that Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas are his favorite justices. In a second Bush term, the Court could be remade in their images."

I know that Kerry won't have an easy time pushing through ideal appointees, but Bush *would* have an easy time, what with the Republican Senate, salting the Court with narrow-minded, freedom-to-choose-hating cronies. These are lifetime positions. *My* lifetime is happening right now, and I don't want to live with Bush's Court. And I don't want to have to move to Canada.

I also love this quote from the article:

"Pollsters like to ask voters which candidate they’d most like to have a beer with, and on that metric Bush always wins. We prefer to ask which candidate is better suited to the governance of our nation."

Indeed.