ACTUAL SERIOUS PUNDITRY

I spend most of my time here linking and not being incredibly serious. Against my better judgement, a brief deviation from that pattern is in order:

Remember a few weeks ago, how the Supreme Court decided not to hear the case of a man sentenced to death for a crime committed while he was a teenager? I recently did some thinking about this case...

First of all, without reading the report, gee I wonder which Justices were on which side of this issue?

Yep, the same 5-4 split as Bush v. Gore and many other cases, with the conservatives (read "election theft middlemen") making the majority.

Yes, Justice Clarence "Long Dong" Thomas did make this mindless and unfortunate comment: "[Foster] could long ago have ended his anxieties and uncertainties by submitting to what the people of Florida have deemed him to deserve: execution." But Thomas, who has basically been a lapdog (as you can see, I'm not going full-on Belafonte here) for Scalia and Renquist, isn't the issue here.

My problem is with Sandra Day O'Connor. Remember in mid-2001, how O'Connor made a couple of speeches expressing new doubts about capital punishment? And how they got extensive media coverage?

Well where is that newfound principle now? Surely this was a chance to take her "serious questions" for a spin. She did the right thing in June, siding with a six-justice majority in ruling executions of retarded people to be unconstitutional. But Sandra, where are you now?

There are exactly two possibilities here:
1) O'Connor somehow came to the idea that while execution of the retarded is a question worthy of discussions on its constitutionality, execution of people who committed their crimes as teenagers isn't. TFM believes this does not wash, that it means that Sandra is tacitly reasoning to us, "I have serious questions... but not that serious"
or, more likely,
2) O'Connor's "serious questions" were what now appears to be a pathetically transparent attempt to rehabilitate her reputation and "legacy" after being the "swing vote" in the Bush coup of December 2000. Remember the stories of how she reportedly yelled at the TV when Florida was originally called for Gore? That's the REAL Sandra Day O'Connor. The same one who we have just witnessed in October, shying away from her transparent statements because the dust had settled and the press had moved on.

This is what conservatives do: They put on a little show for the press, and the press gobbles it up and moves on, unaware of the mess that remains. Remember how Bush said he wants to crack down on corporate crime? How they paraded a couple of exec's around in handcuffs (but not Kennyboy) as a show for the media? Well riddle me this: If, Jebus forbid, the GOP gets majorities on both sides of congress, will Bush even THINK about continuing to crack down on his corporate cronies? We already know they want to financially starve the SEC to death.

The moral? What we see from some individual conservatives, like O'Connor, can be something of a window to the GOP on the whole, Smirk included.