Why this election is so important

It's really quite simple. If you want the U.S. Supreme Court to roll back decades of progress in the areas of personal freedom, equality, reproductive choice, and the like, vote for Huggy Bear in November. Because he just loves the idea of judicial activism -- so long as it's batshit crazy, in-your-bedroom, bigoted, Christianist judicial activism.

Highlighting an issue he plans to use aggressively in the general election campaign, Sen. John McCain on Tuesday decried "the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power" and pledged to nominate judges similar to the ones President Bush has placed on the bench.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee said that Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. "would serve as the model for my own nominees, if that responsibility falls to me," highlighting the gap between Republicans and Democrats on the question of who should sit on the Supreme Court. Both justices have established strong conservative records since Bush appointed them, and the appointment of one more conservative to the nation's highest court could tip the balance on issues such as abortion, discrimination, civil liberties and private property.

The two remaining Democratic candidates, Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), opposed the nominations of Roberts and Alito.

"My nominees will understand that there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power, and clear limits to the scope of federal power," McCain told a crowd of several hundred at Wake Forest University's Wait Chapel, as he stood in front of nine American flags and mock-ups of the preamble to the Constitution.

Irony is not dead, folks. Conservatives, especially neo-conservative whackjobs like Justice Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia, think that "limits to the scope of judicial power" means "don't fuck with my power to do whatever the fuck I want." And in this area, Huggy Bear can pander to the whackjob GOP base without restraint, since he has to show them that he's as much of a nutcase as his BFF Drunky McStagger.

Thing is ... in many ways, he's even more of a nutcase. If that prospect doesn't frighten you, then you need to look at Huggy Bear more closely. Starting right the fuck now. Because if he becomes president, you can say goodbye to any kind of reason or sensibility on the Supreme Court for at least the next three decades.

That's why this election is so important. And that's why either Clinton or Obama would be light years preferable to Huggy Bear.