One more time

There were those who argued that there was no difference between the two major presidential candidates in 2000, and many of them will continue to argue, after the disappointments of the Obama administration, that there is no meaningful difference between the Obama who runs for reelection in 2012 and whatever troglodyte the Republican Party selects as its candidate.

One of the popular memes these last few years is that elections have consequences, and in a presidential election, one of those consequences is that the president gets to nominate justices to the Supreme Court.

The guy selected in 2000 got to appoint John Roberts, the current Chief Justice, and Samuel Alito, one of Roberts' accomplices. The guy elected in 2008 got to appoint Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Obama's two appointees and Bush's two appointees were on opposite sides of a case this week in which the Bush majority decided that a man who was convicted, sentenced to death, and served fourteen years on death row because of a fraudulent conspiracy to conceal exculpatory evidence carried out by prosecutor Harry Connick, Sr., and attorneys working under him, was not entitled to compensation.

Do you think things might have come out a little differently in this case if Bush hadn't been in the White House to appoint Alito and Roberts?

I sure do.

Thanks, Ralph.