In case we have forgotten about the severe left-ward bent of the New York Times, a new editorial puts in all back into focus.  In “A Supreme Court on the Brink” they worry about the future direction of the Supreme Court, specifically that a McCain administration could undo all the liberal decisions the Supremes have made over the years, including Roe V. Wade.  This is a needless fear.   Not even Reagan managed to accomplish that goal, and McCain can hardly be accused of such extreme conservatism.  McCain will keep his word on this, if not on anything else, but conservatives shouldn’t get their hopes up that McCain could get a Samuel Alito or John Roberts through the expected Democratic majority in Congress.  Unless the Democrats inexplicably cave in, there’s no way this will happen.  A more plausible scenario is that McCain attempts to put through judges the base approves of, and he is brutally rebuffed by the Democrats.  Then he gives in and nominates someone like Harriet Miers.  Yikes.  Of course this all assumes McCain beats Barack Obama.  Is the New York Times worried about their golden boy’s chances in November?  Say it ain’t so guys.

Some of the Court’s rulings were questionable, and the assessment of their overall record this year as “muddled” is a fair way of describing it.  Even so, I shouldn’t be surprised that the New York Times wants to be on the record supporting the Court’s decision denying the death penalty to the child rapist.  The ruling was misguided to say the least.  If we are going to have the death penalty as a punishment for crime, not too many crimes are worse than child rape.  The child will be scarred for life.  I’m not sure that life in prison is a sufficient punishment for what the child went through at the hands of this monster. Then there’s the more well-known decision to give habeas corpus rights to Guantanamo detainees who — may I remind everyone — are not American citizens.  It’s a bad idea to give foreigners access to American courts, and I still haven’t heard a great explanation of why Constitutional rights and protections can be given to non-citizens.  At least the New York Times is consistent in their worldview and we know what to expect from the majority of their columnists and their op-eds.

Those of us on the right always point to stuff like this as a example of how out of touch the mainstream media is (and the New York Times usually provides most of the ammunition for these critiques).  If we spent half as much time focusing on what we can do to fix what the Republican politicians have broken, we might have more of a reason for confidence going into November.  As it stands now, we have an uphill climb ahead of us.