The most important issue in this election

News that the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court has thyroid cancer brings closer to home what I consider the most important issue in this election – the composition of the Supreme Court.

Today, the Court is closely divided between those who put themselves under the U. S. Constitution and seek to interpret and apply it and those who put themselves over the Constitution and mangle or just ignore it to impose their own views. In other words, we are perilously close to becoming a dictatorship of the Supreme Court. With two or more Court vacancies very possible the next four years, whoever is president may have the power to pull us back from or plunge us into judicial dictatorship.

President Bush in both his campaigns has pledged to appoint Supreme Court justices who strive to stick to the Constitution. We need to hold him accountable to that promise, but his appellate appointments indicate he’ll keep his word.

John Kerry has made clear he would apply liberal litmus tests to his appointments, such as upholding the infamous Roe v. Wade decision which legalized abortion on demand. A restrained interpretation of the Constitution is definitely not among those tests. And, being the Massachusetts liberal he is, he will surely appoint justices who put their own liberal views over the Constitution.

Now I can almost hear the liberals cry, “It’s not about the authority of the Constitution, it’s about interpretation!” No, it’s not. Some of the opinions of the four (five?) liberal justices of the Court are so divorced from the Constitution, it’s absurd. They have even been citing foreign courts in their rulings. It reminds me of those religious liberal leaders who claim to hold to the authority of scripture, then willfully go against what it teaches again and again.

The U. S. Senate races are important, too. Most Democrat Senators have blocked key appointments of judges committed to sticking to the Constitution. These senators care more about having their liberal views imposed by judges than they do about the Constitution. They, especially ringleader Tom Daschle of South Dakota, must be defeated. We must instead elect Senators who will confirm only Constitutionalist Supreme Court appointments.

There have been so many wild claims about this election, I hate to even appear to add to them. But this election goes to the very heart of who we are as nation. For whoever is elected may well have the power to give us a Supreme Court which respects and upholds our Constitution and keeps us a Constitutional republic or a Supreme Court which puts the Constitution aside and imposes a Dictatorship of the Black Robes.