So what if our judiciary is broken

We're definitely into the silly season. Part of me wants to dig a hole and crawl in it until the election, when I'll emerge and cast my vote (against the GOP) and hope the media nonsense has blown over (nah, we'll hear endless rounds of explaining what happened). I'm tired of every media bobble-head dissecting up, down, and sideways the Democrat's problems and their supposed imminent collapse (though no votes have been cast yet). I'm also tired of such stories as the one I heard on NPR this morning (or maybe yesterday morning -- I don't want to bother looking for the link). The story was about how, in a tossup district, the GOP candidate was able to talk freely while the incumbent Dem candidate actually had to work in Washington. As part of the story listeners heard every one of the GOP distorted talking points without any commentary about the ways they were distorted. Thanks, NPR, for the free publicity! I turned it off.

Enough. I will be studiously ignoring such stories from now on. I'll only note that the GOP gains in state legislatures will affect the makeup of Congress starting in 2012. It is state legislatures, not Congress, that draws district lines on the basis of this year's census. Vote wisely.

I'm wondering if I should explicitly connect stories to the reasons I listed as proof the GOP wants to stay in power and will do away with democracy if necessary to do so. There are two stories in Newsweek that fall under that category. No sign from the magazine that they make the connection.

The first is from Fareed Zakaria. Observing the anniversary of 9/11 he notes we as a nation are much safer than when the towers fell. I'll let him document the details. He adds that, of course, we aren't 100% safe. We can't be without interfering with the freedom we value.

But in the last 9 years we appear to have overreacted with tremendous increases in government powers and bureaucracies. Yet in spite of the reduced risk the GOP still trumpets that we are in imminent danger. They're also making Muslims out to be worse bogeyman than 9 years ago. Zakaria's point is that Al Qaeda weakened America, not by destroying a couple buildings, but by provoking American to overreact. My point is that the GOP is using fear to claim that it is the only party that can keep us safe and thus should be in power.

The other article of interest is by Dahlia Lithwick. She notes the huge number of federal judicial seats that are vacant, waiting for the Senate to confirm the nominees. There are 102 vacancies out of 854 seats. Yeah, GOP and Dems are pointing fingers at each other, but the GOP reasons, while true, sound thin. The bigger issue is that America doesn't seem to care. That's not surprising after so many years of the GOP screaming about judicial activists -- a few less judges sounds like a fine idea. But in this hyper-partisan climate every issue is going to go before the courts. One party will pass legislation, the other will take it to court. In addition, the courts handle a great number of democracy-related issues and high vacancies delay actions on those issues, to the detriment of the common citizen.

Score a big one for those who want to dismantle democracy. A court system constantly denigrated and seen as highly politicized can become broken and nobody would care.