Souter out

David Souter has had it up to here with all your Supreme Court bullshit. He's finally leaving to start that prog-metal band he kept mentioning in all his minority and majority opinions. Knights of Justice. He's already got a 12 minute opus loosely based around the Boumediene decision. Why's he leaving? Mostly because he hates Washington, hates politics, hates the politicization of the court, hates the court itself (calling it a "annual intellectual lobotomy" every time a term started up) and he ain't too crazy about your ugly mug either. He's gone as soon as they can find his replacement.

Justice Souter, who was appointed in 1990 by a Republican president, the first George Bush, but became one of the most reliable members of the court’s liberal wing, has grown increasingly sour on Washington and intends to return to his home state, New Hampshire, according to the people briefed on his plans. One official said the decision might be announced as early as Friday.

The departure will open the first seat for a Democratic president to fill in 15 years and could prove a test of Mr. Obama’s plans for reshaping the nation’s judiciary. Confirmation battles for the Supreme Court in recent years have proved to be intensely partisan and divisive moments in Washington, but Mr. Obama has more leeway than his predecessors because his party holds such a strong majority in the Senate.

Replacing Justice Souter with a liberal would not change the basic makeup of the court, where he and three other justices hold down the left wing against a conservative caucus of four justices. Justice Anthony Kennedy, a moderate Republican appointee, often provides the swing vote that controls important decisions.

All that being said, Souter isn't THAT liberal, like Thurgood Marshall was. But he became a solidly rational, liberal leaning Justice. He will be missed. He also wasn't as liberal as the right wing will pretend the person to replace him is. Joy of joys, I can't wait for that circus. So and so wants free mandatory abortions for all from illegal immigrant doctors, this justice hates freedom, they're gonna take all the guns, SECEDE~!, this is tyranny, biggest liberal in the history of the world, affront to Democracy, etc. It'll be the pinnacle of rational debate.

As to who Obama wants to replace him with, baseless speculation has centered on the fact that someone heard from some guy who heard from another who heard a rumor that Obama might have said he wanted 'more chicks' at dinner last night. Or 'more chicken'. Either way that definitely signals he wants a woman to preside, what with her special lady parts and judicially analyzing lady brain. All in all, it ought to provide a couple days of rampant meaningless speculation over a position that hasn't even been officially vacated or even publicly signaled that is was going to be vacated yet. In any event it will at least give us a few days distraction before the H1N1 Super Pig AIDS kills 99% of us, rendering man's law and thus the Supreme Court null and void.