THE "COUP" CONTINUES: At first, the partisans who refused (and still refuse) to concede that George W. Bush won the last election urged the Senate to deny Bush his cabinet appointees. Now they're arguing for a complete Senate bloc on any court appointments. The two-prong offensive from liberal Cass Sunstein in the New York Times and leftist Bruce Ackerman in the Los Angeles Times is too fortuitous to be accidental. Ackerman is the most offensive. In an article attacking alleged Court-packing, he turns to FDR, the Court-packer of all time, as an authority! Then there's this Begala-ism: "The current judicial majority has already put the nation on notice of its revolutionary agenda, striking down the Violence Against Women Act and seriously weakening the Americans With Disabilities Act. Once rejuvenated, the majority can be expected to thwart efforts to secure genuine equality for all Americans, create new constitutional limits on environmental protection and impose the religious right's fundamentalist morality on just about everyone." It's now "revolutionary" to scrutinize an act that clearly takes us even further down the path (already paved by hate-crime laws) toward a balkanized justice system and an act that places unprecedented demands on private employers, builders and entrepreneurs. It's amazing how simply looking at laws passed very recently that curtail very real liberties is now to be placed beyond the pale of the Supreme Court. Who's the real revolutionary here?

-- Anonymous, April 26, 2001