The American Spectator

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p> JUSTICE OPRAH br> Re: George Neumayr's Sodomy in the Age of Oprah : /p>

Bravo George Neumayr for the best lead of any column about the Supreme Court's week off from sanity. Supreme Court opinions (if these are Supreme opinions, what can the so-so ones be like?) indeed do read like transcripts of the Oprah show.

You could find legal "reasoning" as sound Sandra Day O'Connor's affirmative discrimination opinion under most any hairdryer in any beauty salon in the republic. If we're going to get rulings of this quality from the U.S. Supreme Court, why not save some money by doing away with it and getting our judicial rulings from Americans pulled randomly out of super market checkout lines? How could these draftees do worse than The Supremes did last week?

What an interesting week for the rights industry. While we learn that Americans -- if they are white or Asian -- have no protection against being sent to the end of the line because of their skin color, we can at least take some consolation in knowing that we have a previously undiscovered but inalienable right to buggery. (A bumper strip for the with-it, postmodern Supreme Court justice: "Who am I to say?") Can lap dancers and sheep fanciers be far behind? (And what other exotic enthusiasms we haven't even thought of -- sheltered as our lives have been -- may now be slouching toward Washington to be blessed?)

The week should remind those who have a tendency to forget, given the solemnity the media and political types afford the Supreme Court (ruffles and flourishes here), that Supreme Court justices (like all judges) are no more than lawyers in muumuus. In the case of O'Connor, Ruth Buzzi Ginsburg, the somnolent David Souter, and John Paul (no relation) Stevens, pretty sorry lawyers at that.

p>Perhaps the saddest aspect of this week's legal and political vandalism is that George W. Bush has pronounced himself pleased with the affirmative discrimination hustle. (Compassionate conservatism strikes again, nicht?) Perhaps the concept of equal protection under the law, and the idea that Americans enjoy rights as individuals, not groups, are just a couple of the stuffy ideas found in the footnotes of those "500-page books of philosophy" that Dubya said during the 2000 campaign that he couldn't be bothered to read. br> -- Larry Thornberry br> Tampa, FL /p>

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