This is trouble.  In Bush v. Gore, we learned that the Supreme Court under a Republican majority had become another political tool rather than an impartial interpreter of the law.  Until Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Kennedy or Scalia steps down during a Democratic presidency, that will remain the case.

The Court is now more radically Republican than it has been at any time in the last 50 years and recently ruled that an individual has a right to own guns under the Second Amendment, a ruling completely inconsistent with the language of the Second Amendment (which applies to a state’s right to have an armed militia) and decades of federal precedent.  Should the Court strike down local laws on Second Amendment grounds, the NRA will make more blood money, guns will kill more innocent people and we will need to pass a Constitutional Amendment to restore the right of people to be safe from violent criminals.

This comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s oral argument in a case that could allow corporations to spend unilimited sums of money on broadcast political media in the weeks leading up to an election.  That would be another gift to the NRA.

Meanwhile, the NRA is coducting a telephone push poll in which Wayne LaPierre tries to convince us that Hillary Clinton and the UN are trying to take our guns via international treaty.  This plays into all of the teabagger fringe’s paranoia: black copters, feminists, losing the right to shoot your spouse during a heated argument, etc….everything they fear most. 

Finally, there is the issue of assault weapons.  Democrats are playing dead on the issue in order to distract from the fact that they have the biggest majority in decades and could reinstate the assault weapons ban, but for the fact that it would put some Democrats from rural states in a tough spot.  That’s the wrong move.  The public has always supported the assault weapons ban (which lapsed under Bush) and those same Democrats have been useless on health care, the Employee Free Choice Act, cap and trade, and almost everything else. 

At some point the Blanche Lincolns and Ben Nelsons of the world have to either add some value to the Democratic agenda or forgo the right to influence it.