The Supreme Court has out done itself over the past month.  Landmark cases have been heard and the lands highest court has taken a major swipe at America.  A group of nine has decided on more than one occasion that America is not capable of governing itself.  Rulings on GITMO prisoners "rights" and Louisiana's right to execute child rapists have once again trampled on the true meaning of the constitution.  In fact, in the only case the Supreme Court got right, it was only by the slimmest of margins and with the greatest reluctance that “The 9” upheld the constitutional rights of Americans to own firearms. We’ve long since passed the age of judicial activism and have progressed into the era of Judicial rule. With a few pen strokes the fate of our entire country can rest in the hands on 9 judges. Justices Alito and Roberts are most often on the right side of the issues, and all too often left hanging out to dry by the other 7 rulers on the high court. What’s worse is that their decisions aren’t even masked in good intentions like those of the liberal politicians who seem just not able to get it “quite right”. They are so bold as to not even hide their intentions with acts of kindness. They’ve handed the same rights afforded to American citizens over to enemy combatants, terrorists whose only desire is to watch our buildings crumble and our population expire. They’ve allowed them the access to citizen rights never afforded to terrorists before. They’ve weakened our country with their decree and opened a loophole through which hundreds of murderers can now scramble through and away to the safety of their hate filled homelands. In the Louisiana case “The 9” completely ignored the states’ rights and superseded them based on public opinion. I thought that the role of the Supreme Court was to interpret the constitution the way it was written and decide if a law violated it, not strike down legitimate state laws based on the pollster’s data. Besides the glaring deviation from the entire purpose of the high court, since when was it in the description for them to rule based on public opinion? And whose opinion where they getting? I don’t know very many people, even in my liberal state of Delaware, that would oppose the death penalty for adults who rape children. In fact, I’ve done my own little informal polling in my hometown and while traveling on business throughout the Northeast and 45 out of the 50 people I asked about their opinion supported executing child rapists. If my very small and very limited poll is any indication, it looks like the high court should have said “Screw public opinion, we just don’t want you to execute anyone regardless of the rights given your state by the constitution. And what we say goes!” The bottom line is that GWB may have had his faults, but he got us Roberts and Alito and that has been enough to save at least our guns. Let’s hope that McCain can help us save the rest of our rights before “The 9” take them all away.

The World Nuclear association has determined that, in over “12,700 cumulative reactor years in 32 countries” there have only been 2 major incidents. One of those incidents was contained with no harm to anyone, and one was one of the largest manmade disasters ever.    They found that “detailed analyses and large-scale testing, followed by the 1979 meltdown of the Three Mile Island reactor, began to make clear that even the worst possible accident in a conventional western nuclear power plant or its fuel could not cause dramatic public harm.”  They also have determined that “it is now clear that no-one need fear a potential public health catastrophe.” The IAEA issued a press release in 2007 stating that France receives 78 percent of its power from nuclear reactors and Belgium receives 54 percent. In fact, there were 435 Nuclear Reactors around the world at the time of the IAEA press release. Much of the nuclear waste is recycled in modern plants which cuts back further on the so called dangers of nuclear waste. Given the fact that the technology continues to evolve and the facts about the safety of nuclear power I can’t see where anyone could argue against its use.

In recent months as the price of oil on the world market has risen there has been an increasing debate on how to reduce these costs. Everything from conservation to drilling to alternative energy to criminalizing speculation has been proposed. Most Republicans agree that we should do everything that we can to become energy independent while most liberals want to turn away from oil all together in favor of wind and solar power. We have to have a comprehensive plan that includes utilizing the natural resources of our country (coal, oil, shale, and natural gas), nuclear power, solar, wind, geothermal and other new energy technology. Focusing on oil speculators and gas tax holidays are weak gestures from soft politicians. The fact is that by just announcing intentions to make our country energy independent we will drive down the cost of oil. Speculators focus on future prices and by removing most or all of our demand from the world market, we can drive down the price at the pump immediately. It’s time to stand up and shout that we want to control our own destiny, not place it in the hands of the worlds dictators.