POLITICS DIVIDES.

I'll limit my musings about the confirmation fight that is soon to come to this USA Today observation by Glenn "Insta Pundit" Reynolds.  "When your political system can be thrown into hysteria by something as predictable as the death of an octogenarian with advanced cancer, there’s something wrong with your political system."

The author is a law professor with libertarian tendencies.  Read this excerpt and understand.

When Congress decides an issue by passing a law, democratic politics can change that decision by electing a new Congress. When the Court decides an issue by making a constitutional ruling, there’s no real democratic remedy.

That makes the Supreme Court, a source of final and largely irrevocable authority that is immune to the ordinary winds of democratic change, an extremely important prize. And when extremely important prizes are at stake, people fight. And get hysterical.

It's always possible to amend the Constitution to revoke that final authority, although that's hard to do (by design) and the direction of constitutional amendments tends to be to expand governmental powers, and not in a good way.