Remember when she voted to stop the Florida recount? Yeah, real classless bitch she was.

You love Sandra Day O'Connor? Are you old enough to remember Bush v Gore?

Any judge that steps down during the waning days of the Bush administration should be eternally shamed. Alito is her legacy.

I don't care what Sandra Day O'Connor or Colin Powell or John Ashcroft have to say now. Their damage is done. Fuck them all.

Fuck Sandra Day O'Connor. She stepped down from the Supreme Court, allowing Bush appointee Alito to soil the bench.

Oh get real, #1, and look more closely at her record. The woman is smart, independent, and a true conservative (by which I mean she is was an ardent protector or individual rights but judicially moderate). She voted against expanding the concept of eminent domain beyond public works projects. She voted to protect our civil rights when the Bush administration tried to use the Iraq war as an excuse to whittle them away. She was the deciding vote in 148 of 193 cases where the final tally was 5-to-4. Her retirement was a huge loss.

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/record.x…

2 and 4, the poor woman's husband had Alzheimer's. You think you could take care of a spouse with Alzheimer's AND sit on the Supreme Court? I couldn't.

Sotomayor would have been/is a proper replacement for O'Connor. O'Connor must be strangely wedded to shithead conservatism to retire during a Republican presidency.

@5, Why don't you pull your head out? Seriously, she was a party hack when the pressure was on and do we really need to go through what her "party loyalty" and "holding on until a Republican was President" fucking cost the country?

You fucking Republicans are nothing more than Nazi wannabes anyway.

9, you are a true idiot.

I have never voted Republican in my life. I perform abortions for a living. I help lesbians get pregnant. I write medical marijuana prescriptions. I come from a multiracial family.

And because I dare to suggest you examine the totality of someone's life work you call me a Nazi wannabe?

Oh please. If there's a Tigger avatar in the comments I'll be skipping over it from now on. You have nothing to say of any interest to me.

For heaven's sake 11, LOOK AT THE LINK Frizzelle posted. The decision of the Supreme Court last week OVERTURNED a prior case for which O'Connor wrote the majority opionion. In other words, she would NOT have voted with the majority this time--they were overturning her opinion from last time.

Do you people even READ the posts, or do you just head straight for the comments?

Remember when she fucked over America to install the Third Reich of GWB?

Never forget.

Sandy always was a bitch.

So, tell me Will and Cato and all you black/white single-issue thinkers: do you feel the same way about Ted Olson? That his role in Gore vs. Bush (he argued the Bush position before the Court and won) negates anything else he might have done or might do?

If so, you might want to have him step down as leader of the legal team fighting Prop 8. Because after all, if he "fucked over America to install the Third Reich of GWB" we couldn't possibly want him to argue for marriage freedom at the California Supreme Court, right?

@14: It's Bush v Gore, not Gore v Bush. And you should learn the difference between an attorney (who is an advocate for their client) and a judge (whose "client" is the Law).

You are right of course DOUG., although I am not sure what your point (advocates vs judges) is. If you are trying to say that Olson is just a hired gun, for Bush or for the gays, I think you're wrong. I think he's more complex (and his time with Bush more extensive) than that.

Conservatives (and I am not one) come in many flavors. To take a reductionist view of their politics, motives, and opinions to one simplistic trope merely makes them opaque. Like you, I remember every miserable day of November and December 2000 with nauseating clarity. I am no fan of Bush v Gore (which is probably why I have to look up the damn name every single time). However, to reduce Justice O'Connor's career on the court to one decision in which she sided with the majority is to miss all the cases in which she was the deciding vote in cases that thwarted the Bush administration's policies and the rightist judges' voices. The woman is simply more than that one case. (which is not to say I don't rue that case--my liver may never recover from all the "medicinal" I drank that winter to ward off despair.)

O'CONNOR'S comments about "citizens united" show that like Stevens she is now on the left of the court because the court has moved right. Obama should nominate her for the empty seat. She also has the ability to persuade Kennedy, which Obama wants and Schumer points out, would make a lot of decisions 5-4 for us, instead of 4-5 all the time