Absurd Blow to Women

The first woman ever appointed to the Supreme Court of the United States, justice, Sandra Day O'Connor, 77, retired in 2006 after 24 years on the bench citing a desire to look after her ailing husband who has Alzheimer's as the reason she was abandoning her post and indeed, everyone who cares about women's rights. It now turns out that her husband John has fallen in love with another woman at his retirement home in Phoenix, Arizona. Wait a cotton-pickin' minute! Did I just say, "retirement home?" Yes, folks, I did. It turns out that Sandra's excuse for retirement was bogus because John O'Connor is living in a facility, not at home with her. While many will be charmed by her potty husband's new found love with a geriatric temptress named Kay, I for one, am very disappointed because her retirement paved the way for Samuel Alito (*not John Roberts as I had previously written and which two deeper-thinkers pointed out to me was wrong. Suh-aaame difference, it all went to s---.) and a much more conservative and rights-reducing court. While hardly a knee-jerk liberal, (she wrote the 1989 majority opinion in Penry v. Lynaugh which ruled that a mentally retarded murderer with the intellectual capacity of a 7-year-old could be executed) O'Connor mellowed with the years. She was frequently a swing vote and even dissented with the majority of the justices in a case involving a private developer's use of eminent domain (see post below for more about this) in New London, Connecticut. About this, she said, "The specter of condemnation hangs over all property. Nothing is to prevent the State from replacing any Motel 6 with a Ritz-Carlton, any home with a shopping mall, or any farm with a factory. ... The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms. As for the victims, the government now has license to transfer property from those with fewer resources to those with more."