By Ed Iverson

For 25 years, Sandra Day O'Connor was America's woman in black. Ronald Reagan selected her to be the first woman to serve on the United States Supreme Court. Appointed by the icon of Republican conservatism, she is now a favorite of moderates and liberals. Recent polls indicate that only 17 percent of Americans think of her as a conservative judge, while 56 percent think of her as a moderate or liberal jurist.

Accordingly, a few moderate Republicans want to keep this old ranch gal in the cook shack for a while longer. You know the kind of Republicans I refer to. They are the Republicans with no intestinal fortitude, the Republicans whose chief aim it is to be adored by the Eastern Establishment, the Republicans who never met an aggressive liberal or a terrorist that they didn't want to appease.

They aim to curry respectability by pressing Bush to name O'Connor as Chief Justice when Rehnquist expires or retires. "Just for a year or two." I tell ya, it's always something, isn't it?

I'll tell you what scares the pants off of this mewling crew of pusillanimous politicians. Its the thought of having to face down Harry Reid and his threat to cripple the country with a Senate filibuster. If Bush summons the courage to appoint a strict constructionist such as Robert Bork, or a constitutionalist such as Janice Rogers Brown, if he appoints someone who wants to reign in the judicial activism of the past 50 years, weenie Republican senators will face an uncomfortable choice.

They can support the president and his nominee. If they do that, they forfeit the good will of the establishment media and the attendant shimmer of respect. Or they can break with the President, announce in solemn, regretful tones that they cannot fully support the nominee. Of course, that exposes them to an angry and disgusted electorate, the majority of whom are finally beginning to understand the dangers posed to our republic by judges who presume to legislate from the bench.

Activist judges interpret laws in terms of changing social circumstances and in so doing create new laws. As a result, we are ruled by unelected judges who impose their political agenda upon the nation. With two possible exceptions (that being Justice Scalia and Justice Thomas) it has not mattered whether the sitting president was a Republican or a Democrat when a Supreme Court opening was filled. All the others are judicial activists. Instead of a nation of laws, we have become a nation of ambitious lawyers and arrogant judges, all jockeying to impose their version of the good society.

This judicial activism model was adopted by "the Warren Court" 50 years ago. It creates huge pressures on both liberals and conservatives to "get their guy in." Conservatives hope that conservative activist judges will slow our mad rush to perdition. Liberals want to preserve the abominations their judges imposed on us over the years. The stakes are enormous.

It should never have come to this. The founders of the American experiment never envisioned judicial activism. Rather, they provided for a court whose only role is to interpret the constitution and apply its provisions regardless of personal interest. This is the "strict constructionist" model of judicial theory. After the destruction of Robert Bork nearly 20 years ago, the most prominent strict constructionist is Justice Anton Scalia, hated and despised by liberals and avoided by weenie Republicans.

I conclude with a book plug. Buy "Men in Black" by Dr. Mark Levin. He shows how Supreme Court judges, whose power is supposed to be checked and balanced by elected officials, appointed themselves the supreme arbiters of what is constitutional in an attempt to remake American society. Today, special interest groups gain by judicial fiat what they could never obtain by the legislative process. This is the type of tyranny that inspired the American Revolution.