Why does everyone assume BO would put up an uber-liberal nominee when the Republicans control the Senate?
Because Democrats never compromise in this area when it comes to Supreme Court appointments. They haven't appointed anything other than a full blown social liberal to Supreme Court in over 50 years, and they aren't going to start now. Their base would lose their minds if they did.
What's scary is that most on her are advocating for leaving the SC vacant for ~18 months.
Not that scary. The issues can be brought back in front of a 9 member court in short order, and any messes created can be resolved. Keep in mind that in the overwhelming majority of cases that get appealed at all (which is a minority of cases), the respective courts of appeals are the courts of last resort. In addition of those cases that actually reach the Supreme Court, the vast majority of them are not decided by only one vote. In other words, we aren't talking about a vacancy truly impacting many cases. Much scarier is forcing the Court into a radical direction. That can take decades or centuries to fix, if ever and impacts thousands of cases.
2 sides of the same coin, Mr. Deez. The right perverts the democratic process to institutionalize discrimination and the conservative social agenda (i.e. abortion). Aren't the courts the natural relief? From my 8th grade civics class I thought the courts were the check against executive/legislative power.
No, not 2 sides of the same coin. Before I get into this, I hope you know by now that I'm a man of integrity and try to be consistent. I don't oppose every socially liberal court decision, even if I don't like it on the merits. Furthermore, I don't support every conservative decision even if I like it on the merits. For example, I don't agree with the D.C. v. Heller decision any more than I agree with Roe v. Wade. Both make a mockery of the Constitution and are abuses of judicial power.
However, respectfully, you're off the mark here. State governments have general jurisdiction. That means they can do anything not expressly prohibited by the Constitution. The "conservative social agenda" (and the liberal social agenda) can be enacted to the extent that it doesn't expressly violate the Constitution. That's not a perversion of the democratic process. In fact, it's exactly how the process is supposed to work.
The Court is a check on the legislative and executive branches, but its legitimate authority is limited to the written law. It is not supposed to be a policymaking body and for good reason. Federal judges are not elected and have life tenure. That's as close to dictatorship as our system gets, so if they act outside the limits of the written law, they are the ones who truly pervert the democratic process.
The big problem I have with most (not all) socially liberal court decisions is that they usually rely on interpretations of the constitutional text that are so attenuated from the text, so divorced from the intents of those who wrote the text, and so subjective that they are, as a practical matter, arbitrary. They are effectively a vehicle in which a court can strike down any law it doesn't like, and that's dangerous. You may not see it as such, because far more often than not, it serves your social agenda. However, if it can be used the other way, and if the Right ever starts doing that, it will piss you off and rightly so. Rather than have such a despotic system, I'd rather leave questions like abortion with the state legislatures, where the founding fathers intended them to be rather than with elitists in Washington, D.C. who don't answer to anybody.
Texas should be allowed to ban abortion. Likewise, if your state wants to ban private handgun ownership, they should be allowed to do so as well. The remedy for abortion rights advocates in Texas and for gun rights advocates in Washington should be to convince their fellow citizens of their position on the merits and then go to Austin and Olympia, respectively, and ask their legislatures to change their laws.
