What is the annual cost of frivolous lawsuits? $100 Million? $300 million? I doubt it's more. That's about 1 dollar per citizen. A small price to pay for an open court system, which is one of the bulwarks of our freedom against total authoritarianism.

The administration loves to see stories like this. If it was up to them, they would prefer that the courts be open solely to corporations and settling commercial disputes. Pay close attention to what Musharaf is doing in Pakistan -- he's going after the judges and lawyers. He's not going after CEO's and insurance companies. The former are incompatible with a dictatorship, but the latter can get along just fine with one.

I'd stop worrying about the trifling amount spent on so called frivolous lawsuits and focus on the many hundreds of billions being stolen from us in this so called war on terror.

As a practicing trial lawyer, here is what I think.

I chose Thomas, because he's so bad in so many different ways. What passes for his "legal reasoning" resembles the amateurish interpretations of a self-taught layman. That, combined with his obvious agenda, is a legal train wreck. His appointment was classic Bush cynicism, nominating him to replace Thurgood Marshall. A fake Black and a fake lawyer to replace a monumental hero of the Civil Rights Movement.

Alito and Scalia are tied for third place. Scalia isn't stupid, he's just a nasty prick. Alito is a horrible judge. Scalia hates everybody, Alito just hates individuals, especially poor individuals.

Roberts may be the most dangerous, but I haven't seen enough of him to know for sure. Just because it looks like Herpes doesn't mean that it's a nasty disease that's going to be around forever, but it probably will be.

In an ordinary world, Kennedy would be just run of the mill terrible, but the others are so bad, he looks good by comparison. The same way one might feel kindly toward a migraine headache when one has an icepick in one's eye.

More challenging than picking out the bad justices would be finding a good one. The state of the court is so bad, that the stunningly mediocre justices look like shining beacons of jurisprudence. The Clinton nominees were pure products of triangulation, not meant to offend anybody. (The minute you become concerned with offending neo-cons, you are lost. Being offended is their trademark)

It's a sad state of affairs. I despair of ever seeing a Supreme Court that I would be proud of again in my lifetime, and I expect to live another 50 years.

The two kinda go hand in hand.

First, objectively, what has she really done that qualifies her as a serious candidate? She was a corporate lawyer most of her life, and then her husband was elected president. When he left office, they moved to a new state, and she took advantage of the change in circumstances to get elected to the Senate.

So the first lesson we learn is -- marry well. HRC is the front runner because that's what the media wants. She's a good story.

Ok, if that's unfair, let's take a look at her record in the senate. She's a good "pothole" senator, responds well to constituency issues. I give her credit for that, and for that she deserves to be reelected to the senate.

She has not demonstrated any leadership in the senate. Let's consider the circumstances. We are in exceptional circumstances. We have a president who has expanded presidential powers in unprecedented fashion, started a war under questionable pretenses, at best, has mismanaged that war in spectacular fashion, engaged in unthinkable levels of corruption and cronyism, has limited civil liberties, made breathtakingly bad appointments to key judicial positions, sponsored reckless tax cuts, bankrupted our treasury, presided over the destruction of our manufacturing based and put us in hock to the Chinese.

If this country ever recovers from the Bush administration, it will take 30 to 50 years.

How did this happen? Our government is designed with a system of checks and balances. Why didn't those checks and balances stop Bush? What went wrong?

Congress failed us. Congress is supposed to put the brakes on an out of control president like Bush. Of the two houses, the Senate has the most "braking" ability, because of the power of the filibuster and its role in judicial appointments.

Where did Hillary stand on stopping Bush? Where was real leadership when we needed it? Hillary was part of the failure of the Senate.

A real leader would have acted differently. Voted against ALL of Bushes initiatives, including the war, the patriot act, the tax cuts.

A real leader would be making impeachment part of the daily discourse.

These same criticisms can be leveled against most of the Democratic candidates, with the exception of Kucinich (and Gravel, if you consider him a candidate).

I guess the question becomes: Are you a Democrat, or are you a Republican Lite? The neo-con movement has pushed the Republican party so far to the right that people like Clinton, who 40 years ago would have been Republicans, can plausibly pose as Democrats. But let's get real, this woman sat on the Board of Directors of WalMart Corporation. WALMART! I can't think of a single corporation that has done more to undermine the American worker than WalMart, and this woman sat on the Board of Directors. She was responsible for directing the actions and policies of that corporation.

Move forward to the present. Hillary is taking money from Rupert Murdoch. RUPERT MURDOCH! The man who is responsible for Fox News and who, more than anybody else, represents the destruction of responsible media and the conversion of the media from the fourth estate to the propaganda wing of the government.

A Clinton administration will not reverse the policies of the Bush Administration. At most she will slow them down, but she'll lead us to the same place at the end of the day. Better to get there quickly than slowly, if you ask me.

Either we elect a real Democrat, or none at all.