Well, former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo nailed it with Saturday's Democrat radio address. The American judicial system is not about interpreting the Constitution or laws enacted by the legislature, it's about making law.

Now, the Republicans in the Senate ... are threatening to claim ownership of the Supreme Court and other federal courts, hoping to achieve political results on subjects like abortion, stem cells, the environment and civil rights that they can not get from the proper political bodies: the Congress and the presidency.

It's like the "Weird Al" Yankovic song "Everything you know is wrong." In Cuomo's bizzaro world the Court deciding things such as abortion and civil rights is democratic, while the legislatures doing it is not.

What the Republicans want is judges who will occasionally (OK "always," but will settle for "oftentimes") decide that maybe they shouldn't change the status quo (read: "abortion," "juvenile death penalty," "Under God"), but instead defer to the people's elected representatives.

It's the Democrats who've continued to lose election after election and have come to count on the judiciary to implement their policies.

Elections have consequences -- it's time the Democrats realized it. If they want their judges on the bench, then they should win elections. If they want to vote down Republican nominees, they should win elections.