It was surprising that Justice O'Conner resigned before Justice Rehnquist, who is suffering from cancer and was expected to resign first. This is Bush's chance to change the direction of the Court for a couple of generations.

Expect a nasty battle. If Bush manages to have someone like Scalia or Thomas confirmed, it is conceivable that the Court could eliminate all business regulation and even find Social Security unconstitutional. I don't want to sound alarmist, but the Supreme Court prior to the middle 1930s declared constitutional nearly every attempt to regulate what was at that time a vicious economic oligopoly.

Suppose, for instance, that Bush nominates Robert Bork, a former nominee rejected by the Senate. Bork, the intellectual father of modern anti-trust jurisprudence, preaches a social philosophy that is almost indistinguishable from the 19th social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, author of the phrase "survival of the fittest." Bork, in short, has never seen a monopoly he didn't like.

It should be an interesting summer.