NYT's Maureen Dowd is furious with the U.S. Supreme Court for... well, a variety of things. But mostly for having "conservatives" on it.

Conservatives, and especially conservative justices, are horrible, mean, stupid, divisive and insufferable.

She begins her column thusly:

How dare President Obama brush back the Supreme Court like that?

Has this former constitutional law instructor no respect for our venerable system of checks and balances?

         Nah. And why should he?


Dowd is referring to the president's stunningly ignorant, inaccurate and embarrassing remarks on the court's role in deciding the constitutionality of laws. Dowd ignores the stupidity of those remarks (others have not) and has chosen instead to join the president in his attack on the legitimacy of the court.

It makes for entertaining reading. In Dowd's world, the liberals on the court can be counted on to honestly adjudicate the true legal merits of all the cases that come before them. They respect "process," the conservatives don't. The "conservative" justices are all disgustingly, politically motivated and script their decisions to fit a pre-conceived outcome. A liberal justice would NEVER, EVER do that.

Anyway, read the whole the thing.

And then, just for fun, read the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby's assessment of Ms. Dowd's work in general. Somberby is a good liberal but can't stand hacks like Dowd, who he believes makes liberalism harder to defend against its critics.

According to Somerby, Dowd...

...has been the most influential, and most destructive, print journalist of the past thirty years.

As she has simpered, minced and clowned, she has helped a fatuous upper-class press corps complete its move toward total trivia. 

She has pushed a set of throwback gender values which went unchallenged by major players until Clark Hoyt finally spoke.

And uh-oh! In recent years, she has displayed the bigot’s impulse with respect to Mitt Romney’s religion. She has now written at least five columns which urge her readers to focus on Mormonism’s very strange, scary ways.

Read it all here.