It's like watching a train wreck in slow motion. First George Bush packs the Supreme Court with religious conservatives, all of them promising us all along that they won't be making biased decisions. Then the cases start rolling in, each of them easily resolved from the standpoint of civil liberty: side with freedom, vote to support individuals, protect free speech, avoid repressive laws.

But nooooooooo. Our "fair" jurists have made it quite clear that their interpretation of the constitution falls heavily towards control. Can a high school kid say whatever he wants? No, not if it's a joke about Jesus and pot. Can a woman control her body? No, not if it's a type of abortion that some people find yucky. Can women sue for wage discrimination? No, not if their attempt falls outside of a narrow time window. Can taxpayers be protected from having their money spent to support religious indoctrination? No, not since Bush renamed their conversion attempts "charitable." Can individuals defend themselves from large corporations? No, the court has made it clear they're pro-business not pro-people.

When I say "the court," however, it is important to understand that while the majority rules, there are dissenting opinions. I want to thank Stevens, Souter and Ginsberg for believing that teenagers should not be silenced simply because their message makes people uncomfortable. The kid was standing on a public sidewalk with a banner reading "bong tokes 4 Jesus." His principal made him remove it and he sued, saying his freedom of speech was being curtailed. Obviously it was. But not so obviously if you're sitting on today's conservative Supreme Court who just ruled against him in a split decision.

The paradox is obvious: "no," the conservatives thunder, "you can't get an abortion because that's an individual in your belly!" But as soon as that "individual" is born, she begins losing all of her rights. Control children, control women, control employees, control dissenters. It's all happening right in front of our eyes.

And I will show you where we are headed. I belong to a community service organization in which some members recently tried to convince us that we should all say the Lord's Prayer at the end of our meetings. Obviously this would be inappropriate as we are not a religious organization nor are all of us Christians. But this didn't stop some people from arguing vociferously that they were being discriminated against if we did not agree to say their prayer. Seriously. Discriminated against.

One woman gave a canned speech which I am quite sure her church has devised to try and force all of us to adhere to its theology in the public sphere, where I quite happily exist without religion. She said that any time people excluded monotheism, they were imposing polytheism (!), thus oppressing the poor wretched monotheists. Sigh. The fact that it is those of us who do not profess christianity who are in the minority seems lost on people like her as their need to grab and retain power persists unabated. While they won't admit it, they are the enemies of freedom, clothing themselves as the opposite, torturing logic in the interests of imposing a religious agenda on a nation which was founded by people who worked adamantly to avoid just such a theocracy, having lived under one and endured its injustices.

And now they have the Supreme Court on their side.