I have a problem with popular opinion over matters like supreme court justices. Politicians know that people can be swayed easily, just bring up whatever the hot topic is and you can make the people think they have a strong feeling for it. So what would this bring? Supreme court campaigning, justice nominees making decisions prior to the vote to try and win votes. And that is NOT what the supreme court is about. Justices need to be free from any party so that they can be free to make rational decisions without fear of losing votes, or being pushed down the party line. Lower courts you can, because there can always be an appeal, but its awfully hard to appeal to a supreme court decision. Especially when they're in there for life.
Supreme court system works, lets keep it that way.
And my view on things, democrats are just whining because Bush got to pick 2 judges, which in a way does seem unfair, but you can not have proceedings without the full court, otherwise nothing will get solved.
The problem with the democrats losing seats is they are too spread out. I think someone mentioned that they dont know what issues they are for. Its tough to know, some are way left and some are closer to moderate and I think thats what pushes some people away. Republicans have a full right spectrum as well, and a lot of different stands on things, but they just seem to work as a team better than democrats, at least from what Ive noticed.