Whatever the justified fears of a rogue administration leading the world into a nuclear Armageddon, if we manage to forestall that threat we will still have to deal with the right wing legal apocalypse that we will face from a radical, activist reactionary Supreme Court majority.

Throughout the Republican presidencies, some of the hardest fought battles in the Senate have been over appointments to the federal bench, particularly the Supreme Court. Remember Bill Frist threatening to do away with the filibuster in order to ensure that the right wing could get its partisan appointments on the bench?

That was just one of their strong-arm tactics.

In the end, the right wing pretty much had its way. The federal courts are now the backstop for any Republican ideologues. Just think about last week's federal appeals court ruling that upheld the suspension of habeas corpus. David Sentelle, the Zelig of right wing judges who even had a key hand in the Clinton impeachment and the overthrowing of the felony convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter, played a linchpin role in that decision -- and he's not even on the Supreme Court.

Martin Garbus, noted First Amendment attorney and legal analyst, authored "The Next 25 Years: The New Supreme Court and What It Means for Americans" to warn us of the bad moon on the rise in terms of the courts.

Even if Bush and Cheney finally leave office and are replaced with a Democratic president and the Congress remains Democratic, the time bomb of a biased, right wing Supreme Court and federal judiciary are a ticking time bomb.

After reading Garbus's cogent prognostication, we can't say that we weren't warned.