Presidential election should change Court

OK, maybe you don't care about the next presidential election? Worse comes to worse, it's only going to be four years and then we will have a new president, right?

Wrong. Something people need to look at for this election is that the next president might have the opportunity to name as many as four justices to the Supreme Court.

Three of the nine justices are over the age of 70, and John Paul Stevens is 80. Two of them, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor, have had cancer in the past.

But with so many landmark decisions coming by close votes in the past few months, will new appointees affect what the new laws of our country are? You bet.

The high Court made a landmark decision last month on partial birth abortions. In a 5-4 decision, the Court decided that a state law on the practice was unconstitutional.

As of right now, the Supreme Court favors Roe vs. Wade, the decision to make abortion legal, 6-3. But if a liberal justice steps down in the future, and a more conservative justice was selected by Bush, the Court would only be one vote away from overturning perhaps one of the most dramatic decisions in our country's history.

Other topics that could change would be the rights of homosexuals.

Last month, the Court voted again 5-4 to allow the Boy Scouts of America to exclude homosexuals from being scoutmasters. That decision could be overturned if Gore was able to place one more liberal in the Supreme Court.

Are you for or against allowing teachers to post the Ten Commandments in the Schools? One more conservative justice would lock in the vote that our children would be subjected to Christian morals. While many areas around the country would be happy with that situation, some might not.

Another topic that would hit home to some Purdue students would be race-based preference programs. If the spectrum of the Court changes to a more conservative attitude, then many programs that get kids to college and other such programs could be struck down.

The entire future of the United States might be at stake with this election year and no one really knows. But make sure that you know the entire deal when you go to the polls this November. You aren't voting for a president, you are voting for the future of our country.