Contrary to popular belief, the size of the Supreme Court has not always been nine. In fact, over the years, it has ranged from six to ten.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supreme_Court_of_the_United_States#Size_of_the_CourtThe United States Constitution does not specify the size of the Supreme Court, but Article III authorizes the Congress to fix the number of justices. The Judiciary Act of 1789 called for the appointment of six justices. As the country grew geographically, Congress increased the number of justices to correspond with the growing number of judicial circuits: the court was expanded to seven members in 1807, nine in 1837 and ten in 1863.
At the request of Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, Congress passed the Judicial Circuits Act (1866) which provided that the next three justices to retire would not be replaced; thus, the size of the Court should have eventually reached seven by attrition. Consequently, one seat was removed in 1866 and a second in 1867. However, this law did not play out to completion, for in the Judiciary Act of 1869, also known as the Circuit Judges Act, the number of justices was again set at nine, where it has since remained.So,
if we had the political will (a rather big "if", to be sure, judging by the tenor of the health care debate), we could, theoretically, break the right-wing ideologues' stranglehold on the Court simply by creating two new justices, and having Obama appoint them.