well, what's coming up soon on the SCOTUS?

[pstokely]

[mcscajun]

1. There was an article earlier this month that mentioned a couple of issues

SUPREME COURT NOMINEE

Upcoming cases Alito could swing
By David G. Savage
LOS ANGELES TIMES

(snip)

The court is set to hear a campaign spending case next month. In 1997, the Vermont Legislature under then-Gov. Howard Dean passed strict limits not just on contributions, but also on how much state and local candidates can spend. The Vermont law challenged part of the Supreme Court's 1976 Buckley vs. Valeo decision that set a confusing rule: Government can restrict contributions to candidates, but it cannot restrict how much the candidates spend. Nonetheless, a U.S. appeals court in New York upheld Vermont's limits last year, and lawyers for the Republican National Committee appealed it to the Supreme Court.

(snip)

In 1972, Congress made it illegal to discharge pollutants into "navigable waters." After Roberts became chief justice in October, the court announced it would hear a property rights case from a Michigan landowner who was prosecuted and fined for having filled in wetlands on a farm field 20 miles from Lake Huron. The government said there was a "hydrological connection" between his field and the Great Lakes via several small streams. The Pacific Legal Foundation, a property rights group in Sacramento, Calif., representing the landowner, argues that the 1972 law covers only rivers, lakes and bays on which ships can travel.

On the death penalty, Alito is likely to solidify a five-member majority to make it harder for judges to overturn convictions and death sentences. In recent years, O'Connor joined the court's more liberal bloc to overturn death sentences because lawyers had failed to present evidence that might have swayed a jury in favor of leniency.

The court is not likely to face a question of overturning Roe vs. Wade in the next few years. Five of the justices -- John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Kennedy -- have voted to uphold the abortion right. Only Scalia and Thomas have called for the decision to be reversed outright.

(more at link)
http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/13635966.htm

Read the "more" to see where the anti-choice crowd is headed re: the USSC. Just because they don't have the votes to overturn it outright *yet* doesn't mean they're going to stand still.