had been in the white house when that happened, it would have upended the balance of the court. it would have appointed two liberal leaning justices and thereby shifting the balance of pourer from right to left. bush was president and picked john roberts to place lundqvist and sam alito to take o'connor's place. handed him the presidency farther to the right. leaders of more reliable conservative vote than o'connell was and roberts is as conservative as rehnquist. bush had been retired five years now and made the picks almost nine years ago. roberts is 59 years old. they could be there for 20, 25, or 30 years. as long as they're there, probably going to be voting like they did on the hobby lobby case or the other big ruling we got today which eliminated the ability of public employee unions to collect dues from nonmembers. we hear a lot about washington being gridlocked because of divided government. the white house is controlled by democrats and house is controlled by republicans who don't want to cooperate with the white house on much anything.