All the focus on SCOTUS makes us forget that Bush has been appointing judges all along to the appeals courts. The two hundred judges he has added to these benches are "solid" conservatives. Their decisions will slowly start affecting our lives. For example, NARAL points out that Bush nominated judges have been four times as likely to decide cases for the pro-life side than judges nominated by other presidents. And this is interesting:
On another matter, two of Bush's nominees to the D.C. Circuit are poised to have significant impact on a pair of cases involving challenges to the U.S. military's detention of foreign nationals at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Janice Rogers Brown and Thomas B. Griffith, both just placed on the bench last month, were picked at random to sit on a three-judge panel that will hear the cases this fall.
Let me try to predict what they will find...
Political writing tends too often to focus on the very top. Hence, much is written about the Supremes while all the time, slowly and silently, the whole edifice below them turns wingnut. This matters.