Over and over we hear so much bitching and whining from the right about those evil, nasty, liberal "activist" judges. You know, those renegade judges that show no respect for the legislative process, striking down laws enacted by a legislature elected by the people.

So who are the worst offenders on the United States Supreme Court? Paul Gewirtz and Chad Golder have an insightful piece in the Op-Ed pages of the Times on July 6th bringing these scoundrels to light.

Their analysis found that since 1994, when the Supreme Court formed its current composition, they have voted to overturn 64 congressional enactments. Clarence Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, considered to be part of the court's conservative bloc voted with the court more times than any other justices, over 64% of the time. The only other justice over 50% is Antonin Scalia, whose hard-core conservative values are well documented.

So much for the myth of the liberal activist judge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/opinion/06gewirtz.html

For your reference, a handy list of the 10 countries with the most executions in 2004. Good company, eh? A most exclusive club, we should be proud.

	Country	Executions	Executions per 100 million residents
1	China	3,400+	260
2	Iran	159+	230
3	Vietnam	64+	77
4	USA	59	20
5	Saudi Arabia	33+	130
6	Pakistan	15+	9.4
7	Kuwait	9+	400
8	Bangladesh	7+	5
9	Egypt	6+	7.9
10	Singapore	6+	140

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment