Her are a few questions I asked myself this week. I leave the answers up to you:

• Given that the Supreme Court divides up 5-4 on virtually every important case, with conservatives judges supporting the Republican viewpoint and liberals supporting the Democratic viewpoint — why should I have any respect for their decisions? If essentially half the judges strongly disagree with any decision, along political lines, why should I believe their decisions have even a wisp of impartiality? [Sadly, I’ve been forced to ask this before.]

• Republican Senators are succeeding in blocking all significant legislation by hanging together and adopting “Just Say No” as their motto. The media are largely giving them a pass on this.

Why am I almost certain that, years from now, when Republicans control the Senate, and the Democrats try the same Just Say No tactic, Democrats will be assaulted as anti-democracy and obstructionist? What’s worse, the attacks will work. Because that’s how ineffective Democrats are. They lose on both ends.

• Given that we are constantly told that both political parties need to move to the center to succeed, how can it be that they are 100% divided on everything. If they are all near the center, shouldn’t there be some overlap?

• Exactly how hypocritical are Republicans when they lambast a health care reform bill now that is essentially the same as a bill they supported back in the 1990’s?

• When is Obama going to learn that winning requires that he be on offense at least occasionally? His comments in the State of the Union address are a good start, but they require strong follow-up. When the Republican’s attack him and his response is mainly to say “let’s work together,” he looks weak and is doomed to fail.

It’s like he’s in a baseball game where his side is always in the field while his opponents are always at bat. You can’t ever score runs that way, no matter how well you play the game.

Remember the mantra of Republicans regarding nominees to the Supreme Court? “We oppose ‘activist’ judges, the ones who assume that the function of the Supreme Court is to write legislation rather than just interpret it; the ones who are willing to turn over years of precedents to achieve some political goal.”

So, under previous Republican administrations, we got non-activist judges. Right?

Wrong.

What could be more “activist” than reversing decisions dating back nearly a century, and ignoring established legislation such as the McCain-Feingold act — and ruling to allow corporations complete freedom in spending money on political campaigns? That’s exactly what the “conservative” 5-4 majority on the Court did last week.

Are the Republicans objecting to this? Don’t make me laugh.

Talk about hypocrisy. It doesn’t get more blatant than this. It appears that a judge is only an activist if their ruling is one that Republicans disagree with.

Meanwhile, thanks to this new ruling, we can sit back and watch a complete corporate takeover of America (assuming it hasn’t happened already).

NPR’s On the Media yesterday included a segment about the filibuster (Is 60 the Magic Number?). It echoed the views I expressed last November, when I suggested we should just get rid of the filibuster altogether. But it added a further twist. Here’s the deal:

• In the 1960s, the filibuster (or the threat of one) prevented just 8% of major legislation from becoming law. In the 80’s, it jumped to 27%. After the 2006 election, after Democrats took control of the Senate and Republican’s became the minority, it went up to 70%. In 2009, it reached almost 100%!

• In other words, this idea that “you need 60 votes” to get anything passed in the Senate is a relatively new phenomenon, (mis-)used especially by Republicans.

• The irony here is that back in 2005, the Republican majority protested Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, arguing that Democrats were obstructionist and that “straight up-or-down votes” should be allowed to come to the floor. Amazingly, the Republicans carried the day; Democrats surrendered their weapon, agreeing to avoid filibusters of judicial nominees, except in the most “extraordinary circumstances.”

• Yet today, as the On the Media segment points out, there is virtually no media coverage declaring that the Republicans are being even more obstructionist — and hypocritical to boot. The filibuster situation is reported as if the 60 vote requirement was written into the Constitution or “handed down by Moses” — rather than being a recent development of the last few decades, and greatly exaggerated by Republicans in the last few years.

• How is it that the Republican’s get away with this — opposing the filibuster successfully back in 2005 and yet using the filibuster with great success in 2009?

This gets to what I said in my previous post: Republicans are better than Democrats at framing the issue. Or, as James Fallows noted in the On The Media segment: “The Republicans are simply better at positioning this for the press than the Democrats have proven to be.” You think?

Still, I remain a bit mystified as to how all the major news organizations, from the New York Times on down, have been so easily duped.

If I ruled the world, I would want every politician to take a hypocrisy test before deciding on a position. That is, a Republican might ask him- or herself: “If I am about to be critical of the Democrats for doing X in a current situation, would I be just as critical of the Republicans for doing the exact same thing if the situation were reversed?” If the answer is “no,” then the Republican is being a hypocrite. At this point, they must either shut up or be immediately removed from office. Same for the Democrats. Imagine how refreshing politics would be if my fantasy ever became reality!

In the real world, Republicans appear proud of their hypocrisy. They have no shame in what they are doing. They laugh at how easy it is to dupe the public and get the media to play along. Democrats don’t seem to do this as much. But perhaps that’s only because they haven’t figured out how to be as successful at it.