The short cut to disaster!

I have been thinking how things would have been if United States had her Judicial System completely independent of the political system, as it is in countries like India. In USA, all the Supreme Court Justices are appointed by the President, who does it with a careful eye on how the appointee can benefit his party in the coming years. As a result, the rulings of the Supreme Court are often biased. The best/worst example of this was the 2000 Presidential Election, when the Supreme Court with majority of Republican appointees, stopped the recount of votes in Florida, resulting in Republican George Bush winning by 537 votes (out of 6 million votes cast). An election recount corrects a number of simple errors which can add up to make big a difference in a close election. Look what is happening in Minnesota now. There, the recent Senatorial election result had the Democratic candidate, Al Franken, losing to Republican, Norm Coleman, by about 300 votes. Now a vote recount has revised the results with Al Franken going to be the winner by more than 200 votes! In the same way, a vote recount could have changed the result in Florida, as the general voting trend there was in Gore's favor (remember the ‘butterfly ballots’?). What a shame! I believe that 9/11 would have never happened under a President Al Gore, because he knew the threats of Al Qaeda as Vice President in Clinton administration, and would have reacted properly to the warnings of an eminent attack in the summer of 2001. There certainly would not have been an Iraq invasion following, and I can go on and on! In India, the Judicial System is completely separate from the political system, and one has to move up the ladder from the bottom of the system to be nominated as a Supreme Court Justice. The justices are all appointed by the President on the advice of the Chief Justice of India. There is no shortcut like it is in USA with President George Bush nominating his legal assistant, Harriet Maier to the Supreme Court!