This week’s bellwether election in NY-20 ended in a stalemate. You’ll remember NY-20is the seat that Kristen Gillibrand (D) was in before being selected to fill Hillary’s old Senate seat. So if it flipped to the Republican candidate, many believed it would be evidence that Obama was beginning to hurt his own party and the Republican resurgence had begun. Democrats would see a victory for their candidate as proof that the country is behind Obama.

But nobody won. Except the judges.

The vote split was 50-50. The Democrat is ahead a few hundred votes but military and absentee ballots haven’t been counted. You can bet this one ends in a courtroom much like the Al Franken/Norm Coleman Senate contest. Much like the Presidential election in 2000.

The biggest problem with having a 50-50 red/blue country is that increasingly, elections are being taken to judges to decide. And as we see in the Minnesota Senate race, judges rulings are fickle, seemingly partisan, and often law bending. Do you remember the ridiculous actions of the Florida Supreme Court in 2000?

But not happy with just being able to decide who the legislators are isn’t enough; judges actually want to be legislators themselves. When a thorny issue comes up like abortion, the legislature is only too happy to punt away their responsibilities and allow the courts to decide and then the legislators throw up their hands and say “the courts have decided.”

And, in the case of abortion, the courts, once involved, essentially precluded the actually elected legislatures from making any laws concerning abortion.

So the elected representatives of the people are silenced by the appointed. Not good.

We have judges playing politics and deciding who the politicians are going to be. This is not good or healthy for America.

You want to know how powerful judges are? Here’s a little test. Raise your hand if one of your top two reasons to vote for John McCain for President was so he could appoint conservative judges.

OK. Put your hand down.

When the power of the Presidency is diminished to appointing the people who make the real decisions, we have the makings of a black-robed lifetime appointed oligarchy. And that’s worrisome.