The purpose of this diary (which I'll keep as a regular weekly diary, if people are interested) is to highlight the happenings at the Supreme Court during the past week. I don't plan to get deep into jurisprudential theory about each case here - but feel free to do so in the comments! Rather, I hope to briefly summarize the case (without getting too "lawyerly") and give a sense of its importance to the dKos community. If you're really interested in getting into more of this, and you don't know of it already, check out SCOTUSblog . It's maintained by frequent Supreme Court oralist Tom Goldstein, who, needless to say, really really knows his stuff.

The Supreme Court released three opinions last week, two of which are pretty important.

Many of us have the temptation to bash the government right now, considering the GOP controls all of its branches. Our bashing the government doesn't mean we're anti-government in terms of a general outlook, of course -- most if not all of us agree that government can and should play a critical and positive role -- but, rather, we are anti-THIS government.

And that's the way it should be. But, unfortunately, we progressives play this game at a distinct disadvantage. Why?

I am a pro-life Democrat.

To some around here, that's an utter contradiction. I must be anti-woman. I am anti-choice. I really just don't get it. To be pro-choice is a "non-negotiable" "core" principle of the Party, and truly, I am not a Democrat.

That's fine, I don't mind. Don't worry -- I've heard it all before. I've heard it in college, where people couldn't comprehend that I'd be both against abortion and pro-gay rights. I've heard it before in law school, where a good political discussion would turn sour once we hit abortion and anything else I had to say on any topic would forever be tainted by the memory that "he's anti-choice."