The following are excerpts of Thomas Goldstein’s guest column at Slate.com:

As one of the most conservative in recent memory, the just-completed 2006 Supreme Court term has served as a rallying cry for progressives. But will the Roberts Court help bring Democratic voters to the polls for the 2008 election? Because the public’s interest in the court is notoriously weak and its memory short, the upcoming term is more relevant to whether the court can be a mobilizing force. And the cases lined up for the new term, which begins next week, strongly suggest that the highest-profile decisions will actually make the court look liberal.

[I]n the most significant cases of the term granted thus far, the position of the court’s more liberal members will be (in the caricature of much popular reporting on the court) that accused terrorists deserve more rights, crack dealers deserve lighter sentences, and the First Amendment protects would-be distributors of child porn. All good headlines for Republican candidates.