Tha Fascist Federalist Society - Engaged in a Very Civil War

The Federalist Society has reshaped the legal system without ever going to court.

Washington - It began in 1982 with a handful of law students at Yale and the University of Chicago who saw themselves as minorities. They were conservatives.

As a counter to liberal orthodoxy, they formed a legal debating group they called the Federalist Society. And in a hint of things to come, their first faculty advisor at the Chicago chapter was professor Antonin Scalia, soon to be the most influential conservative on the Supreme Court.

This week, in a moment of triumph, the Federalist Society - now with 35,000 members and chapters at every major law school in the nation - is holding its annual meeting at the Mayflower Hotel, a few blocks from the White House.

Not only are conservative judges no longer a minority, two of the society's favorites, new Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Supreme Court nominee Samuel A. Alito Jr., are poised to add their "strict constructionist" voices to the high court.