"...the Court is rapidly deteriorating' due to the high number of vacancies and, further, that the Founding Fathers did not intend for the Senate to leave the courts in limbo, understaffed and unable to properly carry out their responsibilities.'"

Every now and then, someone or another will apparently go "off the reservation" and overreach in the pursuit of one of the heretofore-unaccomplished communist goals, only to be smacked down by an outraged public.  Almost every time, that's not by accident.  See, the "revolutionary demagogues" are deliberately using the door in the face technique to initiate the public conversation about something, the very something that the socialist-progressives will use creeping normalcy to achieve . . . eventually.

Consider, because of its ubiquitousness, the current raging national debate over gay marriage.  Two decades ago, when the topic of gay marriage first appeared on the public ballot, in Oregon, the question was only whether or not the government must assist in setting the educational standard that homosexuality, pedophilia, sadism, and masochism are abnormal, wrong, unnatural, and perverse, and that they are to be discouraged and avoided.  The defeat of the Oregon measure prompted ultimately 40 states and territories to take at least statutory action to protect the traditional definition of marriage, including 31 states that have done so via amending their state constitutions (including both Oregon and California).

Yet now we have a pair of cases before the Supreme Court of the United States with the apparent intent of overturning the wishes of the people (or their duly elected representation) of 3/4 of the several states in one fell swoop (which, in my opinion, is a blatant violation of state sovereignty).  Don't think for one second that's the actual goal of the socialist-progressives.  Sure, that'd be really nice, but ultimately all they really need is a limited ruling that "advances the ball" enough to shift the baseline and provide a new reference point for future public "debate" on the matter.  As long as SCOTUS doesn't uphold intact the California Supreme Court ruling (recognizing Prop 8 as a duly-ratified amendment to the California Constitution), the subversives get what they want.

The Overton Window on gay marriage has been moved just enough that serious discussions are taking place aimed at overturning or repealing marriage protection in every single one of the 40 states and territories where the divinely ordained definition is protected either in state statute or constitutional amendment.  That specifically includes the Michigan Marriage Amendment (Proposal 04-2), now duly ratified as Michigan Constitution Article I § 25.