Some good news, some bad news. The good news is that Justice Anthony Kennedy is going to stay on the court. The bad news is that Justice Anthony Kennedy will stay on the court.

Kennedy is hardly a conservative but he’s not a total lib either. In fact, many say that this current court should more likely be called the Kennedy Court because he’s so often the deciding vote between the liberal justices and the conservative justices.

But if Kennedy were to retire during Obama’s first term, that would be a disaster for the country as it would establish a liberal majority for years to come. So on that front this is good news from Weasel Zippers which reports:

President Obama may get liberal Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court, but conservative swing-voter Anthony Kennedy says he’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

Justice Kennedy, who turns 74 this month, has told relatives and friends he plans to stay on the high court for at least three more years — through the end of Obama’s first term, sources said.

That means Kennedy will be around to provide a fifth vote for the court’s conservative bloc through the 2012 presidential election. If Obama loses, Kennedy could retire and expect a Republican President to choose a conservative justice.

As if we needed another reason that the two coming elections were extraordinarily important, this is it. Justice Kennedy’s retirement alone would be enough to get me to the polls, never mind Obama’s escalating debt, weak-kneed foreign policy, disinterest in actual emergencies like the Gulf, his big government outlook, his healthcare plan, his energy policy……..