Thanks to President George W. Bush, the English language includes some new and exciting words and phrases.

There's "Hispanically," as in, "Hispanically owned or otherwise." There's "misunderestimated" and "resignate," "embetter" and "foreign-handed."

And don't get me started on those tricky subject-verb agreements ("Is our children learning?" Not with a role model like that.)

But perhaps the most influential term that Bush has introduced recently is "activist judges."

The term "activist judges" apparently refers to judges who look at the Constitution and see more rights expressed than Bush himself can decipher.

He prominently used it in a speech last year condemning the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts for ordering the state government to recognize the rights of same-sex couples to wed. Bush then called for an amendment to the federal Constitution that would strictly define marriage as existing only between a man and a woman.

Many social conservatives are enraged at the idea that judges could slowly make same-sex marriage legal throughout the nation. They claim that recognizing marital bonds between a man and a man or a woman and a woman goes against the will of the people and, indeed, polls suggest that the majority of Americans are uncomfortable with same-sex marriage.

But as the middle school mantra goes, what's popular is not always right and what's right is not always popular. Throughout American history, judges have expanded rights to protect minority groups -- and that has often not sat well with public opinion.

In 1954, the Supreme Court issued its famous Brown v. Board of Education decision, which initiated the end of the government-condoned segregation of public schools. Initial public reaction was heated in many areas. The Daily News, then a newspaper from Jackson, Miss., declared that, "White and Negro children in the same schools will lead to miscegenation. Miscegenation leads to mixed marriages and mixed marriages leads to mongrelization of the human race."

Despite pressure from many Northerners and Southerners alike to permit segregation, the Supreme Court outlawed the practice. It was not overwhelmingly popular, but the justices knew that it was right and that America would progress as a country.

Many people today espouse similar doomsday beliefs about what changes same-sex marriage could bring about. They believe that legitimizing same-sex couples will end up causing the end of marriage or even the end of the human race. They bemoan the activist judges who would overturn their very belief system and cause the end of family values. (Values -- that's another word that is thrown around a bit too much.) They accuse the judges of forcing them to change, forcing their beliefs down the throat of the nation.

It's true. Activist judges do force people to change. They forced Americans to accept equal access to education, equal access to the polls, equal access to lawyers and more. But few people today would argue that those were changes that Americans did not need to make.

The judicial branch of the government is not like the executive or the legislative. Unlike the president, senators or congressmen, judges in the upper echelon of authority do not need to answer to the people.

Once they make it through the confirmation process, it takes egregious errors to remove them from office. Such a system exists to remove the judiciary from political influence and, similarly, the pressure of the people.

The Constitution, as you should remember from that annoying civics class you took in high school, is open to interpretation. If it were not, then the president and local government members would be able to limit how you speak, assemble, worship and publish, because the First Amendment simply says that "Congress" will make no law abridging those rights.

Then you wouldn't be able to send hate letters to The Daily Collegian about me, and that just wouldn't make you happy. The ability to interpret the Constitution and expand it to encompass the present day and age is one of its best features. It's not one of those crummy computers that sits in your basement with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on it, but something you can upgrade to meet your current needs.

In the next four years, morbid as it is for us to speculate on this subject, at least one justice on the Supreme Court will probably retire or die. U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) is in line to head the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Republicans are questioning his ability to stick to the party line and reject any appointee who fails to see how the Constitution could afford protection and rights to all Americans, not just those granted them 200 years ago.

Are there activist judges out there? Sure.

Is that a bad thing? (I forgot -- we're speaking Bush now. What I mean to say is, are that a bad thing?)

Absolutely not.