The Supreme Court is dominated by right-wingers on a conservative activist, pro-corporate, anti-civil rights tear.

Or, perhaps, the court is driven by liberal activists who make up new constitutional rights out of whole cloth and may soon legislate a right to gay marriage.

It all depends on your point of view.

President Obama, his press secretary Robert Gibbs, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, other congressional Democrats, New York Times editorialists, liberal groups, and others have been attacking Chief Justice Roberts and the other conservative justices for being aggressively conservative corporate shills. These critics’ goals seem to include greasing the wheels for confirmation of Elena Kagan and laying the groundwork for bolder Obama attacks on the court if it keeps messing with his agenda.

Conservatives — who have for decades accused the court of usurping elected officials’ powers to flog liberal causes — now find themselves on the rhetorical defensive.

So the Heritage Foundation fought back on Wednesday by holding an event entitled "The Myth of a Conservative Court and Why Liberals Peddle It," with conservative icon Ed Meese, President Reagan’s attorney general, moderating.

A notice for the event suggested that panelists would argue that it is "a sign of liberal vulnerability to the charge of left-wing activism that they are trying to ascribe their activist ways to others" and to "hoodwink journalists into propagating a moral equivalency between different judges that does not exist."