Chief Justice Mario M. Cuomo?

Last Wednesday I said in no uncertain terms that U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist would not be back on the bench when the Court returned yesterday.

He wasn't.

And he will probably never return.

It it almost certain that his thyroid cancer is the rarest and most lethal variety: anaplastic.

Dr. Steven I. Sherman, chair of the Department of Endocrine Neoplasia at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, said that anaplastic cancer is "likely."

Sherman noted in this morning's Washington Post front-page story that anaplastic cancer kills patients on average within six months.

90% of such patients die within one year.

"I have had patients where you can mark on the skin with a pen the edge of the tumor and watch it grow day by day - it is that fast," said Sherman.

Dr. Leonard Wartofsky, chairman of the Department of Medicine at the Washington Hospital Center, said in the same article that in 35 years of treating thryroid cancer he had seen only two patients survive the anaplastic form.

The winner of today's Presidential election will appoint the next Chief Justice to take Rehnquist's place.

So today's election is not only for President, it's also for who leads the nation's judiciary, potentially for decades to come.

That's two of the three pillars of our government up for grabs as I write and you read this.

Profound, amazing, and almost unbelievable.

But true.