And good luck to him, too:

It was, in fact, the Court’s more liberal members, Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer—coupled with “conservative” Justice Anthony Kennedy—who evidently believe its okay to take and auction off some hardworking steel worker’s blue collar homestead to make way for a big corporate industrial park, the kickback being an increase in tax revenues the local nannystate municipality can put to use funding programs meant to provide that newly homeless steel worker with the “educational skills” he needs to one day own a home of his very own.

At least one liberal friend referred to this as "the Scalia court," demoting Rehnquist, but implying that it must have been those mean Constructionists who wiped out private property with this decision.

Nope. But thanks for your passing concern for individual liberties. Perhaps you'd like to join us the next time the Left starts shooting them down? There are a few words in the Bill of Rights, after all, that haven't yet got crossed out. We could start there.

Posted by: Attila at 01:13 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Nice article in the Boston Globe about how to appoint conservatives who don't "trip the extremist trip-wire," and why Roberts will survive the confirmation process.

It would seem that for super-ambitious judges, the rule is, "don't publish [much]—or perish."

Posted by: Attila at 02:04 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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"Why didn't you answer the phone?" she asked me Tuesday night.

"I was downstairs watching Fox news, trying to get a little info about Roberts. Not too much there; I'll have to hit the blogs."

"What do you think so far?"

"Well, I wanted another Clarence Thomas, but Roberts sounds smart. And I think he gets that the Court is not supposed to legislate. How about you?"

"I wanted a woman."

I pause as I wonder at the simplicity of my mother's criterion. There is, I decide, no criticizing her team spirit. Finally, I answer, "I'm not sure we have to keep the number of boobies on the Court steady at four."

"Oh, I was thinking we should have more like eight or ten boobies," she responds, showing off her math-teacher arithmetic skills.

"That sounds fine, Mom, but keep in mind that every time someone is appointed to a spot just because she's female, she's always a spectacular failure. I wasn't really happy with either Janet Reno nor Madeleine Albright."

"What a surprise; after all, they were appointed by a Democrat."

"A Democrat I voted for in 1992."

"You voted for Clinton?" How soon we forget.

"Yeah, Mom. Once, though; I didn't make the same mistake again."

This whole conversation is rather illuminating; it turns out that some of the opposition to Roberts would vaporize if he only got gender-reassignment surgery.

Easy as pie.

Posted by: Attila at 03:24 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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. . . that John Roberts sexually harassed me once? He did it by drinking a can of Coke.

I was very tramautized after that; I couldn't work for a week afterward. I just lay in bed drinking Diet Dr. Pepper and reading Nancy Drew mysteries from my childhood.

But now I'm over it. I'll buy a bitchin' new dress, and then I'll alert the media.

UPDATE: Enough with the e-mails. I don't happen to know the truth of what happened between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas. I do think men do some crazy things when they're young and horny, and I suspect that Thomas was attracted to Hill. But if she kept her own counsel and followed him from job to job, I do think continuing her silence would have been the classy thing.

In fact, she helped to raise public consciousness about the evils of sexual harassment. I wish I could count that as a victory, as such abuses of power have always bothered me. The truth is, our present situation is a mixed blessing, wherein men often feel that the slightest acknowledgement that they are heterosexual may subject them to disciplinary action or lawsuits at any time.

In other words, the pendulum has swung too far.

We'll never know what Thomas said to Hill, or how bad it really was. But I'm grateful to have him on the Court. I do believe he's the closest thing to a libertarian on SCOTUS.

Posted by: Attila at 11:24 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Xrlq is making a chart of how Roberts' confirmation will change/not change the status quo.

Posted by: Attila at 08:59 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Isn't that a Beatles tune?

Posted by: Attila at 08:44 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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The time has come.

Via Insty.

Posted by: Attila at 02:39 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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So it looks like Bush will have to appoint his strict constructionist and his moderate to the Supreme Court more or less in tandem. Which will spare us a lot of legislative fireworks.

A shame. I was looking forward to the fight, in a certain way.

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Commenting on this post, wherein Patterico takes the wood to the L.A. Times, as is his wont, Dean Esmay discusses all the overwrought commentary on Justice O'Conner:

I am rather amused at all the gushing praise we're seeing from much of the press about what a wonderful wise Solomonic moderate Sandra Day O'Connor was . . . .

My only question: where were all these people who are now praising her as wise, virtuous, brilliantly moderate, etc. when she came down with the majority on Bush v. Gore? Somehow I doubt all the people slobbering over her now were all that friendly to her then.

Ah, but that was different. For one week in 2000, she was G.W.'s ho. Now she's a saint.

My take? Glad you asked: far preferable to lose O'Conner before Rehnquist. Once they both retire, it'll be a wash, since Bush is going to appoint a conservative this time, and a centrist to replace Rehnquist. And there's going to be a bloodbath in the Senate over something that won't ultimately change the ideological composition of the Court.

A friend of mine asks me, "won't abortion be illegal if Roe v. Wade is overturned?"

"No," I tell him. "And it won't be overturned, either. Not within the next ten years, anyway."

Posted by: Attila at 09:04 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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