The writing of Andy McCarthy is basically an endless font of self-parody. But this moment flagged by Damon Root belongs among the classics. Identifying himself with the constitutional philosophy of Antonin Scalia, McCarthy writes in a post critical of Wikileaks:
Nevertheless, I’ve always taken the language of the First Amendment’s free speech clause — “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press” — to be more sweeping than the freedom it was understood to convey.
Originalism 101: The Constitution means exactly what it says, unless it says something I don't like, in which case it means something else. The other great moment is when McCarthy writes:
Like Justice Scalia, I like my Constitution dead, thank you very much, and think we should use its amendment process if we want to liven it up.
This conjures up an image of Originalism as the Weekend at Bernie's of legal philosophy, which is an image I actually kind of like.
