Aziz Huq writes that the greatest critic of Justice Antonin Scalia's recent opinion on guns is... Antonin Scalia:
Consider first the two opinions' methodologies. In the Guantánamo case, Scalia accuses his colleagues of having "blatantly misdescribe[d]" a key precedent and of having misread history. Yet in Heller, Justice Scalia simply discarded the key 1939 precedent of United States v. Miller, which rejected the individual rights theory of the Second Amendment in Heller. Worse, reminded by Justice Stevens of the literally "hundreds of judges" who had relied on Miller's holding, Scalia offered only a footnote mocking their "erroneous reliance." Judicial precedent, in short, bites only when he wants it to.
Dana Goldstein reports on new organizations aiming to help women who've had abortions without stigmatizing their decisions to have them:
The anti-abortion rights movement has become more sophisticated in recent years, co-opting themes of female empowerment to argue that women are abortion's central victims -- a line of reasoning that reached the Supreme Court in last year's Gonzales v. Carhart decision. In response, some reproductive health advocates have decided to deal head-on with the psychological aftermath of abortion. And though they're winning over skeptical elements of the pro-choice movement, these younger activists are having trouble convincing donors to fund their cause.
And Terence Samuel has some pointed words for Ralph Nader:
But what Nader showed with his comments is that he, like many political operatives, activists, pundits, and journalists, fundamentally misunderstands the times that have produced Barack Obama. In the words of the great American philosopher Marvin Gaye, "things ain't what they used to be."
Nader, in a single stroke, managed to reveal his own irrelevance and that of a whole generation of people who are arguing about issues that, this election campaign has shown, are not especially important to the vast majority of Americans. "Talking white" is one of them. "White guilt" is another. "The ghetto" is a third.
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