From the right, high-dive sophistry

You probably won't be surprised to learn from Charles Krauthammer, who paused from his London Olympics training in high-dive sophistry to explain it, that yesterday Chief Justice John Roberts nobly used all his conservative powers largely to rescue the Court's reputation from years of ... liberal jurisprudential arrogance and degeneracy.

Roberts, writes Krauthammer, is "acutely aware that the judiciary’s arrogation of power has eroded the esteem in which it was once held." Krauthammer then categorically asserts: "Most of this arrogation occurred under the liberal Warren and Burger courts," which yielded "four decades of popular protest and resistance."

Perhaps, Jon Kyl-like, Krauthammer did not intend his observation to be a factual statement. Even a cursory search of public opinion of the Supreme Court produces contemporary items such as this, from the Christian Science Monitor: "Twenty-five years ago, two-thirds of Americans approved of the way the Supreme Court was doing its job. Today, according to a recent New York Times-CBS News poll, that number is just 44 percent."

Thus 14 years after Roe v. Wade, which Kruathammer marks as the watershed in public disdain of the highest court, the Supremes enjoyed broad public approval. Yet Roberts, according to Krauthammer, was saving the Court--oh, incidentally, there was that Bush v. Gore thing, "Whatever one thinks of the substance of" it; no mention of Citizens United--from four decades of preponderant liberal arrogation and arrogance.

My London money is on Charlie, you know, in the high-dive sophistry competition.

Comments

[Janicket]

Boiled to essence: All things "liberal": bad; all things "conservative": good.

There; now you never need read any Krauthammer et al. column again.

[majii]

I saw Krauthammer on Fox yesterday, and I knew he'd write a column that mirrored his Fox comments. He's so predictable.