I feel Socratic this morning, so here’s a little Q and A.

Q: Who the eff is Stuart Taylor Jr.?
A: The short answer could be, an asshole so full of himself as to be completely oblivious to his own follies. But let’s not take the low road. Taylor is a journalist with a fine legal background:

Stuart Taylor Jr. is a regular columnist for National Journal, a Contributing Editor at Newsweek and a Nonresident Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution. He is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Law School.

Taylor has previously served as a Senior writer for American Lawyer Media, from 1989-1997, a lecturer at Princeton University for one year, a reporter and Supreme Court correspondent for The New York Times, an attorney at the D.C. law firm of Wilmer, Cutler and Pickering, and as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.

Q: Where does he stand on judicial activism?
A: Although Wikipedia does not say so, he is a conservative who opposes judicial activism.

Q: Who the eff published this piece of tripe by him, wherein he argues that even opponents of judicial activism should support the Supreme Court overturning the appeals court decision in the New Haven firefighters case:

The voters, however, by 55 percent to 36 percent, called for abolishing “affirmative-action programs that give preferences to blacks and other minorities in hiring, promotions, and college admissions” in the new Quinnipiac poll.

The 3,000-plus respondents also wanted the Supreme Court to overturn Sotomayor‘s New Haven firefighter (sic) decision by a whopping 71-19 percent.
[...]
But is it judicial activism when the justices stretch the Constitution to go over the heads of the political branches — which are dominated by special-interest lobbies — not to overrule the voters but rather to give them what they want?

A: It sure wasn’t Newsweek, so it must have been those other guys who allow him to regularly inflict himself on the public.

Q: Taylor really hasn’t thought this through at all, has he?
A: No sir, no sir, three bags full. By Taylor’s “logic”, it wouldn’t be judicial activism if, for example, the Supreme Court were to create “a program of national health insurance — after all, a majority of people in the US favor that as well.”

Q: Couldn’t a majority of Americans be persuaded that it is in the national interest to have Dick Cheney subjected to waterboarding, if only to get him (and the fruit of his loins, little miss Lizzie) to shut up forever on the subject of waterboarding not constituting torture?
A: Can we please find out?