This is so absurd that it has, to my knowledge, never been contemplated.

It's a long, uphill fight to get back to original orthodoxy. We have two 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. That's something.

In a big family the first child is kind of like the first pancake. If it's not perfect, that's okay, there are a lot more coming along.

To allow the policy question of same-sex marriage to be considered and resolved by a select, patrician, highly unrepresentative panel of nine is to violate a principle even more fundamental than no taxation without representation: no social transformation without representation.

The Court's decision reflects the philosophy that judges should endure whatever interpretive distortions it takes in order to correct a supposed flaw in the statutory machinery. That philosophy ignores the American people's decision to give Congress '[a]ll legislative Powers' enumerated in the Constitution. They made Congress, not this Court, responsible for both making laws and mending them.

I even accept for the sake of argument that sexual orgies eliminate social tensions and ought to be encouraged.

That's the argument of flexibility and it goes something like this: The Constitution is over 200 years old and societies change. It has to change with society, like a living organism, or it will become brittle and break. But you would have to be an idiot to believe that. The Constitution is not a living organism; it is a legal document. It says something and doesn't say other things.