I think particularly on the left, progressives wanted more bombast and more.

What's exquisitely weird about the Donald Trump/Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel formulation is that this isn't even a case about race.

On a court full of great writers, I shouldn't say full of - there have been some bad writers on the court over the years.

A lot of conservative writers have twisted that argument in the conversation around Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel and said this is identity politics as played by liberals. And that I think what they're trying to say is that progressives are the first to say.

Am I right in saying that the locust of this problem is simply that judges in America are half political animals and half oracular demigods?

On the one hand we want to preserve the integrity of the judicial branch, and we want to talk about judicial independence, and how damaging and dangerous it is when Donald Trump calls out Judge [Gonzalo] Curiel. And at the same time, at the end of the day, judges work for us and we can recall them and we can impeach them.

If Americans actually have the conversation about our disastrous prison policies, we'll understand the trends all move in very dangerous directions: we lock up more people, for less violent crime, at ever greater expense, breeding more dangerous criminals who often come out unemployable, violent and isiolated.