The Framers were no more interested in binding future Americans to a set of divinely inspired commandments than any of us would wish to be bound by them.

Taking legislative authority away from the federal government doesn't necessarily mean freer individuals. It might just mean granting vastly more authority to the states--which already have far broader police powers than most of us would care to admit.

We don't care what the framers would have thought of violent video games. Times are changing.

I think men get nervous when women start counting the number of female senators, and whites become edgy when they hear the next Supreme Court seat will probably go to a Latino. This isn't always because they object to sharing the spoils, by the way; it just reminds us that the melting pot may not be working, and we haven't yet achieved the ambiguous national dream of becoming a nation of indistinguishable beige atheists.

I've been thinking so much about how grateful I am to cover the court because the constraints of calm and civility are really palpable when you look across the street, and that, you know, I feel like the discourse has become so overheated that, you know, we talk about everything in the exact tone that seems to sort of preclude reason and to preclude the possibility of agreement.

I just don't think we think about jurists as rock stars or great thinkers, particularly in the political world.

Allowing ourselves to become a nation of silent, secretive, timid citizens is likely to result in a system of democracy and justice that is neither very democratic nor very just.