The takings clause of the Fifth Amendment is for conservatives what the equal protection clause of the 14th is for liberals.

Among the social sciences, economists are the snobs. Economics, with its numbers and graphs and curves, at least has the coloration and paraphernalia of a hard science. It's not just putting on sandals and trekking out to take notes on some tribe.

If sexual intercourse, as the poets tell us, began in 1963, it was another decade and a half before the American political system began to take notice.

Anything that keeps a politician humble is healthy for democracy.

If hypocrisy is the tribute vice pays to virtue, piousness is virtue paying tribute to itself.

Journalistic conventions make it hard for reporters to deal with a big, complicated lie.

It wouldn't be fair to say that conservatives cherish property the way liberals cherish equality. But it would be fair to say that the takings clause is the conservatives recipe for judicial activism just as they say liberals have misused the equal protection clause.