Rant

I just walked out of a suburban party to which I'd been invited. First, the host -- a government professional working on secret national securities issues -- argued President Bush wrongly rebuffed North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il: who, he insisted, can be trusted.¹ Next, the hostess -- learning I was the sole Republican present -- complained that evangelicals were taking advantage of the poor and confused: and then asked why conservatives were so intolerant. I responded, "I respectfully suggest you've made my point for me."

How can Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada claim Clarence Thomas' opinions are "poorly written" and "at an eighth-grade" level, call the Justice "an embarrassment to the Supreme Court," with either no explanation or a rationale factually wrong and premised on short dissents -- one of which a single paragraph -- that Reid plainly never read?

How can the left attack the strict scrutiny of Bush's judicial nominees, yet insist on unquestioned adherence as soon as a 5-4 Supreme Court augments the Constitution with yet another plank from the liberal platform de jure jour? In stark contrast to a women's right to chose, liberals protect the "living" Constitution while gestating, but sign a death certificate of un-changeability once each new "right" is born.²

If Constitutional text is flexible, why can't it later revert? And what's in-tolerable about raising the question, at a garden party or a Senate hearing? When did tolerance encompass only those with whom one agrees?³

/rant
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¹ Cf. Melana Zyla Vickers in Tech Central:

It's one thing to play one trick, if you're a one-trick fan dancer. Falling for the same extortionate trick is something else entirely. Yet the U.S. appears headed in just such a direction.

² Cf. Nurse Andrea Nead "has filed a lawsuit against Eastern Illinois University saying the college refused to promote her to a higher job at the student health center because of her pro-life views and refusal to dispense the morning after pill." (via Jack Lewis)

³Cf. Congressman Charlie Rangel (D-NY) on talk radio:

The Iraq war "is the biggest fraud ever committed on the people of this country. ... This is just as bad as the 6 million Jews being killed," the 74-year-old Harlem Democrat insisted during a Monday radio appearance on the WWRL-AM morning show with Steve Malzberg and Karen Hunter. "The whole world knew and they were quiet about it because it wasn't their ox being gored."