While writing a column on judicial philosophy, Washington Post columnist Colbert King writes the following about failed Reagan nominee Robert Bork:

Here I draw, as deputy editorial page editor, on the reasoning in The Post’s 1987 editorial opposing the Bork nomination. The Bork criticism could apply to many of the lawyers and judges who pass the high priests’ tests with flying colors.

It wasn’t Bork’s conservatism or his challenge to prevailing legal orthodoxy that did him in. Nor was he an ogre or Neanderthal, as some of his opponents mischaracterized him. But Bork, as with other controversial judicial picks of President Bush, seemed to come to the bar with, as The Post put it, “an almost frightening detachment from, not to say indifference toward, the real-world consequences of his views; he plays with ideas, seeks tidiness, and in the process does not seem to care who is crushed.”

King might harken back just a few months ago to the Post’s editorials on the Raich decision. There, the Post wrote:

The plaintiffs in Raich , patients who regard pot as essential medication for their conditions, contended that because their use of the drug is noncommercial and within a single state that tolerates medical marijuana, the federal government lacked the power to stop them. This may seem like an attractive principle, but consider its implications. Can Congress protect an endangered species that exists only in a single state and may be wiped out by some noncommercial activity?

Days later, the Post ran a second editorial favorably citing the Raich decision as necessary in order for Congress to protect a cave-dwelling insect found only in Texas:

Medical marijuana and cave-dwelling insects may not seem to have much in common, but federal authority over both depends on the same constitutional principle: Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce. The court over the past decade has reminded Congress that this power, while broad, is not infinite; a valid exercise of it must have some relationship to commerce. This reminder is healthy, but it also poses dangers, and the court has left key questions unanswered: What about an endangered species that lives only in a single state but is threatened by commercial activity?

In other words, the Washington Post editorial board is so wedded to Big Government, it’ll oppose carving out even a tiny fissure in federal power so that cancer and AIDS patients can smoke marijuana to relieve their pain, in some cases even save their lives, because doing so might inhibit the power of the EPA to hold up the construction of a hospital in order to protect a cave-dwelling bug.

Let’s read the anti-Bork quote from the Post that King cites one more time:

“…an almost frightening detachment from, not to say indifference toward, the real-world consequences of his views; he plays with ideas, seeks tidiness, and in the process does not seem to care who is crushed.”

Sounds a lot like the Post editorial board to me.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 14th, 2005 at 1:15 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.