To hell in a handbasket

These are the CNN.com headlines as of 3-4 minutes ago. Just read them through, without worry about the stories behind them. It sounds like something from a Philip K. Dick post-apocalypse short story:

Latest News

• High court strikes down gun ban
• Obama: McCain's energy plan empty 'gimmicks'
• Lawmakers vow to execute child rapists
• 3 workers burned after pipeline cut
• California wildfires threaten hundreds of homes
• Briton gets life sentences for killing wife, baby
• N. Korea declares nukes; Bush responds 52 min
• Ticker: Polls show Obama leading in key states
• Russert's son: Sometimes he'd interview me 49 min
• Bomb on belt kills sheikhs in Karma 29 min
• China slams Dalai Lama; Olympic brass rebukes
• City aims to test all Bronx adults for HIV
• Zakaria: S.A. president should be ashamed
• Recycling plant blaze rages
• Questions to ask before being a guinea pig
• Gas scammers refill rentals with water
• Couples fight over who's the 'trailing spouse'
• MTV, BET too XXX for some firms' ads
• Glenn Beck: Obama no, McCain maybe
• Women spin atop escalator handrails
• Heather Locklear enters mental hospital

Activist judges

District of Columbia v. Heller illustrates the ideological vacuousness of the phrase activist judge(s), despite its having been adopted by the right as a pejorative for any judge who issues almost any decision with which they disagree. Judges are lawyers, and Supreme Court justices are, for the most part, very good lawyers. Justice Stevens, in his dissent (a dissent that artfully illustrates the error of the majority's analysis even if not sufficiently to persuade the critical 5th vote), made the point in referring to Scalia et al.'s treatment of the introductory “well-regulated militia” clause: “Perhaps the Court’s approach to the text is acceptable advocacy, but it is surely an unusual approach for judges to follow.”

One can't help but suspect, from this and other outbursts, that the drafting and conferencing must have been, relatively speaking, incendiary.