Taranto quotes a couple of idiots named Murphy and Sullivan. (Irish jokes, if you will.)

Hold That Tiger
This jaw-dropping quote, from Walter Murphy, McCormick Professor in Jurisprudence Emeritus at Princeton, appeared yesterday in the Daily Princetonian, a student newspaper (bracketed verbiage and ellipsis in original):

"Sam is his own man," Murphy said. "He'll never be 'Scalito.' And then it's a gross insult to say in the mold of [other conservative and constructionist justice] Clarence Thomas. Their IQs are so radically different . . . We're not talking about someone in Sam's intellectual league."

Barely a decade ago, Charles Murray stirred up rage on the left with his academic discussion of racial differences in IQ in "The Bell Curve." Today it apparently is acceptable in the Ivy League to insult the intelligence of specific black people by stereotyping them as having low IQs. We're all for honest discussion of racial matters, but Murphy's uninhibited expression of racial prejudice doesn't strike us as evidence of progress.


It's Degenerate! No Wait, It's Fair Game!

"It seems to me that using explicitly religious criteria--rather than jurisprudential philosophy--for judicial nominations is yet another sign of how degenerate Bush's brand of conservatism is."--Andrew Sullivan on Harriet Miers, Oct. 28

"The upshot of [Pope] Benedict's church will be indeed to dictate to Catholic public officials, including judges, what they can and cannot do and still be allowed to receive communion. Under those circumstances, a judge's religion would indeed be fair game for Senate hearings, it seems to me."--Andrew Sullivan on Sam Alito, Nov. 7
(Thanks to Best of the Web Today for the heads up.)