Kevin Drum complains that "conservative judges don't even bother pretending to be neutral anymore. They listen to Fox News, and if something becomes a conservative talking point then they're on board. And that goes all the way up to the Supreme Court."
Even if that were remotely true, all I could say is "Welcome to my world."
Long before <SNARKY SARCASM>liberals like Drum decided to make climate change their latest way of turning the economy over to the government</SNARKY SARCASM>, we conservatives knew all about the "Greenhouse effect":
A Federal appeals judge has criticized journalists for what he described as biased reporting of the Supreme Court.
The judge, Laurence H. Silberman of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, said the press had "accepted and embraced the tenets of judicial activism."
"The truth is that the lawyer-reporters are among the most unbalanced, the least abashed, at asserting the value of judicial activism," Judge Silberman said Saturday in a speech to the Federalist Society, a legal group that advocates a strict interpretation of the Constitution.
The judge had the harshest words for The New York Times, saying, "It seems that the primary objective of The Times's legal reporters is to put activist heat on recently appointed Supreme Court justices."
The judge said some had referred to this as the "Greenhouse effect," a reference to Linda Greenhouse, The Times's Supreme Court reporter.
Indeed, there is empirical evidence that there were "substantial shifts toward more liberal voting, by ... Earl Warren, Potter Stewart, Harry Blackmun, Lewis Powell, Anthony Kennedy, and David Souter." See Judges and Their Audiences: A Perspective on Judicial Behavior
So, Kevin, spare me. Your set has been taking advantage of this effect for decades to advance your agenda in the courts, so your sudden embrace of neutral principles is hardly convincing.
Update: Since some (typically humorless) folks on the left apparently are incapable of detecting snarky sarcasm when they see it, I've highlighted it to help them with reading comprehension.
Of course, while I was mostly just being sarcastic, it is also the case that one could plausibly believe that climate change is real, anthromporphic, and being used by liberals to expand government control over markets.
