McCain Veers Right on Supreme Court

If you aren’t a conservative activist, John McCain didn’t have you in mind when he recently laid out his position on judicial appointments: The speech was “a dog whistle for the right,” Jeffrey Toobin writes in the New Yorker, in a piece that decodes references meant to assure that he’d continue—“and perhaps even accelerate”—President Bush’s Supreme Court revolution. He denounced those who legislate from the bench, but then took close listeners even deeper.

By dismissing one unnamed Anthony Kennedy decision, he affirmed capital punishment for teens and disowned any American invocations of international law. McCain also disparagingly dropped the words “penumbras” and “meaning of life,” obliquely referencing (with disdain) landmark decisions establishing a right to privacy and affirming Roe v. Wade. (More John McCain stories.)