Wrong on All Counts

George Will rips Anthony Kennedy. The best part:

Kennedy occupies the seat that 52 Senate Democrats prevented Robert Bork from filling in 1987. That episode accelerated the descent into the scorched-earth partisanship that was raging in the Senate Judiciary Committee at the very moment Tuesday morning that Kennedy was presenting the court majority's policy preference as a constitutional imperative. The committee's Democrats were browbeating another appellate court nominee, foreshadowing another filibuster.

The Democrats' standard complaint is that nominees are out of the jurisprudential 'mainstream.' If Kennedy represents the mainstream, it is time to change the shape of the river. His opinion is an intellectual train wreck, but useful as a timely warning about what happens when judicial offices are filled with injudicious people.

What Kennedy and the other liberals on the court are really doing with this death penalty ruling and the other opinion barring the death penalty for retarded murderers, is laying the groundwork for declaring that the death penalty is unconstitutional in all contexts (except maybe for treason - its expressly allowed in the constitution - no one ever gets tried for treason). After all, isn't the US out of touch with the world community (read: European) on the entire issue? If these unratified treaties and international consensus call for the abolition of the death penalty for underage and retarded murderers, then isn't that a basis to declare the whole practice out of touch and unconstitutional? If the constitution is nothing more than a suggestion box, why not?