"No One is Above the Law"

"Well, sure, Judge Roberts. But I thought the Bush Administration's position was that -- as a matter of law -- the Constitution did not allow Congress to constrain the choices a President makes in his capacity as commander in chief. So, saying that you think that no one is above the law tells us exactly nothing about what you think about the constitutionality of a statute barring the President from authorizing torture, which was the question I asked."

The oracle at Delphi -- or the oracles on "Angel" (in one episode the characters are quite contemptuous of the pointlessness of prophecies that mean whatever you want them to mean [and then turn out to mean something else]) -- was no worse than Judge Roberts.

So, I take little comfort from the proposition that Judge Roberts is (a) an advocate of judicial restraint and an opponent of judicial activism, who believes (b) that the Supreme Court properly enforces constitutional limitations on legislative power. All the interesting work happens in the space between (a) and (b).