The Federalist Society congratulates itself at Union Station, and torture fan Fat Tony has the quote of the day. WaPo teabags them with A03 placement**:

Federalists Relish Well-Placed Friends

Funny, if they were so important, you'd think that Justice Roberts wouldn't have "forgotten" he was a member during his confirmation hearings. But let that pass. Fat Tony's quote:

Scalia said courts and law schools embrace the alternate view of a "living Constitution" and so too does the ordinary citizen, "who has come to believe that what he violently abhors must be unconstitutional."

"It is no easy task to wean the public, the professoriate and (especially) the judiciary away from such a seductive and judge-empowering philosophy," he said.

"Seductive and judge-empowering philosophy"?!

You mean like the kind of philosophy that allows judges to select a President with a "good for one time only" case like Bush v. Gore?

Every decision that involves a Supreme Court Justice selected by Bush is the fruit of the poisonous tree of Bush v. Gore.

Every such decision is the result of flat out fraud, and the result of a slow-moving coup plotted by many members of this same Society--the "elves" who drove the right's attempted seizure of power during when they impeached Clinton, and their successful seizure of power in Florida 2000.

No such decision is legitimate--How can a legitimate court decision flow from a court whose justices were seated based on theft and fraud?

NOTE Funny how WaPo forgets to mention some other Federalist Society members:

Within weeks of the 2000 presidential election, Bush tapped Gonzales to be his White House counsel, and Gonzales set about creating what officials there proudly described as one of the most ideologically aligned counsel's offices in years.

Gonzales forged his staff instead from a tightknit group of Washington-based former clerks to Supreme Court or appellate judges, all of whom had worked on at least one of three touchstones of the conservative movement: the Whitewater and Monica S. Lewinsky inquiries of former president Bill Clinton, the Bush-Cheney election campaign, and the Florida vote-counting dispute.

As I said: A coup.

"It was an office of like-minded" lawyers and "strong personalities," said Bradford A. Berenson, a criminal defense lawyer appointed as one of eight associate counsels in Gonzales's office. "There was not a shrinking violet in the bunch."

"Federalist Society regulars" is the way another former associate counsel, H. Christopher Bartolomucci, described the Gonzales staff and its ideological allies elsewhere in the government, such as Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo and Defense Department General Counsel William J. Haynes II. All were adherents to the theory that the Constitution gives the president considerably more authority than the Congress and the judiciary.

Thanks, guys: After you seized power, you put the theory of the unitary executive into action, and turned us into a nation of torturers! Nice work all around.

NOTE ** Since you asked, immunity for the telcos is on A08. Fred Hiatt is such a tool.