(no subject)

[somedaybitch]

over at Cato, there's an interesting piece on the Supreme Court and Individual Rights. it blows some commonly held perceptions about liberal vs conservative ruling patterns totally out of the water.

Conservative justices also typically vote to limit the government's ability to regulate election-related speech, while liberal justices are willing to uphold virtually any regulation in the name of "campaign finance reform." In Davis v. Federal Election Commission, decided the same day as Heller, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the Court's conservatives, reaffirmed the "fundamental nature of the right to spend personal funds for campaign speech." The dissenters argued that "in the context of elections . . . limiting the quantity of speech" is perfectly acceptable.

and then there was this:

The Fifth Amendment's protection of property rights presents, if anything, an even starker example of greater commitment to individual rights by the conservative majority. In the infamous Kelo v. New London, the Court's liberal justices, joined by Justice Kennedy, held that the government may take an individual's property and turn it over to a private party for commercial use. The four conservative dissenters argued that such actions violate the Fifth Amendment's requirement that government takings be for "public use."

i think a LOT of people tend to forget that political conservative and religious conservative are not the same thing. a true political conservative wants less government, not more; and while there are certainly plenty of religious conservatives that are *also* political conservatives, the two are not synonymous.