Ponnuru Questions Many Conservatives on Originalism and Race

Ramesh Ponnuru has a fascinating op-ed in today's New York Times. In it, he properly cites conservatives as being the faction most ideologically wedded to an originalist interpretation of the Constitution. Ponnuru is a staunch conservative, and originalist.

But Ponnuru is also brilliant and open-minded, and in this piece, he quite rightly points to hypocrisy on the right in two race-based cases before the Supreme Court.

Read the article, as it shows Ponnuru at his logical best. Bottom line here is that "not every wrong has a judicial solution". Clarence Thomas' dissent in the recent Civil Rights Act case feels and sounds right (basically, that the country has moved past the conditions that warranted the egregious section 5 of the CRA) to conservatives, but if you want to walk and talk as an originalist, then the plain truth of the matter is that it is up to the legislative branch to determine the out-datedness of the statute, not the Supreme Court.