I'd hoped this might be one time when "liberal" members of the court might side with us lowly individuals, but I'm not really surprised at all. It was "liberals" of an earlier time that gave us the outrageously expansive misinterpretation of the Congress's power to regulate commerce among the states that was reaffirmed in the "medical marijuana" decision last week. The author of the majority opinion was none other than John Paul Stevens, who I gather is now regarded as among the court's "liverals." (I'm repelled by this all the more because, in a dissenting opinion in a case on prisoners' rights I read in 1979, Stevens wrote eloquently about how rights are inherent in the individual, not creations of the state.)

I also find that much of the left, like much of the right, has at best selective concern about individual rights. "Community" is the great buzzword, individualism now equated with selfishness, in too many supposedly leftist circles I've come upon.