Perhaps Alito isn't so hostile to Roe, or at least to parts of it. After all, his wife plainly believes in the vitality of one element of the Court's decision: the CRYER exception to mootness.

Perhaps the "Anti-federalist Society" was perceived as confusing to people not well versed in 18th century American history.

I for one welcome a debate based on ideas. Not least of which is the reason that public policy should be formulated from good ideas, not from bad ideas borne by appealing messengers.

I also suspect that few senators want to take a chance of being embarassed by arguing law and public policy against an intellectual heavyweight like the average supreme court nominee. The truth is that socialism and intrusive government dont dovetail well with any reasonable reading of the constition. Short of scripting the entire conversation, it will be very difficult to engage in a policy discussion with an intelligent Federalist Society member without various obvious and painful contradictions being raised.

WTF is it with Miss Jeckyll 'n' Hyde? She writes such excellent, sensible, witty stuff as this, and then, not a day later, turns around and writes some turgid humorless lecture as sententious as the declamations of a newly-crowned Miss America, and as full of long-range perspective as the mating season croak of a horny arroyo toad. Weird.

I don't always agree with Dahlia Lithwick's point of view, but she can turn a phrase. I also recommend her narrative account of the recent oral arguments in Ayotte, if only for its entertainment value.

Politics have always corrupted language. The original concept of federalism was an idea opposed to centralism, but the advocates of centralism stole a march and called themselves the Federalists, leaving the federalists ironically to call themselves Anti-Federalists. This wasn't a very good name for a political party, so the Anti-Federalists (federalists) became the Democratic Republicans, which was a cumbersome title for a philosophy that was, essentially, whiggism, and it was usually shortened as Republicans, until Andrew Jackson and after that they were renamed Democrats. So the centralists had been losing ground to the whigs, and briefly formed a new party called the Whigs (which they were not). The Whig party fell apart and became the Republicans.

Are we confused yet?

It's also true that both the original Federalists and today's incarnation seem to prefer a strong Executive and distrust populism. Further, I think Jefferson would have been at home in the modern Democratic Party. He was personally rather an intellectual imperialist and dedicated theoretician, fonder of the glorious phrase and dedication to high principle than to grubby empirical reality and taking decisive, if imperfectly conceived and execute action. His adherence to the French Revolutionaries long past the time they turned into bloody despots is only the most salient evidence.

Remember the adjective: Today it's the New Federalism.

I recall during the early 1980s I asked a senior aide in the U.S. House of Representatives what members thought of the "New Federalism." He replied, "Most of these guys have served in statehouses, and they know that if you lined up all the jerks in the world, the first ten of them would be state legislators."

Having seen the inside of a couple of statehouses during their biennial rut, I had to laugh. But I also thought a similar remark might be made about the inhabitants of the federal legislature. I wasn't around in 1787, but I suspect those folks were also human.

I always figured that Federalist was simply meant to signify originalism. Like all needed to interpret the Constitution could be found in the text and the Federalist papers.

PS: it amuses us Federalists to no end when the American Constitution Society tries to emulate us but invites lots of people with bad hair to speak at its conventions. They completely miss the point. It's well and good to talk about ideas, politics, constitutional issues, etc., but without soft, luxuriant hair it's all meaningless.

"Federalist" in 1787 actually meant "having soft luxuriant hair suitable for petting." So I think the name is totally appropriate.

On the contrary, only Democratic Republicans sported "soft luxuriant hair suitable for petting." Recall, Federalists like Justice Cushing plumped for the powdered wig. Obviously, that's because they couldn't compete with Jefferson's fabulous mop. And why else would he advise ditching the darn thing? "For heaven's sake, discard the monstrous wig which makes the English judges look like rats peeping through bunches of oakum."

As we do our history lessons, we often hear about Hamilton, Madison and Jefferson, but forget the Father of the Bill of Rights, George Mason, an anti-federalist.

The Democrat party was founded in 1792 by Thomas Jefferson as the Democratic Republican Party and was referred to as the Republican Party. The Democrat Party we know today was a split off from the party of Jefferson and Madison, under the leadership of Andrew Jackson and Martin Van Buren. Any party claim to Jefferson and Madison by today's democrats is very loose, as Jackson was not an admirer of either, and neither of them would support the social programs in place today.

The Federalist Party was a separate party that disintegrated in 1816. The Whig Party existed from 1832 to 1856.

The Republican Party we know today came into being in 1854, basically on an anti-slavery platform and were considered Hamiltonians, socially conservative and neo-liberal economically. They tried to model it after Adams' and Clay's National Republican Party and Jefferson's Democratic Republican Party. History allows both parties to lay claim to Jefferson.

Probably the most bastardized word in politics is 'liberal'. The right has turned it into a slur, the left has totally changed its meaning. Liberalism, in the classic sense, is a conservative ideology, with its foundational tenets being individual freedom, socially and economically, and limited government. Today's progressive movement has sought to usurp the word, but more accurately would be described as neo-socialism or neo-Marxism. There is not much in the progressive movement that represents liberalism in its true form.

Herbert Storing's Anti-Federalist Papers (which I think are out of print) or Library of America's edition of the Anti-Federalist Papers by Charles Baylin are an excellent -- and inexpensive -- read. They should be read by everyone interested in understanding the founding debates about the role of government. The person I think most interesting in the founding generation is George Clinton (governor of New York, not psychodelic funk guy) and there are, I believe several books that discuss his role in shaping our Republic.

Actually, Akhil Amar had a great article a couple of years ago in, I think, the William and Mary Quarterly on the legacy of the anti-Federalists to Constitutional interpretation.

Finally, a good read is Saul Cornell's The Other Founders. While I think that Cornell (the head of Ohio State's "gun studies" institute) is a bit biased towards socialism and tries to fit the Antis into that mold even when unwarranted, the book is very interesting nonetheless.