David Souter
By 
Former Supreme Court justice David Souter has died.
The aftermath of the first Bush administration’s nomination of Souter, who to the shock and horror of Leonard Leo and the Integralist Jurisprudential Experience turned out to be a radical communist, aka a moderate Republican, which is to say a breed that’s now deader than disco, was a key moment in the ongoing radicalization of the Republican party.
RIP
. . . Couple of further quick thoughts: Souter was confirmed by a 90-9 vote, despite the fact that he was a basically unknown figure whose ultimate legal politics were obviously something of a wild card. Nothing remotely like that could happen today of course.
Souter retired at the extremely civilized age of 69, in order to give Barack Obama the opportunity to replace him with someone who wasn’t a radical Republican, in the new and bad sense of the term. Apparently that’s another nice thing we can’t have any more either.