NOT SPEAKING ILL OF THE DEAD

Arlen Specter is dead. He was maddening much of the time, but on some things he was right. Nina Totenberg reports:

A lot of things made him the voodoo doll of GOP conservatives: his outspoken support for abortion rights, his advocacy of civil rights legislation and, of course, the cardinal sin, his vote against the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork in 1987. Nearly two decades later, as he was about to chair hearings on the nomination of John Roberts to be chief justice, I asked him if he regretted the Bork vote.

"Absolutely not," he said. "Judge Bork had a view of the Constitution that was different from anybody else that'd ever been nominated to the court. He was doubtless a brilliant man, but he could have turned the Constitution upside down."

Given the fact that Robert Bork is the chairman of Mitt Romney's Judicial Advisory Committee, I hope President Obama quotes what Specter said about Bork in Tuesday night's debate. Maybe people will take it seriously, because it came from, y'know, a moderate.