A test for the construtionalists

Guys like Antonin Scalia have a reputation as being very small-c conservative and capital-R Republican. Their defenders, at least one of whom frequents my comments section (there's a clue that narrows it down to, um, one person) claim that this is a mischaracterization, and that Scalia merely favours a textual approach to statutory interpretation that happens to often align with Republican positions (since the Republicans are, on balance, the more likely of the two major parties to be stuck in the eighteenth century).

This seems like a good litmus test.

(To be clear, I don't personally know the first damned thing about American constitutional law, so I'm just taking this professor's interpretation at face value. I suspect there are also plenty of legal experts arguing the opposite side, although it's interesting that the one quoted in the article seems to take a decidedly unoriginalist approach.)

A rousing and eloquent call for change from the Democratic nominee

Just not the nominee you're thinking of.

Was Gore speaking like this in 2000? Because that's not how I remember it. For my money, this is much better than Obama's DNC speech - outstanding rhetoric, important instances of substance, and (a personal bugbear of mine) respectful towards opponents.

Gore's probably overselling his candidate, but it's pretty tough to argue after hearing this that there aren't important differences between Obama and the status quo, and that Obama wasn't on the right side of those differences.