Is That Legal?

promotes its agenda and offers networking opportunities? Like the KKK did in its heyday?

There may be a few Federalist Society members who are nothing but "idealists", who sit around and gab. The vast majority are exceptionally powerful, very well placed within the Republican party, and are quite dogmatic (if not 'true believers') about their so called positions. They view themselves in the Marxian tradition that the point is to "change" the world and history, not to understand it. Hold on to your "non worries" all you like, these are dangerous people with concrete for brains, who will advance their agenda by any means possible.

Well, there wouldn't be so much of it if Republicans were proud and honest about their membership. Honestly, if Roberts had gotten the question right the first time, it'd be a kvetch: this is a gotcha.

No, Jonathan, this is no longer a "gotcha." The NYT article to which I linked is full of substantive worries about the Federalist Society itself; it refers to Roberts' apparent equivocation on membership only in passing.

This is, instead, an effort to make membership in the Federalist Society look inherently suspicious. Which it isn't.

Gosh, comparing the Fed Soc to the KKK... is there some subset of Godwin's Law that covers that? Or maybe Charles & Boyles' law - the law about hot air expanding to fill the available space - covers it.

I've always found that your writing and analysis is strongly textual. The rigorous and scholarly bent to your writing has more in common with legal conservative approaches to the law, than to the tea leaf and chicken bone reading methods proposed by Dworkin and others of that sort.

Uh oh... you're not one a them secret Federalisses, and "passing" for a legal liberal, are you?

The Federalists view themselves in the "marxian tradition"? yeah, That makes a lot of sense