Editorial: Conservatives no more: Supreme Court’s ruling on EPA’s right to regulate greenhouse gases is a capper on a radical term

First, a “textualist” Supreme Court majority ignored the Second Amendment clause attaching gun rights to “a well regulated Militia.” Cherry-picking history to claim that carrying a weapon has always been protected, the “conservatives” killed a century-old New York statute regulating the concealed carry of firearms and elevated a newly contrived individual right to self-defense that appears nowhere in the Constitution.

Then the majority, saying women’s right to bodily autonomy appears nowhere in the Constitution, empowered states to bar women from terminating pregnancies starting at the moment of conception, again embracing a reading of America’s past that’s not only wrong, but of dubious relevance.

The logical acrobatics make the head hurt. The Constitution’s words matter, except when they don’t. History and precedent are controlling, except when they’re not.