In the process of lavishing some (deserved) hero worship on Justice Stevens, the WashPost lets slip a hush-hush truth about our Supreme Court

There's some good news for those of us who are, as I've taken to describing it, to the left of Chuck Hagel. (This isn't intended at all as a facetious distinction, given the frequency with which Hagel distinguishes himself from the cadre of Senate wingnut zombies with flashes of principle and even occasional independent action.) In today's Washington Post profile of Justice John Paul Stevens, we learn that the justice, closing in on his 86th birthday, is in robust mental and physical health.

I expect I don't have to underline the significance of Justice Stevens' continued tenure on the Supreme Court. In fact, Charles Lane's Post piece is quite informative about the role he has played building coalitions to beat back the forces of darkness on the current Court.

No, what caught my attention was the rare acknowledgment that not only isn't Stevens a "liberal," but in fact there aren't any real liberals on the Court. Oh, Post reporter Lane does refer carelessly, in describing Stevens' understanding of the Court's internal dymanics, to "the liberals" on the Court. (The reference would be fine if "the liberals" were in quotes, since it refers to what we might call the "relatively liberal" bloc.) But he also allows a source he quotes to slip in the little-heralded truth while talking about Stevens:

"'He's a remarkable figure,' said Dennis Hutchinson, a law professor and Supreme Court historian at the University of Chicago. 'If you looked at his first three or four years on the court, you'd say he was a quirky middle-of-the-roader with no vision and not interested in playing the game. But 30 years later, he's moved into a very influential position. On a court with no true liberals in the '60s sense of the word, he's gotten as much out of the court in terms of left-wing results as anyone could.'"

There's certainly no question about conservatives on the Court. We already know that it contains two of the most rabidly extreme right-wingers to be found outside institutional care, and that the two newest members are, at the very least, several epochs more conservative than the late Barry Goldwater.

At present, the justice who seems most frequently in the crosshairs of the loony right is poor Anthony Kennedy, the loons' latest Judas. Yet I have no doubt that Kennedy thinks of himself as solidly and totally conservative. For that matter, I imagine that David Souter thinks of himself as a conservative too.

It's just useful to remember that, at a time when the far right's coercive power is exceeded only by its paranoia and delusional sense of persecution, the liberals it fantasizes holding power everywhere are nowhere to be found on the Supreme Court. Being to the left of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas and John Roberts and Sammy Alito doesn't make you "liberal." It makes you minimally brain-functional.