Ms. Greenhouse's op-ed is chock full of the self-righteousness that has become abolitionism's principal inventory. But I want to focus here on Doug's title, because it wonderfully captures abolitionism's second-most copious commodity  --  deceit.

First, as Ms. Greenhouse surely knows at some level of cognition, for the Supreme Court to base its jurisprudence on alleged (or real) popular disenchantment is the opposite of what it exists to do.  The expression of popular will is for the political branches, not the courts.  Were it otherwise, Obamacare, which has been in the public approval dumpster for quite some time, would, under the Greenhouse theory, have gone down the SCOTUS tubes long ago.  But Ms. Greenhouse said only two months ago that that the Court should keep hands off.

If Ms. Greenhouse were a judge, this would be called "result orientation," but, may God be praised, she isn't.

Second, in fact the country is, not only not disenchanted with capital punishment, it favors the death penalty by just short of two-to-one.  Such robust approval exceeds, to pick one example out of the air, the confidence it has in newspapers. 

Liberals used to vote against hypocrisy, before they voted for it.