From Patterico’s Pontifications: apparently, Obama’s approval ratings and Monica Lewinsky have a lot in common. People who were squeamish about the Bush Administration’s actions towards terrorists must be absolutely irate over the current crowd’s manhandling of the Americans next door.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration intends to radically change the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. This naturally reveals, yet again, the folly of this business of the centralisation of power: the changing of the guard in Washington should not change so much about people’s daily lives.

On a philosophical level, the difference between modern conservative civil rights and modern liberal “civil rights” movements is not, as the NYT proclaims, to be one about the availability (or lack thereof) of evidence of intentional discrimination: it is about individual civil liberties. The progressives believe that membership in a politically favoured group is a basis for a civil rights action; conservatives focus on ensuring that human beings are not oppressed by a hostile government.

Carrie Prejean is suing the Pageant for religious discrimination (HT: Volokh). While I would like to think that this is a case designed to put liberals in a bind – giving them the choice between endorsing Miss Prejean or complaining about lawsuits that infringe upon the rights and actions of private entities – it could just as easily be one that ends up further eroding religious liberty. That clause of the Constitution is already applied with less vigour than other elements of the First Amendment, as its only liberal champions are prisoners who use it to vindicate their temper tantrums.

More nerdy fun from Volokh.