1. Obama is a progressivist in the sense that the history of our country is progress toward full implementation of the Constitution’s egalitarian principles. He didn’t say anything, though, that would suggest he beleives that the principles themselves progress. At the level of principle, he might be called an originalist.

2. An evangelical, Joe Carter, judged Obama to be a heretic. That same way of judging might conclude American Protestanism has been rife with soft forms of liberationist heresy, I will admit. I will add that African-American theology, from the beginning, was about both otherworldly and this-worldly liberation. But Rev. Wright’s church’s theology of liberation is far from soft and very one-dimensional.

3. Although I remain almost as impressed with Obama’s distancing speech as David Tucker and Steve Thomas, Rev. Wright will continue to be a problem for Barack, one that may send waffling evangelical and orthodox Christians back to McCain. It seems to me that it would really help McCain to put an evangelical (and I don’t mean Huck at this point) on the ticket. Right now, I’m sensing that many evangelicals don’t regard the choice between a theologian of liberation and a Zeussian as very appealing. A candidate’s religion shouldn’t be a factor in voting, unless that religion makes insistent political claims.

4. I’m still virtually certain that the Democrats won’t be able to deny Obama the nomination. Nonetheless, as Peter S. pointed out, Hillary’s lead is lengthening in PA, and the most recent study has her tied in NC. The combination of a Hillary landslide in PA and a victory in NC could throw the party into genuine turmoil.

5. Both sides in the Second Amendment case before the Court are talking originalism. But it’s sometimes hard to know what originalism is. Randy Barnett--the one doing the most celebrating about it being so back in fashion--thinks that a true originalist would regard both LOCHNER and ROE as rightly decided. Some so-called originalists are big-time, promiscuous judicial activists. But surely the original constitutional view included a much more modest place for judicial view than almost everybody today (well, not Scalia and the Scalia-ites) thinks.