There’s a stunning four-paragraph riff in yesterday’s lead New York Times editorial that shatters the GOP line on “activist” judges.

And more importantly, it catalogues the willful lapses, about faces, and hypocritical standards that fell from Republican nominee-in-wating John McCain’s mouth during his speech at Wake Forest University Tuesday where he (surprise) pandered to the right wing.

In the speech, billed as a definitive statement on his judicial philosophy, McCain cited Bush SC appointees John Roberts and Samuel Alito as models of the kind of “strict-interpretation” judges—i.e., abortion isn’t a right—that he would name to the Court. (Never mind that the right wing likes it when judges turn into activists on behalf of dissident Christian pharmacists.)

Here’s the fortissimo four paragraphs from the NYT:

Since President Bush chose Justices Roberts and Alito, the Court has ordered Seattle and Louisville to scrap voluntary school integration, protected employers who illegally mistreat their workers, and constrained women’s right to choose and voters’ right to vote.

Mr. McCain did not mention, of course, how the Roberts-led Court blithely overruled Congress by nullifying a key part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law. He did wax nostalgic about what “the basic right of property” has meant “since the founding of America.” (He did not mention that in 1789 many women could not own property and African-Americans were property, but he did criticize the idea that values evolve over time.)

There was a moment when we were briefly cheered. Mr. McCain declared that “all the powers of the American presidency must serve the Constitution and thereby protect the people and their liberties.” We hoped that would be the start of a serious critique of how President Bush has violated cherished civil liberties: endorsing torture, ordering unlawful domestic spying and depriving detainees of the most basic right of habeas corpus.

Mr. McCain himself has eloquently criticized Mr. Bush’s policies on some of these issues, but he did not raise any of them on Tuesday.

Footnote: While the Seattle example definitely highlights a flagrant instance of right-wing activism (one of my first stories in Seattle nearly 10 years ago was about the conservative activists who were pushing the case), I do have mixed feelings about how the left, from afar, cavalierly uses the Seattle case to push its point of view.

But man, 3 Cheers for the no-nonsense takedown of Sen. McCain.