When he first posted his anti-Catholic tirade about the partial-birth ruling, University of Chicago law professor Geoff Stone pretended to find it “mortifying” to make the “painfully awkward observation” that the five justices in the majority are Catholic. Then Stone retreated to claiming (utterly implausibly, as I showed here) that he intended merely to “pose the question” about what role the Catholic faith of the five justices might have played. Now, in this article in today’s Washington Post, Stone says that he “meant … to be provocative.” Ah, that’s a nice excuse for ignorant bigotry. Perhaps Stone will next tell us that some of his best friends are Catholic.
But wait: In his Chicago Tribune op-ed today, Stone, slightly revising his original blog post in a number of respects, finds it “distressing” to make his “painfully awkward observation.” So I guess that we are now supposed to believe that Stone finds it distressing to be provocative in merely posing a question.