Glenn Greenwald has an interesting piece up on "judicial activism" in the court decision to not compel MSNBC to include Dennis Kucinich in this evening's Democratic debate. Basically, Kucinich sued on a "breach of contract" basis and the matter seems to have been settled — he was not included — based on the merits of that specific principle. But a lot of people who wanted him in the debates — either because he's their guy or they think he'd wound the other Democratic candidates or maybe because they just like short people — are charging "judicial activism." That is, as Greenwald notes, something a lot of folks charge any time a court decision does not yield their preferred outcome. I think he's right. The law does not always give us the results we'd like to see and it isn't always (or even often, I suspect) because judges are trying to engineer the results they'd like to see.
I caught a little of that debate, by the way. Tim Russert seemed to be trying hard to get the candidates to bash one another and they refused to do much of that…and even gave Russert a bit of hard time for trying to start trouble. At least in the portion I saw, it didn't seem like any candidate "won." The victory seemed to be for those who want to see the leading Democratic contenders stop firing at one another and to link arms to get one of their own elected. Apart from that, it wasn't of huge interest. In hindsight, the best argument for including Kucinich was that he might have gotten some squabbles going and livened things up. Of course, they could have done that by bringing in Gallagher to smash a watermelon.