Founder foundering at CNN.

Here's the teaser in the sidebar...



... for a Jeffrey Toobin piece titled "Supreme Court faces new reality on marriage equality."

The picture is of James Madison, who died in 1836. The 14th Amendment, the source of the rights asserted in the same-sex marriage cases, was adopted in 1868. 

Toobin has nothing new to say on the subject of constitutional interpretation. He says things like:

[W]hen it comes to Supreme Court decisions, it is usually safe to bet that a majority of the justices will come down on the side favored by most of the public. In any case, as we head into the argument, it looks like most of the justices have already made up their minds.

The only real problem he sees with that is that "the justices have imperfect instincts when it comes to measuring public attitudes." Oh, come on. It's not about accurate measuring of public attitudes. It's about glomming onto the best attitudes of the educated, enlightened people (without running into too much resistance from ordinary people).

Toobin's column is utterly boring, but I only have something even more boring to say about the cases that are to be argued this morning: Precedent � the cases already decided � will determine the outcome.