Ed Whelan has some thoughts on The Corner about Supreme Court justice David Souter's retirement:

[I]n coming years, Souter’s replacement may well provide the fifth vote for:

— the imposition of a federal constitutional right to same-sex marriage;

— stripping “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance and completely secularizing the public square;

— the continued abolition of the death penalty on the installment plan;

— selectively importing into the Court’s interpretation of the American Constitution the favored policies of Europe’s leftist elites;

— further judicial micromanagement of the government’s war powers; and

— the invention of a constitutional right to human cloning.