Dean turns right?

Howard Dean has made for an interesting leader of the National Democratic Party. He continues to say outrageous things that the mainstream media reports without challenge. For example, criticizing a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision:

"The president and his right-wing Supreme Court think it is ‘okay’ to have the government take your house if they feel like putting a hotel where your house is,” Dean said, not mentioning that until he nominated John Roberts to the Supreme Court this week, Bush had not appointed anyone to the high court.

Dean’s reference to the “right-wing” court was also erroneous. The four justices who dissented in the Kelo vs. New London case included the three most conservative members of the court - Chief Justice William Rehnquist and Associate Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Sandra Day O’Connor was the fourth dissenter.

The court’s liberal coalition of Justices John Paul Stevens, David Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer combined with Justice Anthony Kennedy to form the majority opinion, allowing the city of New London, Conn., to use eminent domain to seize private properties for commercial development.

“We think that eminent domain does not belong in the private sector. It is for public use only,” Dean said.

One blogger astutely noted:

So, at a time when the nomination of a Supreme Court Justice is one of the hottest stories in the news, the head of the Democrat party makes an impassioned speech that (though he doesn’t realize it) is an argument for more conservative Justices in the mold of Scalia and Thomas.