The general consensus seems to be that last night's results settled the Democratic nomination fight. But I'm not exactly sure why that is.

For months now--since South Carolina--it has been pretty obvious which states Obama would win and which Clinton would carry. It seemed clear all along that Obama would win North Carolina comfortably and that Clinton would take Indiana by a close margin. And that's what happened yesterday. So why all the talk about how the race is finished now? Look: If you believed that the nomination fight was signed, sealed, and delivered before yesterday, that's a perfectly reasonable position and the results only confirm your theory. After all, because of the way Democrats apportion delegates, the pledged delegate lead has been out of Clinton's reach since early February--something everyone watching the campaign has long understood. But if you thought that Clinton had a small, but viable, chance to sway superdelegates at the convention by making the case of a popular vote victory, then I'm not sure how last night changed anything.

In other words, it's not clear how yesterday changes anything. The candidates performed roughly to expectations and the next three weeks are going to be a gauntlet for Obama as he gets clobbered in one place after another--all while being touted as "The Nominee." What has been Clinton's gambit since February--her attempt to be leading at least two of the popular vote counts by the time of the convention--will finally be given the chance to mature as she has a string of contests with very favorable demographics. It seems to me that there's no reason for her to quit now and every reason for her to stay in the race. And that this gambit has as much chance of succeeding today as it did on Monday.

The future direction of the Supreme Court is very much at stake in this November’s presidential election. The two or three justices most likely to depart the Court over the next four years -- Justice Stevens, Justice Ginsburg, and possibly Justice Souter -- are liberal judicial activists who routinely read their own policy preferences into the Constitution and who selectively regard their own favored precedents as sacrosanct. If a President Obama or a President Clinton names their successors, the slender operating majority on the Court for liberal activist results on most contentious political issues is likely to be preserved for at least another generation. By contrast, a president committed to nominate, and fight for, justices who will practice judicial restraint offers real hope that the Court may soon be restored to its proper role in our constitutional system. In his speech today, John McCain has provided encouraging evidence that he would be that president. One speech, of course, does not a campaign -- or a Supreme Court appointment -- make. John McCain needs to continue to make the case for judicial restraint and to draw the stark contrast between his views and his Democratic opponent’s on the proper role of the judiciary. If elected, he will need to populate key judge-picking positions -- including the White House counsel and the attorney general -- with experienced advisers committed to his stated goals. (We would rest easier if he threw out a few names now.) And he will need to be ready to devote a lot of political capital to defeat intransigent Democratic opposition in the Senate. Conservatives, for their part, need to do what we can to help McCain live up to his promises.

The mischief began 40 years ago in the case Griswold v. Connecticut, when the Court struck down a prohibition on contraceptives on the basis of a "right to marital privacy." The bit about "marital" was quickly dropped, and the new discovery became a general right to privacy.

In Griswold, the Court suggested the right might be found in the First, Third, Fourth, Fifth and/or Ninth Amendments. In other words, it must be there somewhere, anywhere. But since the right to privacy is nowhere mentioned, the Court had to contend that it resides in "penumbras formed by emanations." In layman's terms, that means in partial shadows formed by emissions, which it doesn't take a constitutional scholar to conclude sounds pretty vaporous.

If Connecticut's contraceptive law was outdated and purposeless, the answer was simple: for voters to overturn it. Both the dissenters in the case, Justices Hugo Black and Potter Stewart noted that they opposed the Connecticut policy, but that didn't make it unconstitutional.