What's Important 41

Forty-first in a series.

This is from the NY Times report on the Saddleback Church "event":

Mr. Warren asked [each of the candidates] which of the sitting Supreme Court justices he would not have appointed. ... Mr. McCain, Republican of Arizona, named all the liberal judges on the court and noted that there might be several vacancies soon. “This nomination should be based on the criteria on a proven record of strictly adhering to the Constitution and not legislating from the bench,” he said.

and this little tidbit, too, though it's not as important:

Mr. Warren, who has made millions of dollars on his books, asked [them] to define “rich.” Mr. McCain said that “rich” should mean people who are happy and avoided putting a precise price tag on the term, finally jokingly tossing out a figure of $5 million.

Interestingly, the LA Times didn't think McCain was joking:

McCain took a far more discursive approach to answering the question but ultimately settled on a dramatically higher figure: "I think if you're just talking about income, how about $5 million?"

The Arizona Republican quickly added that he was "sure that comment will be distorted," and his campaign said Sunday that he was joking.

"To be fair to both of them, 'rich' is an adjective," said James P. Smith, a senior economist at the Rand Corp., a nonpartisan think thank in Santa Monica. "Economic science is not going to tell you that 'this' is the cutoff point."

Yet the $5-million level, Smith said, includes "almost nobody." Experts said that of all the households in the nation, fewer than one-tenth of 1% had an annual income of $5 million or more.