In the short run, the 'federalism revolution' of the 1990s is undeniably his most significant substantive achievement. But whether these rulings will survive in the long run, or instead be reversed, remains to be seen. It's much more likely that the Rehnquist Court's surprisingly liberal rulings -- on abortion, on gay rights, on gender -- will actually represent the most indelible legacy.

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You can't remember sex. You can remember the fact of it, and recall the setting, and even the details, but the sex of the sex cannot be remembered, the substantive truth of it, it is by nature self-erasing, you can remember its anatomy and be left with a judgment as to the degree of your liking of it, but whatever it is as a splurge of being, as a loss, as a charge of the conviction of love stopping your heart like your execution, there is no memory of it in the brain, only the deduction that it happened and that time passed, leaving you with a silhouette that you want to fill in again.

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What we are expecting from Pakistan is concrete, serious, substantive steps to deal with cross-border terrorism, and the question of terrorists who operate from Pakistan soil.

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Substantive abandonment of convention is evidence of mastery.

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