While we've been talking about 'Doppler effect,' you thought you knew what 'Greenhouse effect' means, didn't you? But yesterday NPR (National Public Radio) used a different meaning.

As you may know, a US Supreme Court justice has announced her retirement (another may follow soon), so there's a vacancy or two to be filled and a person or two to be selected. Paul Rosenzweig commented.

Many justices have changed their orientation after they've taken their seats. And the judges who've changed have been conservatives who've become more liberal. The litany of conservative disappointments is a long one. [lists Earl Warren, Harry Blackman, John Paul Stevens, Anthony Kennedy, Sandra Day O'Conner, David Souter, William Brennan]

Why is that? Why do conservatives so often disappoint the presidents who appoint them? And why is this disappointment always a one-way ratchet? Why, at least in modern times, are liberals so rarely disappointed?

At the core, people want to fit it. They want to be respected and well liked by those whose opinions they value. Supreme Court justices come to Washington from around the county. And they're soon immersed in, indeed overwhelmed by, the sea of Washington elites. And lets be honest: today in Washington, the elite norm is a liberal one. So if you want to fit in in Washington, you usually fit in as a liberal.

The phenomenon is so common that frustrated conservatives even have a name for it . They call it the Greenhouse effect, named after the New York Time's influential court reporter Linda Greenhouse, whose favorable coverage is the mark of social acceptance.

PS to tsuwm: In grubbing for this on NPR's site, I ran into another report that uses one of your 'worthless' words in its very first sentence. "Washington has worked itself into quite a swivet over the impending retirement of Justice O'Conner."

"And lets be honest: today in Washington, the elite norm is a liberal one. So if you want to fit in in Washington, you usually fit in as a liberal." (Rosenzweig)

What planet is Rosenzweig living on? At a time when liberal has become a vile epithet, when Dems are getting whiplash trying to duck the label, when journalists use the term only to make derogatory observations, he thinks that the only way to fit in is as a liberal???? I want some of whatever he's smoking.