May 18, 2010 5:01PM # George W. Bush Is Not Missed By [Tim Lynch](https://www.cato.org/people/tim-lynch) --- SHARE An atrocious ruling from the Supreme Court yesterday in *United States v. Comstock,* as has been [noted](https://www.cato.org/2010/05/17/supreme-court-further-reduces-constitutional-limits-on-federal-power/). It is no real surprise that the liberals on the Court ruled the way they did. They believe in big government and need a way to get around a Constitution that set up a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. Thus, we are told a “living” Constitution “evolves” in such a way as to accomodate the administrative state that is all around us. But the law at issue in the *Comstock* case did not arise during the Clinton years. The Adam Walsh Child Protection Act was championed by conservative legislators in the Congress and signed by Bush. Until the *Comstock* ruling was issued, court watchers were unsure of how committed Bush’s Supreme Court picks (Roberts and Alito) were to the constitutional doctrine of enumerated powers. The answer has now arrived: Not much. As the Bush memoir makes its way to the bookstores, I expect there will be a good deal of [spin](http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2010/02/bush_miss_me_yet_billboard_is.html) about how good the Bush presidency was. Well, it wasn’t. More [here](http://store.cato.org/index.asp?fa=ProductDetails&method=cats&scid=43&pid=1441337), [here](https://www.cato.org/pubs/chapters/republican_revolution_chap15_tlynch.pdf), and [here](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=6330). ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Constitutional Law](https://www.cato.org/constitutional-law), [Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies](https://www.cato.org/robert-levy-center-constitutional-studies) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).