Scalia's Retirement Has Started Early-By Charles P Pierce-'He's really just a heckler at this point'
Tony Scalia's Retirement Has Started Early
By Charles P. Pierce
at 3:47PM
Here's the deal. I think Justice Antonin Scalia isn't even really trying any more. It's been clear for some time now that he's short-timing his job on the Supreme Court. The job bores him. All these inferior intellects coming before him. All those inferior intellects on the bench with him, now with some other Catholics who aren't even as Catholic as he is, Scalia being the last living delegate who attended the Council of Trent. Inferior Catholics with inferior minds. What can a fellow do? He hung in there as long as he could, but he's now bringing Not Giving A Fuck to an almost operatic level.
His "originalism" was always a shuck, even if it was consistent, which it rarely was, and even if it was principled, which it never was. Bush v. Gore was proof enough of that. More often, it was just an excuse for Scalia to be an arrogant bully to the people appearing before him, and to the clients out in the world that those people were representing, most of whom were unworthy of the time that Scalia and his mighty mind had to devote to their petty little grievances. But at least, for a while, he actually tried to act like a judge in a democratic republic, and not the lost Medici pope. Reports pop up periodically that he's bored, that he's unsatisfied, that he knows he'll never be Chief, so he'd rather just chuck it all and go teach, and write, and flip off the occasional tabloid reporter. Now, though, it appears that the man has pretty much checked out without going through the formality of resigning from the bench.
It is plain now that Scalia simply doesn't like the Affordable Care Act on its face. It has nothing to do with "originalism," or the Commerce Clause, or anything else. He doesn't think that the people who would benefit from the law deserve to have a law that benefits them. On Tuesday, he pursued the absurd "broccoli" analogy to the point where he sounded like a micro-rated evening-drive talk-show host from a dust-clotted station in southern Oklahoma. And today, apparently, he ran through every twist and turn in the act's baroque political history in an attempt to discredit the law politically, rather than as a challenge to its constitutionality. (What in hell does the "Cornhusker Kickback" yet another term of art that the Justice borrowed from the AM radio dial have to do with the severability argument? Is Scalia seriously making the case that a banal political compromise within the negotiations from which bill eventually is produced can affect its ultimate constitutionality? Good luck ever getting anything passed if that's the standard.) He's really just a heckler at this point. If he can't do any better than that, he's right. Being on the court is a waste of his time.
Read more: http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/scalia-retires-7675276#ixzz1qVwQoQ2u
sinkingfeeling
(51,457 posts)tularetom
(23,664 posts)flamingdem
(39,313 posts)Brian Kay · The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Once again paraphrasing, Scalia is a stupid person's idea of what a Supreme Court justice should act like.
Reply · 37 · Like · Follow Post · 20 hours ago
John L Bush · Top Commenter · Virginia Tech
I have never understood why "some say" that this man is a "towering intellect". A "brilliant" juris prude. He seems to me to be a colossal bully and to have a realy petty and small mind. Originalism and strict constitutionalism seems like a crock and a fancy smancy way of saying I can do whatever the hell I want and don't have to think very hard. He should be tarred and feathered and ran out of town on a rail...
Reply · 16 · Like · Follow Post · 20 hours ago
Rick Massimo · Top Commenter · George Washington University
"I have never understood why "some say" that this man is a "towering intellect". A "brilliant" juris prude. He seems to me to be a colossal bully and to have a realy petty and small mind."
The people who think he's a towering intellect are colossal bullies with really petty and small minds. That's how.
"Originalism and strict constitutionalism seems like a crock and a fancy smancy way of saying I can do whatever the hell I want and don't have to think very hard."
Originalism and strict constructionism are pseudo-intellectual attempts to turn the Constitution into the Bible: A document written by an infallible being whose will only a certain elite group can divine, which they will then translate into rules that you must obey.
Reply · 30 · Like · 20 hours ago
Weldon Berger · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Legal Counsel at The Brobdingnagian Institute for Very Large Minds
Same reason Dana Milbank described Lindsey Graham as a leading GOP thinker. Context is everything.
Reply · 10 · Like · 20 hours ago
Kim Casey · Top Commenter
Rick Massimo: "Originalism and strict constructionism are pseudo-intellectual attempts to turn the Constitution into the Bible: A document written by an infallible being whose will only a certain elite group can divine, which they will then translate into rules that you must obey."
I am so using that without attribution. Take it to the supreme court mofo.
(kidding, props to you well said)
Reply · 6 · Like · 18 hours ago
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Davis Statton · Top Commenter · LSU
I take satisfaction in that he will go down in history as a political hack and not the the legal scholar be thinks he is.
Reply · 11 · Like · Follow Post · 20 hours ago
Nathan Swick · Subscribe · Top Commenter · Chapel Hill, North Carolina
To paraphrase Keynes, when he's going down in history, we'll all be dead.
Jack Hughes · Top Commenter · Houston, Texas
Scalia is on the record as saying proof of innocence is insufficient grounds to stop an execution.
The man is "legally insane" and should be removed from the Court -- kicking and screaming if necessary.
Reply · 9 · Like · Follow Post · 18 hours ago
Paul Donahue · Top Commenter
Have you got a reference for that handy, I'd like to save it as I'm sure it will come in handy around here.
Reply · Like · 16 hours ago
Kurt Weldon · Top Commenter · Los Angeles, California
He's also on record as saying it doesn't really matter if an innocent person is executed since God will take care of that person in heaven. Seriously. He said that. Out loud. In public.
Reply · 3 · Like · 13 hours ago
leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)one can hope. luv me some charley pierce you can hear him on the stephanie miller show tuesdays, i think.
DFW
(54,384 posts)He's the Fox "News" host on the Court.
No way he or his puppet retires voluntarily while there is a Democrat in the White House.
bigdarryl
(13,190 posts)starroute
(12,977 posts)By Supreme Court standards, he's practically an infant.
FSogol
(45,485 posts)Myrina
(12,296 posts)Festivito
(13,452 posts)annabanana
(52,791 posts)JohnWxy
(6,506 posts)... actually, he "checked out" on really living a long time ago. He's a conservative!