Letters to the Editor
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Scalia's Self-Serving Nonsense
Scalia abandoned his strict constructionist, states rights principles when sticking to his principles might keep a Republican from being elected president. Scalia is a cheap Republican hack, masquerading as a Supreme Court justice, and anyone who claims that he has any integrity is a liar or a fool.
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Scalia
For all the Republicans and other Conservatives talk about bringing morality back to Washington, none of them seems able to tell the plain, unvarnished truth. An explanation from Justice Scalia about the Supreme Court intervention into the 2000 election is only somewhat true. He conveniently leaves out the parts that don't bolster his case and don't make the Dems look bad.
Everyone in this administration has been untruthful about the Iraq war - why we got into it, how it's going and how we'll get out. The Plame case has a lot of evasion and inconsistency about it.
Of course then we have Abramoff and everywhere that will lead. I hope all the evangelical republicans take a good hard look at the people they elected and decide if this is the path they want to stay on. Oh, I forgot, all GW, Dick C. et al have to say is "Abortion bad" and they are doing God's work.
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More on that dinner
It was "off the record," and Al Franken went to it. (Interesting that this paper did not feel bound by that embargo.) Al stayed away from what Scalia said at the dinner, except that he talked to Scalia after his speech-- presumably on the record-- and asked him, if he's such a strict contructionist, and an originalist, then why is he against abortion, since it wasn't against the law when the Constitution was passed. "You're wrong," said Scalia. Except he wasn't. Abortion wasn't illegal until about 1850, apparently. So, Al said, he was delighted that the originalist was obviously going to change his stand! (Heavy Irony)
I used to think the Scalias of this world were honest, and had a logical case to make. I no longer believe so. They want what they want, for religious or ideological reasons, much of it pickling in hatred inside them, and they'll say anything -- anything -- to get their way.
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Scalia is a Republican Toadie
Scalia is a cheap political hack (or is this redundant?)
His behavior begs the question of why Supreme Court justices should be appointed for life.
No CEO is appointed for life in this free-market, free-thinking society. So, why should anyone in the judiciary be appointed for life?
Why is it that there is a "welfare" mentality in the appointment of Supreme Court justices?
Scalia -- the best buddy of Cheney -- can rant all he wants. He seems to forget, however, that he is being paid by the American taxpayer. He was appointed on the assumption that he would be intellectually honest.
His record certainly speaks for the fact that he is a Republican shill.
So why should the taxpayer subsidize such a person?
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Scalia: Al Gore made me do it
How much of these facts even get reported in the MSM? Those MSM outlets which report things
like this, with factchecking right in the story,
should be bought and subscribed to. Those which don't should be abandoned, avoided, and de-subscribed from. The Corporate Fascist MSM will
have to be exterminated station by station, network by network, paper by paper, reporter's job
by reporter's job.
Could any Constitutional Lawyers be invited to
write articles about how or why Scalia might be
legally impeachable and removable from the Supreme
Court for these anti-Constitution acts and decisions? Or why he can't be, if that is the
Constitutional Lawyer Consensus?
And if he can be, then why don't the Authentic
Democrats who believe such an impeachment would
be necessary to the political decontamination
process go ahead and run on that, among other
things? If there are enough Authentic Democrats
to function as an Authentic Opposition, I hope they abandon the Brandname Establishment Democrats
to their fate, which hopefully would be extinction
from political existence. They could form an
Authentic Democratic Party. That way we would at
least see how many or few people want a genuine
decontamination of politics and government here.
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Ballots, shmallots...
It continues to baffle me why middle-of-the-road Americans debate the 2000 Florida vote-counting question as if it were about legal technicalities.
As I understand the issue, Katherine Harris disenfranchised many thousands of black voters, as has been reported by Greg Palast among others. I have looked for any reasonable denial of this assertion, and found none.
So - why does not enrage other Americans as it does myself? Scalia ought to be livid that corruption at a senior level in Florida changed the result of a US presidential election - but he doesn't seem to be that concerned about it. Perhaps that's because he's not really, or at least not at heart, a supreme court justice.
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Impeach Scalia; Interrogate Alito over Bush v. Gore
So Justice Scalia now says that the issue in Bush v. Gore was "whether Florida's Supreme Court or the United States Supreme Court [would decide the election]." The best you can say for Scalia, I guess, is that when he gets around to revising history, he at least becomes candid about his own motivation in this most unconstitutional of decisions.
Of course, back in 2000, he was trying to put a nice legalistic face on it. Here's what he described as the issues when he voted to impose a stay on the Florida Supreme Court's decision and grant certiorari:
The issue is not, as the dissent puts it, whether "[c]ounting every legally cast vote ca[n] constitute irreparable harm." One of the principal issues in the appeal we have accepted is precisely whether the votes that have been ordered to be counted are, under a reasonable interpretation of Florida law, "legally cast vote[s]." * * * Another issue in the case, moreover, is the propriety, indeed the constitutionality, of letting the standard for determination of voters' intent-dimpled chads, hanging chads, etc.- vary from county to county, as the Florida Supreme Court opinion, as interpreted by the Circuit Court, permits.
Of course, the first issue was nonsense-- Scalia would never assert in any other case that the SCOTUS has any role to play whatsoever in interpreting state law. And Alan Dershowitz made short work (in Supreme Injustice) of demonstrating that Scalia's equal protection concern was insincere in light of his prior opinions.
As I wrote in a letter to Salon back in 2000:
I would ask anyone who still believes in the judicial integrity of the conservative justices of the Supreme Court to please offer a sensible explanation of why, if the majority was so genuinely concerned about the equal protection implications of conducting recounts under differing standards, did not a single justice dissent from the court's denial of certiorari in the Bush campaign's petition appealing the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal's denial of their emergency motion for an injunction pending appeal of the district court's decision against Bush on the equal protection clause issue. The issue, which on Dec. 12 was a deal-breaker for the Supreme Court given the lack of time remaining under the artificial deadline they imposed, was squarely before the court when it denied that petition on Nov. 24, nearly three weeks previously. What changed between November 24 and Dec. 12? Was there an Equal Protection Clause epiphany? Or was it merely the increased risk that Bush's coronation might somehow go awry?
Democrats should not settle merely for letting this recent statement complete the job of tarnishing the reputations of Scalia, O'Connor, Rehnquist, Thomas, and Kennedy. Upon retaking the Congress, they should move to impeach and try Scalia for his now-admitted constitutional crime.
Approaching the fifth anniversary of this usurpation, we can best remember the Constitution by instead remembering this lesson of deceit as we approach the Senate's consideration of Samuel Alito. And since it is commonplace now for Court nominees to refuse to provide their personal opinions on cases that might come before the Court, Bush v. Gore's self-limitation can be used against it. The Court famous and unprecedented caveat that its equal protection ruling would be limited to the case before it, and the unique circumstances of that case, make the questions of federalism and equal protection fair game to ask Judge Alito how he would have ruled.
Ultimately, I hope that the Democrats will find the courage to filibuster Alito. Even prior to any public hearing, he has demonstrated moral cowardice and a Scalia-like willingness to deceive America by simultaneously renouncing the relevance of his prior stated opinions while refusing to provide assurances that he recognizes the trends in constitutional law over the last 100 years-- the right of privacy being an important one, but dwarfed in comparison to the recognition of the federal government's role to govern interstate commerce and protect civil rights. The Democrats need to wake up to the fact that the ambition of Scalia, Alito, Janice Rogers Brown, and other Federalists is no less than the reversing of decades of Court precedent, and a return to the era of the Robber Barons. For them, Roe v. Wade is just a rallying flag for a battle they are waging for much bigger, and more destructive goals.