{"id":137816,"date":"2013-03-22T10:00:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-22T14:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/?p=137816"},"modified":"2013-12-09T11:28:52","modified_gmt":"2013-12-09T16:28:52","slug":"scalia-as-ugly-as-dc-gets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/03\/22\/scalia-as-ugly-as-dc-gets\/","title":{"rendered":"Scalia: As Ugly As DC Gets?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Article:<\/strong> Is Scalia the Most Vile Person in Washington?<\/em> by in Salon.<\/p>\n

\"Scalia\"<\/p>\n

The Text:<\/strong> A day after Justice Antonin Scalia caused gasps in the Supreme Court gallery by saying the 1965 Voting Rights Act had become a \u201cracial entitlement\u201d no congressperson could vote against, Rachel Maddow told The Daily Show she was in the courtroom and Scalia clearly enjoyed tormenting people. \u201cI think he does know how that sounds,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s a troll. He\u2019s saying this for effect. He knows it\u2019s offensive.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shortage of badly behaving Republicans in Washington. There\u2019s the take-or-leave-it congressional leadership, who constantly show they value rightwing ideology more than its impact on people. There are intransigent obstructionists, like the NRA\u2019s Wayne LaPierre, who believes the answer to gun violence is more guns. But Scalia isn\u2019t simply another Republican bully; he may be the most venal and fascist Republican of all.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s one thing to be a political bully and enjoy it, as Scalia does. But it\u2019s another to say that the other branches of government are broken because they\u2019re not doing things he agrees with; and then abuse the power of his office to overthrow that governance and perpetuate his legacy. That\u2019s close to how European despots acted before World War II.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s unpack what Scalia said about the 1965 Voting Rights Act with an eye to seeing his method, not just his madness. It is the same backstory to his mocking outbursts over the years, whether telling law school students asking about Bush v. Goreto \u201cget over it,\u201d or arrogantly answering questions put by other justices to lawyers\u2014such as 2008?sHeller case where he coached libertarian lawyers and then wrote the opinion that for the first time in U.S. history said the Second Amendment included a personal right to a handgun at home.<\/p>\n

Scalia has long had a visceral hatred of the democratic process. In 2000\u2019s Bush v. Gore, which awarded the presidency to George W. Bush, he could barely contain himself in telling us there was no federal constitutional right to vote for president. He\u2019s said the direct election of U.S. senators (the 17th Amendment) violated state sovereignty. After the Brady Bill created a national system of background checks for gun buyers, he wrote a majority opinion saying states didn\u2019t have to participate in that system.<\/p>\n

In all of this, Scalia boasts that he is a constitutional originalist, meaning he wants to see the law interpreted as he believes the founders intended. However, that boast falls apart when one sees that he is by far the most activist and radical of all the Court\u2019s justices. His 2008 opinion expanding Second Amendment rights is a prime example of such revisionism.<\/p>\n

The Voting Right Act<\/p>\n

Republicans have been targeting the federal Voting Rights Act for years, because in the 16 states where it is law they cannot rig voting rules to give their party an advantage. In 2006, when Congress last reauthorized the law, not one senator voted against it. The House vote was 390-33. In 2012, there were numerous lawsuits involving the VRA, where the Justice Department intervened and won on behalf of minority voters.<\/p>\n

The case that came before the Supreme Court last week focused on whether the law\u2019s strongest tool\u2014a section allowing the Justice Department or a Washington appeals court to reject changes in state voting laws\u2014should stand. Republicans had argued that the U.S. had moved into a post-racial period in elections and Section 5 was not needed. Scalia surprised everyone by deepening that argument and essentially contending that Congress did not have the guts to vote against a law that had outgrow its usefulness.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd this last enactment, not a single vote in the Senate against it. And the House is pretty much the same\u2026 I think it is attributable, very likely attributable, to a phenomenon that is called perpetuation of racial entitlement. It\u2019s been written about. Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scalia\u2019s mention of \u201cracial entitlements\u201d caused the stir in the gallery. He continued:<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think there is anything to be gained by any Senator to vote against continuation of this act. And I am fairly confident it will be reenacted in perpetuity unless\u2014unless a court can say it does not comport with the Constitution\u2026 [T]his is not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress\u2026 Even the name of it is wonderful: The Voting Rights Act. Who is going to vote against that in the future?\u201d<\/p>\n

Scalia\u2019s statements are outrageous\u2014and dangerous\u2014in so many ways. First, it presumes that only he, and not the Congress, knows what\u2019s best for American democracy. Second, it substitutes his prejudices for facts. Judges are supposed to apply the law to facts and defer to legislative history and intent, not trample it. His arrogance goes beyond mere bullying. It is the temperamant of a dictator.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat speech, even without the bile\u2014even had it been couched in, \u2018What is a judge to do?\u2019 terms\u2014is unimaginably injudicious,\u201d wrote a lawyer in an e-mail to AlterNet who did not want to be named because he appears in federal court.<\/p>\n

\u201cNever mind that the 15th Amendment gives Congress unfettered enforcement power with no reference to equal protection\u2014which Scalia didn\u2019t even invoke\u2014let alone majority protection. Never mind that those parts of the country that are subject to [the Voting Right Act\u2019s] Section 5 have kept Section 5 enforcement a thriving industry. Forget the racism. Let\u2019s assume Scalia uses the same bathroom as [Justice Clarence] Thomas. Forget that the case fits into the Republican strategy of keeping power under a fake democracy whose elements deny it even a semblance popular support and which wants to move on. Beyond all that it\u2019s jurisprudential evil.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scalia seems to be tapping the legal theory that a judge could strike down a law that\u2019s not used and force its re-enactment\u2014if Congress felt it were needed. In this case, however, the provisions under attack in this GOP-led suit against the VRA are very much used. If anything, one could argue that the law should apply to all 50 states. \u201cBut notice the difference,\u201d the anonymous lawyer told AlterNet. \u201cSection 5 is a law that is reaffirmed periodically, by increasing majorities, and it is actively and frequently enforced. So the bastard Scalia bastardizes, standing the principle on its head.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then, he does it again\u2014twisting more legal reasoning to fit his prejudices. There are famous rulings where the Supreme Court has said that tougher standards should come into play if a court might invalidate a law focused on a \u201cdiscrete and insular minority.\u201d Here, Scalia said that the congressional majorities that re-enacted the VRA in 2006 was too accomodating of racial minorities. \u201cHere, too, the bastard bastardizes\u2026 declaring that when a majority is too solicitous of such a minority\u2014in effect is caught up in the poltical correctness\u2014it\u2019s time for judges to step in and be politically incorrect, and undo the mealy-mouthed politicians.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is dangerous stuff. This is not at the same level as the GOP\u2019s politics of obstruction surrounding the federal debt that is now centerstage in Congress. Scalia has the power to rewrite the rules for who participates in American democracy and those decisions could last for decades\u2014until Congress or another Supreme Court majority reverses them.<\/p>\n

His past tirades have been extremely damaging. Scalia helped give the White House to George W. Bush by stopping Florida\u2019s 2000 recount. He was the lead voice saying the Second Amendment gives people a right to own a handgun at home, which is where most gun violence occurs. In Citizens United,he said that corporations have the same speech rights as people in certain types of political operations. And now, he wants to unravel voting rights, based on rightwing articles he\u2019s read instead of a vast congressional record.<\/p>\n

\u201cPut it in the context of all the rest [that] Scalia and men like him have done,\u201d AlterNet\u2019s legal analyst said. \u201cThey should just drop the pretense and put on armbands.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Article: Is Scalia the Most Vile Person in Washington? by in Salon. The Text: A day after Justice Antonin Scalia caused gasps in the Supreme Court gallery by saying the 1965 Voting Rights Act had become a \u201cracial entitlement\u201d no congressperson could vote against, Rachel Maddow told The Daily Show she was in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[259],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nScalia: As Ugly As DC Gets?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"When they regress to trolls, SCOTUS Justices shouldn't be revered so much as reviled.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.prosebeforehos.com\/article-of-the-day\/03\/22\/scalia-as-ugly-as-dc-gets\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" 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