BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG
by Mark Karlin
Editor and Publisher

June 30, 2008

Antonin Scalia is Rush Limbaugh's high I.Q. alter ego; in short, Nino is a partisan hack and fabulist.

We once chastised Harry Reid for saying -- after Rehnquist's death and before Roberts' nomination -- that Scalia was so brilliant that he might make an okay Supreme Court Chief Justice, even if Reid disagrees with his decisions.  Good grief!

Scalia Gives the Media the Italian Finger

The reality is that Scalia is a totally partisan creature, who follows legal precedent and so called "original intent" only when it suits his right wing bias.  But since the actual Constitution and legal precedent rarely support a radical agenda, Scalia is reduced to fabulist statements and legal circumlocutions that are so dishonestly twisted that they would make Nino the equivalent of a circus contortionist.

Take Scalia's lead decision on overturning more than 230 years of precedent on the Second Amendment.  Okay, let's repeat that, if Nino is a so-called "strict constructionist," how could he lead a band of right wing GOP partisans in a brazen act of legal activism by overturning the combined legal legacy of all the Supreme Courts that preceded him and his gang from the beginning of the nation until now?

Easy, Scalia pretty much ignored the Constitutional convention debates that serve as the battle ground for interpreting the Constitution, ignored the legal precedent of the Court that he sits on, and -- instead -- brought up an inane, bizarre argument right out of the NRA that isn't even in the Constitution: self-defense in the home (which Scalia anecdotally described in the most rabid NRA fashion of a man with a locked-up handgun dialing 911. Uh, did they even have handguns or telephones during the American Revolution?) Alas, the self-defense in the home issue isn't even in the Second Amendment, but that's of no hindrance to a man on a mission: Antonin Scalia.

Scalia also cited English laws before the American Revolution, as if we didn't have a revolution.  Scalia isn't a "strict constructionist": to him revolution is a dangerous word.  He wants to return to an English monarchy style of government.

And of course there's Scalia's aversion to common sense.  Okay, if you ban a handgun, but allow rifles, how are you denying an individual right to bear arms, even if you accept that as an "absolute" right?  There were no modern handguns during the revolutionary period.  Is Scalia telling us that the framers of the Constitution could see 230 years ahead and put in a few words in the Second Amendment that every American has a right to a semi-automatic Beretta? But thinking in a rational sort of way is not Scalia's specialty nor is it of much interest to him.  He is a political creature who dons himself in judicial flourishes that would be comical if they weren't so pernicious to democracy and our Constitution.

Then, Scalia wrote an opinion that we should deny habeas corpus to men in Guantanamo because "30" already have returned to the "battlefield."  Where does Nino get his "facts", from the same place Bush and Cheney claimed that Saddam Hussein was tight as a bug with Osama bin-Laden? 

What's more Scalia ignored the countless Guantanamo inmates who have been determined not to be terrorists but got caught up in a somewhat random dragnet and falsely denounced by people who were paid to identify likely Al-Qaeda members. 

Oh, and let's not forget the infamous and mind-boggling 2000 election.  Remember when Scalia stopped the recount in Florida, took away Constitutionally guaranteed State's Rights in elections, overturned a conservative Atlanta-based federal appellate court, and declared -- more or less -- that if Al Gore won the recount it would hurt the reputation of George W. Bush, because Scalia was going to make sure that he "won" anyway -- and he did.  Then he made sure that the eventual ruling only applied to Florida, because, of course, it wasn't grounded in the Constitution. (He told a British paper [1] this weekend  that the ruling was Al Gore's fault. We are not making this up.)

Scalia's decisions are a marvel, as if he were a highly biased law student asked to make his or her best case for defending the indefensible, after being told that he could use any law that they wanted -- even if it wasn't relevant -- if he made it sound "smart."  And he would also be able to toss in their personal thoughts, arrogance, scorn, and tall tales.

There's so much more to be said about the University of Chicago Law School version of Rush Limbaugh, including when he gave the press the finger (such a well-mannered Federalist, Nino is.)

But we'll conclude with a true story we recall of Scalia speaking to a synagogue in Alabama two or three years back.  He assured them that there was no fear for America becoming a "Christian nation" (oh, yes, of course, that would mean that Scalia doesn't believe in the separation of church and state enshrined in the Constitution.).  Scalia comforted the congregants with the statement that no Christian leader had ever made the Jews suffer.

Is this man completely bonkers? You know in a Unabomber or Ted Bundy sort of way?

The guy is so delusional he doesn't remember Hitler, the Spanish Inquisition, and the long line of Christian nations and leaders under which the Jews suffered.

Good grief.

Rush Limbaugh is starting to sound downright sensible compared to Scalia. 

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

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