De mortuis nil nisi bonum. Of the dead, speak only good. Antonin Scalia is dead. Good.
And wicked me, how did I respond? I laughed.
After my first reflexive thought that I was relieved Scalia was dead, I collected myself and wrote the following on my Facebook page:
What I think and what I feel about the death of Justice Scalia is not entirely within my control, but what I say publicly is. My private and now my public prayer: May Antonin Scalia rest in peace. May God give comfort and consolation to all who love him.
My statement after I collected myself was genuine, as was my first thought and my spontaneous laughter at my friend's post. Sometimes we just do the best we can.
Don't be fooled by the smile and benign expression on his face.
Whenever a society adopts racial entitlements, it is very difficult to get out of them through the normal political processes. I
don’t 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 — unless a court can say it does not
comport with the Constitution. You have to show, when you are treating different States differently, that there’s a good reason for it.
That’s the — that’s the concern that those of us who — who have some
questions about this statute have. It’s — it’s a concern that this is
not the kind of a question you can leave to Congress. There are certain
districts in the House that are black districts by law just about now. And
even the Virginia Senators, they have no interest in voting against
this. The State government is not their government, and they are going
to lose — they are going to lose votes if they do not reenact the Voting
Rights Act.
Above is Justice Antonin Scalia's response to arguments in a case before the Supreme Court brought by Shelby County, Alabama, to dilute the Voting Rights Acts. How is the right to vote an entitlement? There's a history here that Scalia seems to have forgotten. Perhaps consideration might be given to strengthening the Voting Rights Act to include the entire country, as we heard many stories of attempts at voter suppression in areas outside the South during the recent election. Reducing the number of days for early voting, which results in long lines, 6 to 8 hours in some precincts, amounts to voter suppression.
Despite the low esteem with which Congress is regarded today, and despite Scalia's words to the contrary, it's still the duty of the legislative branch to pass laws in the country.
Anyway, I'll let Rachel Maddow on the Jon Stewart show have the last word on Scalia.
ON the second day of oral arguments over the Affordable Care Act,
Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., trying to explain what sets
health care apart, told the Supreme Court,
“This is a market in which you may be healthy one day and you may be a
very unhealthy participant in that market the next day.” Justice Antonin
Scalia subsequently expressed skepticism about forcing the young to buy
insurance: “When they think they have a substantial risk of incurring
high medical bills, they’ll buy insurance, like the rest of us.”
May the justices please meet my sister-in-law. On Feb. 8, she was a
healthy 32-year-old, who was seven and a half months pregnant with her
first baby. On Feb. 9, she was a quadriplegic, paralyzed from the chest
down by a car accident that damaged her spine. Miraculously, the baby,
born by emergency C-section, is healthy.
Read it all. I wish there was a way to mandate that the conservative justices on the Supreme Court read the story, especially Antonin (Broccoli) Scalia, the clown on the bench.
