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| FromAlbum4 |
“It’s all those good white authorities in Shelby County and elsewhere who are the REAL victims.”
Actually, and I’ve said this in comments here at First Draft and elsewhere, watching Tony waddle off into his dotage in a fizzle of petulance is a good thing. Whether deserved or not — probably not — Scalia was presumed to have at least some intellectual heft. But certainly since Bush v. Gore and possibly earlier, he’s demonstrated clearly that he’s just another wingnut hack. A dangerous one, to be sure, and damn if I wish he wasn’t almost anywhere except the bench, but I’ll take anything that drops him down a peg.
Meanwhile, out in the real world (from Ed Kilgore) here’s what’s actually happening inregions covered under Section Five.
C’mon now, Justice Scalia is simply taking on the task that our elected representatives find far too dangerous anymore: Acting nakedly racist. As Justice Scalia pointed out, it’s just too risky for a Senator or Representative to vote against the Voting Rights Act; the voters tend to frown on such bigotry.
Instead, Justice Scalia will go so far as to look at the motivations of the unanimous Senate vote to justify the Court’s meddling: “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.”
So, despite a unanimous vote in the Senate, despite the ongoing need for the corrective of the legislation, Justice Scalia alone has the guts to stand up for racism because he and his compatriots on the bench don’t have to explain themselves to the electorate. The constitutional right to vote, if it truly exists (Justice Scalia seems unpersuaded), doesn’t need any legislative guarantees or enforcement, according to this line of “thought.”
I would endorse the Benedict XVI Solution for Justice Scalia.
Scalia also said: “The Israeli supreme court, the Sanhedrin, used to have a rule that if the death penalty was pronounced unanimously, it was invalid, because there must be something wrong there”.
After that gem, Big Tony’s intellectual bona fides membership card should have been revoked.
The next time a wingnut politician names Antonin as a “model justice,” someone should remind them that he admits to being influenced by foreign/international jurisprudence.
Of course, they’ll claim it’s different, because…you know, Israel.
But…if we can let Israel influence our legal system, can’t we also let Israel influence our health care? They’ve got a universal system that’s a good bit more centralized than Obamacare, though I don’t think it’s single payer. Could be wrong, though.
BTW, the Sanhedrin Big Tony was referring to was in the so-called biblical times about 2K or so years ago.
Given the situation, this fact made Scalia’s comment even more bizarre.
If anyone denies that there is a need for review of the election laws by an outside group:
*) all they have to do is look at the gerrymandering done all over the country to get the people of the right political affiliation. (And only a handful of states have to worry with that pesky review. The others are free to draw districts that are 90 miles long and 1 mile wide.)
*) Just look at the videos of Rove in the last election taking info of preleminary votes of districts. Rove then spit, off the top of his head, stats on which precincts would vote which way because of their demographics.