Post #166

Subject: Antonin Scalia, Naked Under his Robes

There used to be a lone voice of solid reasoning that thundered across the political landscape – this is a nation of laws, not of men. Respect for what is written in the Constitution is paramount. But that changed in 2000.

If ever there was one case that the U.S. Supreme Court should have stayed out of, it was Bush v. Gore. Our election for President is not a national election – if it was, Al Gore would have won. But our election is a series of state elections with each state determining its own rules as ultimately interpreted by that state’s Supreme Court – not the U.S. Supreme Court.

The irony is that, if played out according to the law, George W. Bush would have won legitimately. Instead, we have an illegitimate President who was inflicted upon us by Antonin Scalia.

Recently, I saw a TV interview with Scalia and was hoping for a reasonable explanation. Instead, when asked why the U.S. Supreme Court intervened, he answered “the way it was presented, it was a Constitutional problem.” Well, yes or no. Goodness, anything can be presented as a Constitutional problem -- the Supreme Court decides what is or is not a Constitutional problem.

Scalia then went on and said that he considered public opinion, that the public was impatient for a new President. What does public opinion have to do with deciding a case before the U.S. Supreme Court? To Scalia, it is important.

Not only is public opinion important to Scalia, but he also cited world public opinion as a reason the U.S. Supreme Court intervened in Bush v Gore. Scalia was worried that a foreign newspaper – French? – might make fun of the world’s leading democracy when we had to follow the law to determine our President.

Uh, I thought following the law was what a democracy was all about.

Of course, still today, Scalia is wandering… out there. Take, for instance, the recent D.C. gun ban case and show me “self-defense” written in the Constitution. Scalia made convincing arguments as to why the ban was bad policy, but he had to rely on “original intent” as a way to describe the ban as un-Constitutional – that is, he guessed as to what the founders meant so that he could impose his own agenda on the country instead of relying on what is written in the Constitution. Isn’t that known as “legislating from the bench?”

Antonin Scalia – another one. * sigh *