USSC Justice Scalia Dead at 79

[21st Century Man]

Well, I'll combine the two. You are a moron and I hope you die in the next few minutes.  The world can use less morons like you and Scalia.

You are not winning any converts with statements like this.

[GravitySucks]

Feel the hate. Only a liberal would hate someone like that with every fiber of their soul.

RIP The honorable Antonin Scalia.

+1

[GravitySucks]

You are not winning any converts with statements like this.

And I'm still alive and kicking.

[21st Century Man]

Is there seriously a debate that black people are slower learners as Scalia claimed?

Or that homosexuals make inferior parents?

Or that the voting rights act perpeptuated 'racial entitlement' in favor of black people?  (Another opinion of his that over rode the elected legislature.)

I think it's you who are too enamored by his writings to judge him objectively for the 'man' he was :a hate filled and vile POS

That's funny.  Ruth Bader Ginsburg didn't think he was a piece of shit and you are the one that is hate-filled, Canuck.  I never thought I'd be praising Ginsburg but she is a 1000 times better than you.  Stick to Trudeau and Canadian politics.

[21st Century Man]

+1

Hey, GS.  Its been a while since I've seen 136 lurking in the politics thread and he crossed way over the line with his spinning and hate.  I know nobody else is here but I had to say something.

[GravitySucks]

Hey, GS.  Its been a while since I've seen 136 lurking in the politics thread and he crossed way over the line with his spinning and hate.

I agree, but typing on my iPhone is a difficult way to counter his bullshit. Thanks for taking up the gauntlet. Having different political views is one thing, spewing hatred upon hearing of the death of someone like Justice Scalia is pure ignorance. Ruth Bader Ginsberg will miss her colleague. Two jurists with diametrically opposed political views could enjoy each other's company every New Year's Eve. It will be hard to replace Justice Scalia. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

[21st Century Man]

In addition to previous articles that I've posted that showed (or opined) that Scalia's interpretation of the U.S Constitution ended up in his later years at least as being whatever was consistent with his ideology.......blah, blah, blah

    Of course, the Founders had no idea that corporations would be doling out health care for their employees.  I'm sure they would have preferred to have health care left up to the individual.   

   I am also sure that the Founders would have agreed that what corporations provide for their employees was up to the corporations not government so long as it was not injurious to the employees.  This also applies to corporate laws.  Employees are free to choose where they work. If they don't care for the corporations benefits and bylaws, they can work somewhere else.

   As for the peyote case, up until the last few years it was generally agreed that drugs were bad for people and should thus be regulated regardless of religion.  How many times in the 20th Century was pot use upheld for religious reasons?  Or any other drug for that matter? Forgive me if I'm ignorant on that matter but on a federal level, I don't recall it ever being brought up before that ruling. I'm not necessarily saying that it is right but I do see the justification from a 20th century POV. That issue should be left to the states as should gay marriage, abortion and many other issues.

Was Scalia perfect?  Hell no.  Are any of us?  No. However, he did a hell of a great job and did the best he could.

For further posts, please refrain from posting articles from biased sources.

[Showroom Dummy]

Since The Constitution doesn't mention a cut off day for making Supreme Court appointments, if you think there should one, what should it be and why?  Show your work.

And if we had a Republican President and a Democratic majority Senate, everyone's position on the situation would be the reverse of what it is now, so there's no point in anyone pretending to be acting purely on principle. We've all been guilty of that at one time or another, so we might as well admit it. 

good point and there is many republican seats up in the coming election so the status quo could change

This is a good point.  However, the edge still goes to the left with Roberts and Kennedy on the bench.

yes, however Roberts and Kennedy are both wild cards at times
but whoever is nominated it will be a lions den of a nomination  not sure who will really be willing to endure that process does it turn into a dragged out no win scenario 

[Jackstar]

Or any other drug for that matter?

Gonzales v. UDV, 2006

[GravitySucks]

Gonzales v. UDV, 2006

That would be the 21st century.

[Jackstar]

That would be the 21st century.

Yes, but I don't care about that.

[21st Century Man]

Gonzales v. UDV, 2006

Do you understand why I said the 20th century?  I know times have changed.  I was taking that into account.

[albrecht]

In addition to previous articles that I've posted that showed (or opined) that Scalia's interpretation of the U.S Constitution ended up in his later years at least as being whatever was consistent with his ideology and not what Scalia thought was consistent with any actual interpretation of the U.S Constitution, here is another one:

The Supreme Court’s creation of new religious rights for closely-held corporations, Burwell, Secretary of HHS v. Hobby Lobby, makes clear that while Antonin Scalia is winning his career-long war for more governmental accommodation of religion, he is doing it by silently consenting to the further dismantling of one of his most important decisions, Employment Division v. Smith.

The Hobby Lobby decision follows the logic of Citizens’ United in arguing that corporations, which have been ruled to have protected Free Speech rights for election campaign donations, now have the right to ignore portions of a federal law if they are “closely held corporations,” whose owners object to the law on religious grounds.

But I wonder whether the people that Scalia seeks to channel for this understanding, using his historical originalism theory to divine what the people in the state ratifying conventions of the Constitution in 1788 or the Bill of Rights in 1791 understood those words to mean, would agree? Under the Bill of Rights, would those Founding-era people have agreed with the majority in Hobby Lobby that the religious rights of the owners of corporations trump the constitutional rights of their workers to exercise their personal autonomy privacy right to choose their own form of family planning? In Scalia’s historical originalist terms, if there had been a tea shop run by two former employees of the British East India Company in Charlottesville, Virginia in 1791, would Thomas Jefferson and James Madison have agreed that under the First Amendment religion clauses its owners could have imposed their Church of England religious views on their American employees in opposition to a federal law dealing with the personal autonomy choices of their workers? Of course not. It is hard to imagine that the same people who fought and won a revolution against the economic enterprises of King George III and Parliament, believed that the Bill of Rights were intended to protect the free speech and religion rights of such corporations.

At issue in Hobby Lobby is just how protective of religious rights the Court will be in applying the First Amendment’s Free Exercise of Religion clause. Prior to 1990, the Court used a complicated “compelling state interest” and “least restrictive means” test, requiring that the state make an exception to its law if that regulation “substantially burdened” a “central” belief in a person’s religion, unless the state could demonstrate that there was no other way to achieve its aim. The complication was that despite what seemed to be a balance here that favored protecting religious rights, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor always provided the fifth vote in favor of state regulation, because she argued that the laws did not affect “central” religious views.

Scalia changed the standard in a 1990 case called Employment Division v. Smith, dealing with the firing of a Native American who was a drug counselor for a private company and who ingested peyote for religious reasons, thus was denied his right to receive unemployment benefits from the state. Ignoring that using peyote was a central part of some Native Americans’ religion, Scalia returned to a much older “secular regulation rule,” under which general state regulations, that applied to everyone equally and did not target specific religious groups, would be upheld if they were “reasonable.” Contrary to Hobby Lobby, in which the Court animates corporations in order to protect their religious rights, Scalia allowed Oregon’s anti-drug law to operate regardless of its religiously discriminatory effect on the Native American litigant’s religion.

But, by his own description a “faint-hearted originalist” who upheld key precedents at times, Scalia also held that the higher level, religious rights protective exception could be used in certain situations, such as when the Court considered a “hybrid case,” raising more than one constitutional issue, or if the states or Congress passed a law imposing the more protective standard. In the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), Congress restored the higher level, “compelling interest” rule, thus protecting persons whose religious rights were “substantially burdened.” While the Court four years later overturned this law when it applied to state governments, it later upheld its application to the federal government. Since then, the Court has repeatedly added exception after exception expanding the use of the higher level test elsewhere, thus piecemeal limiting the reach of Scalia’s Smith holding and, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued in dissent, extending religious protections under Congressional law that go far beyond what it had found for decades under the First Amendment itself. Since the Obama administration had allowed for exceptions to its contraception provision in the Affordable Care Act to some religiously-affiliated facilities, its argument for being unable to grant an exception to Hobby Lobby was doomed to lose once the Court ruled that this corporation was a protected person.

When I teach about the First Amendment Free Exercise of Religion at Lafayette College, which used to occupy a routine pair of classes, I now wheel into the classroom a large white board that will occupy us for weeks, filled with all of the exceptions that the Court has created here restoring, in piecemeal fashion, the pre-Scalia, 1990 decision, world. I explain what has become the “Swiss Cheesing” of the First Amendment’s Free Exercise clause, allowing, among others, for claims to be considered for exceptions for federal prisoners and others being held in government institutions, for a religious group in Hialeah, Florida seeking to sacrifice animals in religious ceremonies, and for a small religious group seeking to drink ceremonial hallucinogenic tea from the Amazon. The string of exceptions to Scalia’s Smith rule has created so many holes that there is almost no cheese left. After the Hobby Lobby decision, I will have to make one more change to the top of my board, one which risks doubling the number of exceptions, adding next to the words “person’s Free Exercise of Religion rights,” the phrase “and closely-held corporations’ religious rights”

Even though the majority in Hobby Lobby has further limited Scalia’s Smith case holding, since that result comports with his pro-religious accommodation, pro-corporation constitutional rights, viewpoint, he silently votes with them. While Scalia likes to say in his public speeches that his version of the Constitution is “Dead. Dead. Dead,” once more his reading of Founding era history to construct his originalist interpretation of the Constitution is very much an evolving work in progress.
By Bruce Allen Murphy is the author of Scalia: A Court of One (Simon and Schuster, 2014) and is the Fred Morgan Kirby Professor of Civil Rights at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.
â€" See more at: http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156300#sthash.GQETcyBw.dpuf

Vitriol and celebrations of death aside, when it comes down to it when an entity can make, or at least expand, their own jurisdiction and have positions for life, I don't like it. I don't think some select group of people, or likewise a President, should have so much ultimate authority. How very 'democratic' and 'progressive.' HAHA. At least with Congress we get gridlock and some, albeit less and less, actual representation for the States and People. I side with Jefferson on this, who, apparently, is now hated by the Democrats but just a few years earlier, and for decades, was lauded. Funny how things work out. Lest I be called a hypocrite; I don't mind when the Court makes a good decision, will even be happy, but even then I often don't like the precedent and its ability to do so in many cases. At this point I'm not sure, why even have State legislatures, Congress, or voters. Just let some people in robes make proclamations.

[Jackstar]

This thread has resulted in a necessity for me to remove people from my /ignore list, so I can watch them argue with each other. Thanks, Tony! Your death has not been in vain.

[136 or 142]

Feel the hate. Only a liberal would hate someone like that with every fiber of their soul.

RIP The honorable Antonin Scalia.

From 21st Century Man:
We can hope for another heart attack.

Yeah, please Obama.

You see you're just like me, I hope your satisfied.

There was nothing 'honorable' about the vile 'human' Scalia.  He was a racist, sexist hate filled freak and a pseudo-Christian extremist.  At worst, I'm just returning the hate that he felt all the time.

If there is a Hell, I sincerely hope he will suffer there for all eternity.  It couldn't happen to a more deserving 'person.'

Also, if you're so morally superior 21st Century Man, I suppose you oppose the death penalty (which Scalia was a major supporter of), that you oppose torture (which Scalia was a major defender of) and that you oppose the mistreatment of prisoners in jail.

[136 or 142]

You are not winning any converts with statements like this.

Who says I'm trying to win converts?

[136 or 142]

And I'm still alive and kicking.

Most unfortunate. 

[136 or 142]

Hey, GS.  Its been a while since I've seen 136 lurking in the politics thread and he crossed way over the line with his spinning and hate.  I know nobody else is here but I had to say something.

I'm sorry I insulted your hero.  If I crossed over the line, what about you wishing Obama dead?  I don't think you have any pretense to superiority.  Also, I don't see where I did any 'spinning' and in regards to hate, I don't think you're any better than me.

Also, I couldN'T care less what Ruth Bader Ginsburg thought personally about Scalia.  I judge him on his public behavior.  I understand that Hitler could be kind to animals and the during World War II Stalin was known as "Uncle Joe" so, I don't doubt that both of them also had friends that likely completely disagreed with them, although in Stalin's case, personally disagreeing with him would have been bad for one's hopes to remain a going concern.

[136 or 142]

I agree, but typing on my iPhone is a difficult way to counter his bullshit. Thanks for taking up the gauntlet. Having different political views is one thing, spewing hatred upon hearing of the death of someone like Justice Scalia is pure ignorance. Ruth Bader Ginsberg will miss her colleague. Two jurists with diametrically opposed political views could enjoy each other's company every New Year's Eve. It will be hard to replace Justice Scalia. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family.

Again, if you don't like celebration of death, I assume you oppose the death penalty?

[136 or 142]

    Of course, the Founders had no idea that corporations would be doling out health care for their employees.  I'm sure they would have preferred to have health care left up to the individual.   

So, you're saying that if somebody can't afford health insurance, that's their problem and if they die as a result you couldN'T care less?  Interesting. Seems like you're a pseudo-Christian just like your hero, the POS Scalia. RIH Scalia.

I don't think anybody has to vote in favor of some form of health care system.  If a person says "I couldn't care less about other people and I don't want my tax dollars to go to the health of other people."  However, from my reading of the Bible, to say you are a Christian and to oppose public spending on health care does strike me as being hypocritical.

Also, to oppose public spending on health care and then to express OUTRAGE! at another person being happy that some vile POS has wonderfully finally left the planet and made the world a better place by doing so, knowing that by refusing to spend money on health care that some people who could have lived will die, also strikes me as being hypocritical.

I've expressed above why I couldN'T care less about this 'politeness' bullshit when somebody dies.  This politeness bullshit strikes me as being a form of "political correctness" that so many in the Rethuglic Party claim to be against.  Personally I don't like to hear all the fawning that so many people in the media I think are required to do when some significant public figure dies to the point that their faults have to be glossed over.

So, if nothing else, I'm just providing my own personal antidote.

[136 or 142]

From my twitter feed.  Lawyer, former Victoria B.C radio talk show host and near economist (just got his masters, I believe he's now going for a PhD) Adam Stirling:

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  9h9 hours ago
Nothing written in the Constitution about being nice to Antonin Scalia just because he's dead. It's really all that matters, isn't it?

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  9h9 hours ago
I suppose one could argue for the inherent value of human mercy and decency. But he never did. Why should those who (don't) mourn him?

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
Besides, does anybody think Scalia would want to be falsely adored by those who he knew didn't like him? No way. He'd want brutal clarity.

Adam Stirling
‏@Adam_Stirling
I see many of us scolding the poor, the marginalized, and the downtrodden today over cheering Scalia's death. Perhaps we should consider why

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
When I die, I hope the poor, the marginalized, & the downtrodden are not singing & dancing in the streets. I'd wonder if I'd wasted my life.

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
God only knows how many frightened women are heaving a sigh of relief tonight because Scalia died before the abortion case coming up.

Adam Stirling
‏@Adam_Stirling
And maybe give the holier than thou you-have-to-be-nice language policing schtick a break, just this once.

[FightTheFuture]

From my twitter feed.  Lawyer, former Victoria B.C radio talk show host and near economist (just got his masters, I believe he's now going for a PhD) Adam Stirling:

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  9h9 hours ago
Nothing written in the Constitution about being nice to Antonin Scalia just because he's dead. It's really all that matters, isn't it?

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  9h9 hours ago
I suppose one could argue for the inherent value of human mercy and decency. But he never did. Why should those who (don't) mourn him?

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
Besides, does anybody think Scalia would want to be falsely adored by those who he knew didn't like him? No way. He'd want brutal clarity.

Adam Stirling
‏@Adam_Stirling
I see many of us scolding the poor, the marginalized, and the downtrodden today over cheering Scalia's death. Perhaps we should consider why

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
When I die, I hope the poor, the marginalized, & the downtrodden are not singing & dancing in the streets. I'd wonder if I'd wasted my life.

Adam Stirling ‏@Adam_Stirling  8h8 hours ago
God only knows how many frightened women are heaving a sigh of relief tonight because Scalia died before the abortion case coming up.

Adam Stirling
‏@Adam_Stirling
And maybe give the holier than thou you-have-to-be-nice language policing schtick a break, just this once.

Who cares?

Damn. All the time you wasted here with this nonsense, you could have been feeding the poor. You uncaring bastard.

[136 or 142]

Who cares?

Damn.

I care.  I care far more about what he has to say, even if he sometimes goes on too much, than I care about any of your idiotic comments.

[136 or 142]

Who cares?

Damn. All the time you wasted here with this nonsense, you could have been feeding the poor. You uncaring bastard.

I volunteer several hours a week at the B.C Schizophrenia Society.  Many people with that mental illness are poor.  What do you do?

[FightTheFuture]

I care.  I care far more about what he has to say, even if he sometimes goes on too much, than I care about any of your idiotic comments.

Why are you so angry? Seriously...why?

[SredniVashtar]

This politeness bullshit strikes me as being a form of "political correctness" that so many in the Rethuglic Party claim to be against. 

It's a courtesy that we give to the families of people who have died. Whatever the personal traits of the deceased, they still leave behind loved ones who don't need to be put through a public discussion of the shortcomings of their husband, brother etc, so shortly after they have died. I think that's to be preferred over some ill-tempered score-settling aimed against someone who is not in a position to answer back any more.

I am guessing you must be very young to have that sort of attitude.

[136 or 142]

It's a courtesy that we give to the families of people who have died. Whatever the personal traits of the deceased, they still leave behind loved ones who don't need to be put through a public discussion of the shortcomings of their husband, brother etc, so shortly after they have died. I think that's to be preferred over some ill-tempered score-settling aimed against someone who is not in a position to answer back any more.

I am guessing you must be very young to have that sort of attitude.

If others are going to publicly deify them (or come close to doing that) I think a counter needs to be offered.  The whole idea of 'political correctness' is courtesy, but being 'politically correct' is supposedly bad.  So, I guess it's not bad when people you don't like are the ones being treated discourteously.  Spare me the sanctimonious bull shit.

Would you prefer it if I put a 'trigger warning' at the start of my comments?

I'm 45 and I personally couldN'T care less if the family of a public figure has to listen to some harsh words about their relative, especially a public figure as vile as Scalia was.

[136 or 142]

Why are you so angry? Seriously...why?

I don't know.  Why was Scalia so angry?

[FightTheFuture]

I don't know.  Why was Scalia so angry?

That`s the thing; he wasn`t. Scalia was extremely good-natured and had a legendary sense of humor.

[FightTheFuture]

If others are going to publicly deify them (or come close to doing that) I think a counter needs to be offered.  The whole idea of 'political correctness' is courtesy, but being 'politically correct' is supposedly bad.  So, I guess it's not bad when people you don't like are the ones being treated discourteously.  Spare me the sanctimonious bull shit.

Would you prefer it if I put a 'trigger warning' at the start of my comments?

I'm 45 and I personally couldN'T care less if the family of a public figure has to listen to some harsh words about their relative, especially a public figure as vile as Scalia was.

You`re 45?! Wow. You`ve never had a girlfriend, have you?