I’m sure EJ’s Jacksonian-Whig sparring partners will be disappointed by his lack of discretion here:
Justice Antonin Scalia needs to resign from the Supreme Court.
He’d have a lot of things to do. He’s a fine public speaker and teacher. He’d be a heck of a columnist and blogger. But he really seems to aspire to being a politician — and that’s the problem.
So often, Scalia has chosen to ignore the obligation of a Supreme Court justice to be, and appear to be, impartial. He’s turned “judicial restraint” into an oxymoronic phrase. But what he did this week, when the court announced its decision on the Arizona immigration law, should be the end of the line.
PeakVT
Vafanculo, Tony.
JPL
Twenty-seven percent of the nation would vote for Scalia for President.
negative 1
When everyone is inevitably frustrated with the ACA decision, they should write letters to the editor, comments, etc. echoing this. His should be the scalp sought as an answer to them striking down all or part of ACA. As far as most legal press has come out, there is not much of a defense to his position if it gets shot down (and yes I realize I’m jumping the gun, but if anyone believes he votes to uphold I suppose they can ignore my comment).
dmsilev
As long as a Democrat is in the White House, the only way Scalia is leaving the Court is if he’s carried out in a coffin.
Mark S.
Oh, he’ll probably top it tomorrow.
c u n d gulag
Maybe Scalia can make porno movies?
He seems to think he’s the big swinging d*ck on the SC.
Of course, everyone on the set will either laugh at him, or else have to come up with a left-of-center costar – since the only way Antonin gets hard, is when he fecks Liberals.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: Would they though? He is not pretty enough. May be he can be Palin’s VP and run the country like Cheney did.
jonas
Can you imagine the aneurisms across the wingnutosphere if Kagan or Ginsberg went on a left-wing tirade like Scalia? It would be an apocalypse. Of course, since it would be conservatives flipping their shit, the outrage would have to receive a “serious” airing in the MSM. In Scalia’s case, the outrage is currently limited to some bloggers and liberal columnists who appear as of yet unable to crank up the kind of noise machine the right is capable of and that gets the MSM’s attention.
El Cid
He’s only a good public speaker if he’s speaking to the same crowd of right wing douchenozzles he’s already speaking to. I’ve watched him speak in person and via C-Span or whatever, and it’s only “good” in the sense of being animated and occasionally snarky and say the same bullshit arguments which succeed only because there’s no one up on stage able to call out the simpleton bullshit.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
the only way the right could be talked out of full scale civil war, if biden and kagan went hunting, is if they were shooting undocumented workers.
even then, the rw blog establishment would make it important to note that even though they like shooting undocumented workers, the vice president should not be hunting with a supreme court justice.
MattF
I was surprised by this. I think EJ’s colleagues on the WaPo OpEd page might have to rally in defense of Scalia. After all, Scalia isn’t actually water-boarding anyone. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Bort
I think he should be a talk radio host. Maybe have one of those buttons that make fart noises. That would be rad.
dedc79
I (and others) have been saying for awhile, that by Scalia’s own test, he should resign.
gnomedad
Loved the bit about he wasn’t in the same duck blind or anything with Cheney, so it’s all good.
slippy
@dmsilev: That would work for me.
TenguPhule
That can be arranged.
Wag
@dmsilev:
…and if he continues with the spittle flecked invective from the bench, he may drop dead on the job, with a rage induced stroke
dmsilev
@Wag: That thought occurred to me as well. One could argue that an optimal result tomorrow would consist of a decision to uphold the healthcare law, combined with Scalia stroking out while trying to read his dissent.
How very uncivil of me, I suppose.
NonyNony
@dedc79:
You’re missing the key portion of Scalia’s excuse here:
It’s what Scalia believes about Catholic doctrine that’s important, not what the doctrine actually might be.
And to be honest – Catholic doctrine is a much larger tangle of weeds than those who are not Catholics understand. The caricature of Catholocism is that the Pope says it and that makes it doctrine. More accurately there’s over a millenia of tradition built up in the Church that gets interpreted by bishops. Scalia’s able to justify his belief that Catholic doctrine doesn’t forbid the death penalty because the Catholic Church hierarchy is a bit weaselly about it. They never come right out and say “the death penalty is wrong and it is the duty of every Catholic to oppose it” the way they do with abortion. Instead they say things like:
That’s from the Catechism. It says plainly that Church doctrine does NOT prohibit the death penalty. Sure it goes on to say that in this modern world the cases are rare, but to a mind like Scalia’s “rare” might mean that roughly 3000 people on Death Row in a country with a population of 300 million counts as “very rare”.
Compare that, by the way, to the firm stance that the Church takes on abortion in the same part of the Catechism:
There you go. The Catechism of the Catholic Church specifically and categorically forbids abortions, helping someone get an abortion, or participating in the legislative process to pass laws to allow someone else to get an abortion regardless of their own personal religious beliefs. The Catechism of the Catholic Church does NOT specifically and categorically forbid the death penalty, and leaves enough wiggle room in how the death penalty should be applied to allow an elephant to walk by.
Respect for life begins at conception and ends at birth – a more classic example is hard to find.
schrodinger's cat
OT but somewhat related. I saw an infomercial at the gym by the NRA, it seemed pretty
crazy, it had John Bolton and Wayne LaPierre (sp?) has anyone else seen it. The TV was on mute, so I couldn’t hear anything.
kindness
@TenguPhule:
You aren’t supposed to say such things openly. Thinking them are OK though. Saying it quietly in ‘polite’ company is OK. Saying it on the intertubes only brings one hell (and possible Secret Service meetings).
Patricia Kayden
Well, we all know what’s going to happen tomorrow. Scalia and his cohorts will overturn the Affordable Care Act and the Repubs will vote no confidence in Holder. Hopefully, sensible Americans can see that both actions are all about playing politics. Nothing more.
Raven
U.S. Rep. John Barrow, a Georgia Democrat, says he plans to vote in favor of holding Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for refusing to release documents related to a botched gun-tracking operation.
Punchy
THIS. If, in the very off-chance Kennedy woke up on the Left side of the bed and this goes to the correct decision, I cannot wait to see what Scalia says then. They’d be smart to keep an EMT and defibilator nearby.
hal
I still say the ACA is going to be upheld. John Roberts and Kennedy are too concerned with their long term reputations to go full wingnut. Roberts does not want his court to go down in history as the Citizens United/ACA court and it wouldn’t surprise me if that’s part of the reason he sided with the liberals on AZ as well.
Kennedy on his way out the door and he to is concerned about how he will be remembered. Because of that, I think both are willing to ignore personal politics long enough to uphold the ACA.
I think…
Citizen Alan
@dmsilev:
Your lips to God’s ears. BTW, does anyone remember Fat Tony back in the summer of 2000 openly saying that he might retire if Gore won because there would be no chance of his radical views ever commanding a majority of the Court’s agreement. Luckily, he got to cast the deciding vote against Gore and so his legacy was preserved.
peach flavored shampoo
This made me laugh, if only because I first took this a little differently than I think it was intended.
Roger Moore
@dmsilev:
Tempting, isn’t it?
dedc79
@NonyNony: Thanks for that additional context. It’s a point one of my co-bloggers has been making – that Scalia is a “Cafeteria Catholic” picking and choosing the tenets he emphasizes, generally in line with whatever the Republican party thinks at the time.
Turgidson
@Patricia Kayden:
“Sensible Americans” aren’t enough – as Adlai Stevenson said, we need a majority.
I’m just guessing, but I don’t think most people really give a shit about the Fast and Furious thing, which could be good or bad. If they just pick up the paper and see that the AG has been voted in contempt, and the inquiry ends there, that’s bad.
If they dig a little deeper and see that the whole thing was a circus conducted on a giant pile of steaming bullshit with an idiotic, disingenuous crook as the ringleader, that would be good. But I’m not counting on the “dig deeper” part happening.
People will notice the ACA ruling. I’m guessing a bad ruling would be a short-term ding on Obama, but doubt it will change many votes in November. I doubt a significant number will notice that that whole thing was a partisan, intellectually dishonest shitshow either.
Roger Moore
@gnomedad:
It’s too bad, really. Think of how much better the world would be if he had been the one Cheney shot in the face…
Mark S.
@peach flavored shampoo:
Yeah, if he’s in the majority, there will be a different type of stroking going on.
Roger Moore
@Punchy:
My definition of smart does not involved protecting Scalia from his own rage-induced heart attack. It involves making sure it provides us an opportunity to replace him with a more liberal justice.
EconWatcher
You young folks might not believe me, but there actually was a time when Scalia was an interesting jurist.
He’s always been to the right of Genghis Khan, mind you. But there was a time when he stood stubbornly for certain jurisprudential principles. His opinions on the Confrontation Clause in criminal cases, for example, were quite thoughftul and actually more pro-defendant than those of some moderates on the Court. Ditto his views on the right to jury trial in criminal cases.
But now he’s just a partisan wingnut; nothing interesting about him at all. I think age is part of it. Many people who are already of a conservative bent seemed to have lost all sense of nuance and balance with age. Same thing happened with my father.
I guess the rise of Fox News may also have a lot to do with it; in the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t as easy for a conservative to lock himself in a hermetically sealed environment. How much do you want to bet Nino has Fox blaring on high volume constantly at home?
shortstop
Why do I feel like this is like Nixon’s last, batshit weeks in office, when it was clear he couldn’t prevail, but people urging him to resign just made him dig his heels in harder? Scalia won’t resign not just for reasons of towering ego, but because he is a petty, spiteful motherfucker.
dedc79
@EconWatcher: His opinion questioning the appropriateness of having a special prosecutor is one for the ages. He was prophetic about what a disaster it could turn out to be. Only, since it ended up being a Dem who suffered from it, I’m guessing Scalia has probably changed his mind since then.
the Conster
Remember the media shit storm over Clarence Thomas’ withholding of information on his financial reports to hide his wife’s political activities, which if revealed, should have led to his recusal on the ACA hearing, or at least calls for impeachment? Me neither.
Scott S.
Saying it is one thing. Convincing him to go? He’ll never do it. As long as one brick lies atop another brick in the USA, Tony Scalia’s job is not yet complete.
Waldo
If Scalia gave a shit about what people like EJ think, he would have resigned ages ago. In fact, knowing he’s pissing off liberals is probably the only compelling reason he has to drag his fat ass out of bed in the morning.
Elie
@dmsilev:
He’s already 78 and a bunch overweight. The fat in his head alone must send his triglycerides over the moon…He is, what we say in the medical world, a “set up” for any number of bad cardiovascular outcomes.
My fear is that way before he passes on, the hardenning of the arteries and bizarre non Alzheimers dementia would cause him to become even more unstable and inappropriate. And of course, they would cover it up. My guess is that he is already pretty crazy acting.
MoeLarryAndJesus
I still want to know if Scalia has ever sodomized his wife.
It’s a fair question, by his own standards.
twopercentco.com/rants/archives/popups/popup_123.html
David Hunt
@the Conster:
Unfortunately, Supreme Court Justices are immune to the legal rules that require recusal in circumstances of such clear-cut conflicts of interest. Each Justice is allowed to look into his heart and decide whether he is truly independent in a particular case and stay with it anyway even though he/she is obviously biased as all hell. With no consequences. The only lawful, formal control of a Supreme Court Justice that I am aware of is the threat of impeachment. Thomas is clearly not afraid of impeachment. He’s already given Congress more than ample reason to impeach him and it hasn’t happened.
negative 1
@Waldo: Yes, but he likes wine and classical music, so he’s complex! He’s certainly not Rush Limbaugh in a funny bathrobe!
burnspbesq
@hal:
The optimal opinion would be four sentences long.
“The payment described in 26 U.S.C. Section 5000A is a tax. The Anti-Injunction Act applies. The Anti-Injunction Act is jurisdictional. The case is dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.”
That’s about the least likely outcome.
GregB
@Raven:
Another stellar member of the stab in the back douche-bag caucus along with whole pack of West Virginia cowards and the soon to be retired Senator from Missouri.
Ash Can
@GregB: McCaskill is also trailing her goofy-as-all-hell teahadist opponent by 8 points as of today. If her skipping the convention keeps her opponent’s radical ass out of the Senate, she gets a pass from me — but her asshole constituents don’t.
@Raven: I don’t know off the top of my head if this is what Barrow really believes, or what he believes he has to do to keep his seat. Either way, it’s just further reason to worry about the long-term viability of the Sane White Southerner as a breed.
Tripod
@Elie:
Also a smoker. I’m betting the actuarial table and voting Obama.
The Other Bob
@dmsilev:
We can only dream.
mclaren
The hell with getting him to resign. Impeach the bastard. Impeach Roberts and Scalia and Thomas. Impeach ’em all. Then send ’em to prison for corruption, conflict of interest, and various other high crimes and misdemeanors.
Villago Delenda Est
@dmsilev:
Fine. Let’s arrange it.
Nora
burnspbesq:
If the Supreme Court still bothered to follow precedent and still cared about jurisdiction, you would be 100% right. However, neither one of these things is true. Cf. Citizens United.
Jebediah
@Villago Delenda Est:
I’m thinking a single dinner out with a waiter who disrespectfully refuses to bring the correct order might successfully pop a valve. Maybe somewhere there is some waitstaff who like some of the provisions of the ACA and don’t want them taken away.
SiubhanDuinne
@dmsilev:
Don’t do this to me! You’re tempting me to vote for Mittens!!
dww44
@GregB:
@Ash Can:
You know, even if John Barrow votes in favor of contempt, he will gain no quarter or respect from the Republican/conservative/tea party base in his highly African-American district (Savannah has a very large AA population). They still have him targeted clearly within their gun sights. So, what do blue-dog Democrats believe they will actually gain from turning their backs on their own party and on its first elected Black President and his Black Attorney General? This is a manufactured issue. Are they that scared of the NRA, for pity’s sake? Is it perhaps possible people like Barrow are being personally threatened in some way, whether physically, or economically, or reputational? Something else besides pure lily-livered cowardice is at play here. Barrow has hung in against tough odds for the last 3 or 4 election cycles. Yes, he doubled down on some stuff. I think he voted against the ACA, but this? If I’m John Lewis, I believe I’d be twisting his arm a bit.