Tag: scalia

Sorry, Neil Gorsuch. The Supreme Court Seat Was Already Filled

Geoffrey Stone makes as good a case as I’ve seen:

Anyone who cares about the proper and legitimate functioning of our American democracy must oppose Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, not because he is necessarily unqualified, but because of the undermining of our American democracy by Senate Republicans. Anyone who cares about the rule of law should must oppose this nomination. If we fail to take this stand, the Senate Republicans will have succeeded in placing a justice onto our highest Court who has no business being there. They will have undermined the credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution, an institution that is critical to the functioning of our Constitution.

Judge Gorsuch’s nomination should be withdrawn, and the President should nominate in his place a genuinely moderate justice who is acceptable to Democrats and Republicans alike. Only then can we move on with a sense of institutional integrity. Short of that, every decision of the Court decided by a margin of five-to-four with Neil Gorsuch in the majority will justifiably be castigated as fundamentally illegitimate.

Simply saying you’re holding the seat for at least four years isn’t going to fly. Preemptively declaring a blanket filibuster on all candidates isn’t going to fly; that sort of thing is perfectly okay if you’re a Republican, but otherwise you can forget about it. But the Democrats must find a way to extract a political price over the Garland theft, but have to do so in a “serious” way that also placates the recently ascendant Democratic wing of the Democratic Party. Maybe you can manage to hold until mid-terms? But you have to have an end game and start talking about it today; good thing the Democrats are known for their excellent coordinated messaging machine…

Sorry, Neil Gorsuch. The Supreme Court Seat Was Already Filled

Antonin Scalia, Thinking Man

Salon reports some amazing cogitation on the part of Scalia:

[Peter Eliasberg, whose client objects to the cross suggests that] “a statue of a soldier which would honor all of the people who fought for America in World War I and not just the Christians.”

“The cross doesn’t honor non-Christians who fought in the war?” Scalia asks, stunned.

“A cross is the predominant symbol of Christianity, and it signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins,” replies Eliasberg, whose father and grandfather are both Jewish war veterans.

“It’s erected as a war memorial!” replies Scalia. “I assume it is erected in honor of all of the war dead. The cross is the most common symbol of … of … of the resting place of the dead.”

Eliasberg dares to correct him: “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of Christians. I have been in Jewish cemeteries. There is never a cross on a tombstone of a Jew.”

“I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead the cross honors are the Christian war dead,” thunders Scalia. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion!”

Truly the conservative intellectual at work.

The cross in question:

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I’m sure that many, if not most Jewish and Muslim veterans would look to this as a fitting memorial to their service in WWI… who could possibly view it in any other way!?! It defies belief.