Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
It’s Time to Impeach Justice Scalia
Good article looking at the myriad ways in which Scalia not only fundamentally misinterprets the Constitution, but completely disregards it. A bit dry and non-narrative, so I'm just excerpting the four paragraphs from the end.
Scalia voted in the minority in an effort to overturn the federal Affordable Care Act and in his dissenting opinion seems to call for a return to eighteenth-century government and way of life. He criticized not only the health insurance mandates but also the Department of Education, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development as excessive overreaches of federal authority. Scalia based his textualist opinion on a close reading, not of the Constitution or of legal precedents, but on definitions of “regulate” from antiquated dictionaries: Noah Webster’s from 1828, Samuel Johnson’s from 1785, one by Ash (1775), and one by Dyche and Pardon (1777). Of course these dictionaries have no legal weight and there is no evidence the authors of the Constitution were familiar with these dictionaries or agreed with the definitions, but that does not seem to have bothered the textualist champion.
Although the word “corporation” does not appear in the Constitution of the United States (or in Samuel Johnson’s 1785 edition of his dictionary), Scalia joined a narrow majority in striking down limits on corporate spending in federal elections. He insisted that somehow these limitations violated the First Amendment right of corporations as non-humans to freedom of speech.
Perhaps the greatest example of Scalia’s ideological activism on the Court and his basic inconsistency was his decision in Bush v. Gore (2000) when the Court’s conservative majority stopped a vote recount in Florida in the name of equal protection of the law!
We can no longer afford to tolerate Scalia as a conservative curmudgeon; he is a right-wing ideologue who is in a position to threaten constitutional government in the United States. He is a smart man, but smarts without a respect for law are dangerous, especially on the United States Supreme Court. Of course, Antonin Scalia could decide to spare the nation the spectacle of an impeachment and trial. After reading this indictment, he could just resign.
Full article: http://hnn.us/articles/it%E2%80%99s-time-impeach-justice-scalia
Although the word “corporation” does not appear in the Constitution of the United States (or in Samuel Johnson’s 1785 edition of his dictionary), Scalia joined a narrow majority in striking down limits on corporate spending in federal elections. He insisted that somehow these limitations violated the First Amendment right of corporations as non-humans to freedom of speech.
Perhaps the greatest example of Scalia’s ideological activism on the Court and his basic inconsistency was his decision in Bush v. Gore (2000) when the Court’s conservative majority stopped a vote recount in Florida in the name of equal protection of the law!
We can no longer afford to tolerate Scalia as a conservative curmudgeon; he is a right-wing ideologue who is in a position to threaten constitutional government in the United States. He is a smart man, but smarts without a respect for law are dangerous, especially on the United States Supreme Court. Of course, Antonin Scalia could decide to spare the nation the spectacle of an impeachment and trial. After reading this indictment, he could just resign.
Full article: http://hnn.us/articles/it%E2%80%99s-time-impeach-justice-scalia
41 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
There's plenty public info that says he should be. 
and next month Scalia will be 76-1/2. He's grossly overweight and probably suffers from high blood pressure. I've thought for awhile he'll be the next one to go on the Court. And hoped it, too. Meanwhile, here's to your good health, Justice Ginsberg.
