Religion Largely Absent in Argument About Cross

[katkat]

Source: New York Times

Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”

Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.”

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/08/us/08scotus.html

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How stupid is Scalia? And this guy is on the Supreme Court.

[Chulanowa]

1. How stupid is Scalia?

Do they make numbers big enough to measure that?

[Fridays Child]

3. Uh uh. Nope. I doubt it.

Infinitely stupid.

[mitchum]

5. His waist measurement is 3 times the size of his IQ

[FatDave]

19. Yes, but you have to go to scientific notation to express them.

[FiveGoodMen]

2. How stupid were the people who PUT Fat Tony on the bench?

[mitchum]

4. Fuck Fat Tony and all of his fellow Opus Dei dirtbags

[laconicsax]

6. The best suggestion I've seen is that when Scalia dies, he be buried under a Muslim crescent.

He shouldn't have a problem with it since religious symbols aren't religious.

[FiveGoodMen]

9. I like that!

[mitchum]

13. I consider urine to be sacred...

therefore, I will consecrate Scalia's grave in an appropriate fashion

[ThomCat]

15. I'll be standing in line behind you.

:P

[Tx4obama]

7. This was posted on DU yesterday, here's the link to the BIG discussion

This was posted on DU yesterday, here's the link to the BIG discussion regarding what Scalia said, etc.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6721997

.

[RaleighNCDUer]

8. Would it be considered a breach of decorum to respond before the high court

"Well, DUH!"?

When the majority of the dead are christian, OF COURSE the most common symbol is the cross. That does NOT make it appropriate for ALL.

Fucking moron.

[fascisthunter]

10. religious fanatics

the spin is terrible... they will say whatever... weird!

[onehandle]

11. How does this one stupid cross discussion get to SCOTUS?

The stupidity is wasting time on this. The conservative court obviously accepted this case to suck up to their base.

[Igel]

17. Because of the issue involved.

Which, oddly, involves the cross itself to a small amount.

Strictly speaking, Congress pre-empted the entire dispute. The cross is not now on federal land, and therefore cannot be covered by the court's injunction telling it to remove it. The cross has not moved.

But the cross was on federal land when the court issued the injunction.

Instead Congress swapped land to create a little island of non-federal land for the purpose (the plaintiffs would say) of doing an end-run around the courts. Is this okay? Is it disrespecting the courts? Is it somehow circumventing the clear intent of the Constitution (and if so, how so?).

It strikes me, for the most part, as having Congress get involved in a simple dispute. The government did not do as the court ordered, but did something that brings it into formal compliance with the goal of the court. It's the kind of maneouvre that's too clever by half, and is sure to piss off a judge--he's the arbiter of how the Constitution is to be enforced and implemented, and finding an alternative is clearly, well, uppity.

How SCOTUS decides and why they decide as they do will be entertaining.

[tomm2thumbs]

12. Scalia is a scab on the butt of this country - we need to pick it off and throw it in the trash

the most common symbol for the dead is actually a dead person. duh... and if we are talking about a popularity contest, for the record of Mr. Scalia, the most popular first name in the world is Muhammad so he needs to get over himself and his tunnel vision.


Below is quoted from the article for those that didn't happen to check it out entirely:

The question of the meaning of a cross in the context of a war memorial did give rise to one heated exchange, between Justice Scalia and Peter J. Eliasberg, a lawyer for Mr. Buono with the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation of Southern California. Mr. Eliasberg said many Jewish war veterans would not wish to be honored by “the predominant symbol of Christianity,” one that “signifies that Jesus is the son of God and died to redeem mankind for our sins.”

Justice Scalia disagreed, saying, “The cross is the most common symbol of the resting place of the dead.”

“What would you have them erect?” Justice Scalia asked. “Some conglomerate of a cross, a Star of David and, you know, a Muslim half moon and star?”

Mr. Eliasberg said he had visited Jewish cemeteries. “There is never a cross on the tombstone of a Jew,” he said, to laughter in the courtroom.

Justice Scalia grew visibly angry. “I don’t think you can leap from that to the conclusion that the only war dead that that cross honors are the Christian war dead,” he said. “I think that’s an outrageous conclusion.”

[undeterred]

14. He's quite stupid.

When he was a teacher at University of Chicago Law School he said that women should marry and stay home so they could bake homemade cookies for their children... not the view you hope someone involved in the graduate education of women would hold.

[ThomCat]

16. Again, I wonder how the hell anyone thought he was qualified

for the bench. x(

[OneBlueSky]

18. hey, for years Scalia was touted as the Court's "intellectual" . . .

I always wondered where that particular viewpoint originated, since I've never thought he was all that smart . . . this latest idiocy, I think, proves that he had a lot of people fooled -- including many in the media . . . not all that hard to do, I suppose, now that I think about it . . .