Scalia. Dead. Yesterday.

I knew about it then, but God asked me to announce it only on a Sunday. 

Dead and (one hopes) gone...

Actually, I found out while I was sitting in a car in the Academy Sports & Outdoors parking lot, waiting for Stella who was trying to buy tennis shoes. I struggled mightily to find a free, unpassworded WiFi available from the parking lot. I found one, with a signal strength so low that its download transfer rate was only 1mbps. About the only news list I subscribe to is The Guardian (what? you expect an American news service to publish straight info on American politics, etc.? gimme a break!), and I saw the announcement of Scalia's death pass quickly before my eyes, but the connection was so iffy I gave up and dismissed the browser. But even the dismissal didn't get through the bad connection; I received one article from the Guardian, sans photos, and read the basics.

I have never had any sympathy for that man. He was a smiling dogmatist, with no redeeming qualities I could ever find. (I guess that makes me one of those "liberals" The Guardian said found him "infuriating" ... fair enough.) Read the article at ThinkProgress for a list of possible consequences of Scalia's sudden absence on the Court; be forewarned, they range from actually beneficial to nearly "chaotic" (their word, not mine). Now that there is a 4-4 tie between conservatives and moderates (the last actual liberal retired and died over a decade five years ago), cases which provoke an ideological reaction from the Right will rebound to the lower court in which they originated; in many cases, that court has more "tighty Righties" than the Supremes... and the result will apply only to the circuit in which that court operates. In other words, no help for Texas, Louisiana or Oklahoma. Sucks, if you ask me.

Here are other articles I found once I had a solid connection from inside a bookstore:

• Moments After Scalia’s Death Is Confirmed, GOP Senate Staffer Pledges To Block Any Obama Replacement
  

  So did Sen. and presidential candidate Ted Cruz, I read somewhere. Grrrr... if he becomes president, he shall appoint NO Supremes; I would hope the Democrats in the Senate will see to that.

• Antonin Scalia's death calls supreme court gun rights stance into question
  

  That would be District of Columbia v Heller.

• Supreme court justice Antonin Scalia dies: legal and political worlds react
  

  The summary bulleted list contains useful links.

That will do for the moment. Ted Cruz and other Repugnant members of Congress are vowing to torpedo anyone... ANYONE... Obama nominates to replace him. Dog help the next Repub president, whenever they manage to steal that office again...

Scalia: Constitution Does Not Prohibit Torture

AP, in an unsigned short article:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is joining the debate over the Senate's torture report by saying it is difficult to rule out the use of extreme measures to extract information if millions of lives were threatened.

...

Scalia says nothing in the Constitution appears to prohibit harsh treatment of suspected terrorists.

...

Well, fuck, Antonin; good job of answering... what? certainly no question anyone actually asked.

Scalia exemplifies original dyspepsia

Suppose Scalia is correct, and not one word in the Constitution prohibits torture. Does that mean that torture is peachy-keen, and every agent of every three-letter American government agency should run right out and torture the first criminal suspect or terrorist suspect s/he encounters?

In short, it does not matter whether the Constitution of the United States explicitly prohibits torture: torture is wrong anyway, from a moral AND a strategic standpoint.

Is one Texas GOP asshole who occupied the White House for eight years sufficient to overturn two centuries of moral tradition that the US does not engage in torture? And why does an ancient and far from venerable Supreme Court Justice feel compelled to advocate torture publicly?

Scalia is 78 years old and reportedly very religious. Please forgive me if I hope his God calls him home before he incites too many more zealots in the CIA, NSA, FBI and DHS (to name just a few) to grotesque acts in the name of the people of the United States of America.

Scalia Believes In The Devil

Quoting Scripture for
his own purpose

Kay Steiger at TPM points to a New York Magazine interview of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in which Scalia is quoted as whispering, "I even believe in the Devil."

Well, I'm not Catholic. I'm not even Christian... I'm a UU. But I believe in the Devil. He walks the face of this Earth. He looks like an overgrown Catholic choirboy, and indeed often wears robes, though appropriately enough for the Devil, his robes are black. He dyes his hair black. Sometimes during the day he sits on a bench and wreaks havoc in people's lives. Oh, yes, there's a Devil...

"My horns are THIS wide..."

Among current Supreme Court Justices, six
(Roberts, Scalia, Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor) are Catholic and three (Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan) are Jewish. Whatever effect it may or may not have on their judgments, the religious composition of the current Court is certainly far from reflective of the American population at large.

Sporting a devilish smirk...

Historically (see same wiki), the diversity of Justices by religion has been quite wide, even including over history nine Unitarians. Now their may as well be a clause in the Constitution forbidding Unitarian Universalists on the Court, as unlikely as it is that such would ever be confirmed by the religious bigots in the GOP caucus in Congress. But at least we can point to one Devil on the Court, and know that he believes in himself...